Today, the Specialty Coffee Association (SCA) released updated Rules & Regulations for the 2023 World Latte Art, World Coffee in Good Spirits, and World Coffee Roasting Championships. These rules will be used for the first time at the Taipei World Coffee Championships, hosted at Taiwan International Coffee Show in Taipei, Taiwan, from November 17-20, 2023. 

The 2023 NCDT Market Research Series is an exclusive compendium of the most in-depth coffee industry market research currently available. The SCA is partnering with the NCA to help deliver key insights to coffee professionals.

If you are an SCA member based in Greece, cast your vote for the SCA Greece Chapter committee now.

We’re never entirely sure what the future holds, but the past few years have made it feel particularly unpredictable.

The Specialty Coffee Association is the world’s largest coffee membership association, with a sustainability-driven purpose deeply ingrained in its structure as a non-profit trade organization: to make coffee better.

Anthropology Professor EDWARD F. FISCHER, author of Making Better Coffee: How Maya Farmers and Third- Wave Tastemakers Create Value, explains the different types of value, ways of determining worth, and how we create economic value by drawing on other sorts of values (moral, social, political, and other cultural values) through the lens of his fieldwork in Guatemala.

Anthropologist SARAH BESKY, PhD considers the relationship between tea’s sensory lexicon and ideas of quality across tea’s colonial history and current-day trading practices, highlighting that quality is far from an objective measure—and that it must be constantly reproduced in practice, including how we choose and use words to adjudicate quality over time.

CHERYL HUNG, lead researcher for the NCA's National Coffee Data Trends studies, traces the impact of the pandemic on coffee consumption in the US and Canada, highlights the collective urge to reconnect, and calls for the coffee community to focus on marketing the emotional benefits and the “softer” aspects of America’s favorite morning beverage.

Lead author Dr. MACKENZIE BATALI shares the results of a controlled and systematic study exploring the impact of the cold brew process on the sensory profile of the beverage it produces, recently published in MDPI’s open access journal, Foods.

Corresponding author HELEN VAIKMA shares the results of a study market mapping the sensory attributes of five different categories of plant-based beverages.

VAUGHN TAN highlights where uncertainty (which is not the same thing as risk) exists within specialty coffee’s supply chain, and questions whether the industry’s previous emphasis on the “direct” in “direct trade,” combined with a drive to rebuild leaner coffee supply chains, has had unintended side effects.

We are so excited to announce World of Coffee Busan 2024, produced and delivered by licensed partner Exporum. World of Coffee Busan will take place at the Busan Exhibition & Convention Center (BEXCO) May 1-4, 2024, and will feature the 2024 World Barista Championship. This inaugural World of Coffee in Asia will run in addition to the SCA's annual World of Coffee trade shows in Dubai, scheduled for January 21 to 23, 2024, and Europe in June 2024.

Earlier today, SCA CEO Yannis Apostolopoulos formally introduced the beta version of the SCA Coffee Value Assessment on the Re:co Symposium stage, a thought leadership event that takes place prior to the Specialty Coffee Expo in Portland, Oregon. Yannis also unveiled an Early Adopter program designed to help the SCA refine the system’s protocol and forms through community feedback before it moves through the SCA’s standards development procedures.

The 2023 SCA Greece Chapter Election has started! That means that it’s time to make your voice heard by nominating and voting for the volunteer committee who will be leading the chapter's activities for the next two years.

Two New Bonavita Coffee Brewers Join the SCA Certified Home Brewer Lineup

The new SCA White Paper: The Value of Specialty Coffee Cuppers: Perspectives, Roles, and Professional Competencies describes the various roles cuppers currently hold within coffee’s value chain, the value of these roles, and the competencies required to successfully operate as a cupper in each context.

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For 2023, the Sustainability Award Business Model Category winner is Primavera Green Coffee. Primavera Green Coffee is a coffee exporter and importer specializing in excellent coffees from Guatemala, along with new coffees from other origins such as Colombia.

In the second in a series of features on sustainability frameworks and their relationship to the SCA’s sustainability agenda of equitable value distribution, SCA Sustainability Director ANDRÉS MONTENEGRO explains the concept of the circular economy through the use of a doughnut-and-coffee metaphor.

Learn all about the 2023 winner of the Sustainability Award in the Project Category, RENACER Coffee Training School by Catholic Relief Services.