Where has the Head Bean been?

We have spent a month travelling around the US visiting vibrant cities like Los Angeles, Portland, Vancouver, Seattle and New York. We have called into many coffee roasters and great coffee concepts and it has been very refreshing to see the effort the industry is putting in around the delivery of quality coffee. Most of the businesses we have been directed to are all very busy and when you see their amazing concepts and the lengths they have gone to you they deserve the lime-light and attention. All I can say from my world travels is “Quality First” is the key to success.

Meeting up with Josh Fields from Compak America we were shown around some great businesses like Irving Farm, FIKA and the Brooklyn Roasting Company. Josh is very excited about being the major sponsor of the Compak Golden Bean and could see the networking benefits this event has created in Australia and believes the North American market is ready for this style of competition with the industry supporting one another. He has witnessed the rapid changes that are taking place in the market and has experienced a big sales growth for new grinder technology that has come out of Compak design labs. The young team at Compak are always in touch with the industry through barista competitions and world trade events and the feedback they get is taken on board and put back into designing quality coffee grinders that are keeping up with barista needs. Josh explained they also look at the end customers needs and have designed some of the quietest grinders in the market. Nothing worse then trying to have a chat in a café and you have to compete with a noisy coffee grinding system.

We are starting to get a steady flow of entries for the competition and we want to let roasters know it is okay to send entry forms in before we send the sample bags out in August. As this is the first event in North America we may have missed you on our data base creation so please get your entry forms back so we can send you out the great promotional entry/sample bags that have been supplied by our sponsor Pacific Coffee Bags.

The Compak Golden Bean North America is a conference for coffee professionals and we have four full days of educational speaking sessions and workshops between the judging sessions. We are covering topics around the issues coffee companies experience and bringing in some of the most knowledgeable industry professionals from around the globe. This format has been running this way for the last ten years in Australia and we have changed the way the industry conducts business now by educating roasters who are the supply chain to all hospitality coffee systems. Coffee is the true business champion and goes across all areas of the hospitality arena.

We strongly advise you to get your delegate registration back to us and get your hotel accommodation booked in. The team will be staying at the Jupiter Hotel, which is a funky art hotel not far from the city and they still have available rooms. Just mention – Golden Bean North America for a discounted rate. Single room rate $169 + tax and double room rate is $179 + tax.

We are very excited to have UTZ certification on board for The Compak Golden Bean North America. We met up with the lovely Brigitta Nemes who has moved from the Netherlands to head up UTZ in America. UTZ has a great relationship with the Golden Bean and has run workshops and speaking session at our events in Australia. We are pleased to put Brigetta on the speaker’s podium and look forward to hearing about the UTZ certification practices.

A big thank you goes out to our latest sponsor Silver Chef who has been a big supporter of the Australian Hospitality Industry specializing in financing coffee business start ups. Kristian Thanas has moved from Australia to be the President of the new Canadian business and he is based in the head office in Vancouver BC Canada. They are famous for their business concept of Rent, Try, Buy. They understand coffee and have produced training manuals helping new café start-ups make their businesses profitable and struggling businesses in expanding and alleviating cash flow problems. Kristian will be at The Compak Golden Bean North America and is always up for a chat. He has worked in his own coffee business before stepping into this finance management role.