Introducing Community Impact of COVID-19, A New Video Series Exploring Research Survey Results

In the past half a year, SCA Research conducted two surveys to assess the impact of COVID-19 on the global specialty coffee community, made possible with support from Pacific Barista Series and SCA members around the world

In the coming weeks, the SCA Research team will break down the results of the latest survey in a new video series: Community Impact of COVID-19, with continued support from Pacific Barista Series. These videos will be released on the SCA’s YouTube channel and available across the SCA’s social media channels.

You can now watch the first video, Community Impact of COVID-19: An Introduction, presented by Katie von der Lieth and Peter Giuliano here.

The next videos coming up in the series will cover two topics discovered to be crucial for coffee businesses in the current environment: "Science of COVID-19 Safety in the Coffeehouse" and "Marketing in the COVID-19 Era.”

Digging Into the Data

In Community Impact of COVID-19: An Introduction, we analyze what the SCA’s most recent survey tells us about the general impact of COVID-19, changes in sales channels, lost sales to date, future revenue expectations, and business decisions around remaining close or opening back up for service.

We also take a look at respondents’ attitudes and optimism about the situation. For example, the May/June survey showed a notable decrease in the number of respondents selecting “likely to go out of business” when asked, compared to the March survey, potentially signifying that the majority of specialty coffee respondents see this as a survivable time.

One key takeaway we saw in our open-ended questions was a strong focus on worker safety, customer safety, and sanitary practices in light of COVID-19. Respondents mentioned the implementation of safety and health procedures more than any other tool as a key competency during reopening. 80% of respondents mentioned new cleaning and sanitation procedures being implemented. 

Another major takeaway we saw was an emphasis on communications and marketing. 90% of respondents to our survey either never closed or have reopened at closing at one point, and many respondents see marketing as a way to communicate their ready-for-business status to their community. To give our community better marketing tools, we’ll be launching a separate video on this topic shortly, as another part of this video series.

Special Thanks to Pacific Barista Series

This series is made possible with support from Pacific Barista Series.

Watch Community Impact of COVID-19 Now:

We will be regularly updating this page with new episodes of the video series as they’re released. Check the listing below for all available episodes and subscribe to our newsletter to be notified of all new episodes.