En este seminario virtual, discutiremos los impactos de la virus COVID-19 con dos representantes de la cadena de valores de café de los EEUU, Areli Barrera de Grodski y Jorge Cuevas. Areli y su pareja Leon son dueños de tres cafeterías y un negocio de tueste en Carolina del Norte y hablará de su experiencia cambiando el módelo de ventas rapidamente para responder diariamente a nuevas circumstancias.

This week on Recap: the COVID-19 outbreak continues to have a devastating impact on the coffee industry; the SCA has postponed World of Coffee and the World of Coffee Championships; World Coffee Research continues important work on the future sustainability of the coffee supply chain; Colombia invests in a newly-launched coffee stabilization fund; Folgers, the leading brand of ground coffee in the US, adopts blockchain technology.

The staff and leadership of the Specialty Coffee Association and affiliated guilds and chapters are carefully monitoring developments related to the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak to understand its impact on our global community and activities. This blog post is part of a series of articles and other content written by members of our community, reflecting on the current COVID-19 pandemic and how it’s affecting their work and livelihoods.

As a part of the global specialty coffee community, the SCA is deeply concerned about the welfare of the businesses that form the basis of our professional network. In an attempt to understand and document the impact that COVID-19 is having on the specialty coffee industry, we have created this snapshot poll of the specialty coffee industry.

We’ve put together a living database to collect some of the many resources being shared by our community across social media and from business to business as we look for answers on how to manage the rapidly evolving situation. 

On March 20, we hosted a webinar with food safety expert and coffee consultant Mike Ebert and the chairs of all three guilds. The aim of this webinar was to provide an overview of the current (and ever-evolving) situation, including what we know and what we don’t know, and the direct effects on various roles within the supply chain. Mike will be joined by members of the Barista Guild, Roasters Guild, and Coffee Technicians Guild leadership, who will lead a Q&A with questions collected from their communities.

Today, we are announcing an agreement with our partners at PTAK Warsaw Expo to postpone World of Coffee to October 15–17, 2020, the only dates available in 2020. We have informed all of our exhibitors and visitors via email, and our exhibitions team will be sharing more information next week.

Today, the 2020 Melbourne International Coffee Expo (MICE), featuring the 2020 World Barista Championship and World Brewers Cup, has been postponed by the show organizers to November 3-6, 2020. 

This session brings together recent work on the history and anthropology of coffee in the context of a discussion about the role of specialty in rebalancing the fundamentals of the market. Professor Jonathan Morris presents an overview of the history of price volatility across the five eras of coffee history he has identified, with some suggestions as to how this might be resolved in a sixth era as producer countries start consuming their own coffee. 

SCA members in Lithuania have cast their ballots in the 2020 elections to select their new leadership. Today, we are delighted to welcome the SCA Lithuania Chapter’s new committee.

SUSIE KEALY draws a spotlight to one of our long-term volunteers in a series on SCA News. This month, she’s interviewed DAVID MILLER, a content creator for the new Coffee Technicians Program (CTechP) and chair of the Coffee Technicians Guild (CTG) Education Committee.

Consumer-driven changes will reshape the global coffee world. To help companies throughout the coffee value chain prepare for the future, today’s presenters - Maria Castroviejo and Michaël de Groot - look ten years ahead at key change they expect to stir up the coffee market, offering a TED-style discussion about how changes in consumer preferences, their perspective on coffee, and their buying behaviors will change the global coffee world.

World Coffee Research (WCR) has designed a global survey on agricultural research priorities with input from other coffee organizations including the SCA. The survey aims to understand the needs of the coffee industry in agricultural research and development.

In this month's SCA Chapter Spotlight, we caught up with Jeremy Ho, National Coordinator of the SCA Canada Chapter. Learn more about Jeremy and the SCA Canada team here.

In today's lecture, learn about the science driven by the SCA's Research Center, with reports on projects and outputs of our research streams in sensory science, coffee extraction, coffee freshness, and more. Many of these projects are still ongoing, so this is a chance to get a sneak-peek of soon-to-be-published studies, including the first-ever update of the brewing control chart, and work that's just starting.

Voting in the 2020 SCA Lituania Chapter elections is officially open. The nomination stage is closed, and the candidates listed below have accepted their nominations. If you are an SCA member based in Lithuania, cast your vote for the new committee for the SCA Romania Chapter Committee now.

In today's lecture, representatives from the SCA Sustainability Center and Board of Directors identify factors that contributed to the wholly unsustainable economic position facing many coffee producers.

Throughout its long history, coffee has been cast in very different roles: exotic beverage, colonial good, global commodity – but also as a staple of the local cuisines of the countries where it was produced.

After an inspirational and activism related trip to Southern Mexico, Jen Apodaca sought out her first steps into the coffee industry.

Thanks to SCA members in Romania who wrote to us after the results of the elections were released to request that we publish information about the percentage of votes received by each nominee.