Sunday Journey

Well, it’s Sunday and the Technivorm Party is over.  Too be honest, it was overwhelming, in a good sense.  I gave a little speech last night where I remarked that the culture of party and food is so different in Europe compared to North America; we have so much to learn.  Last night was a bit of an extreme, with a 7 hour dinner (we started at 7:30) but it was great nonetheless.  It was a lot of fun to spend a weekend in Europe with a bunch of Scandinavians and I learned a lot about how Technivorm (or Moccamaster in Europe) is marketed and sold.  In Norway alone they have sold over 1.5 million machines in 33 years.  The numbers are quite staggering.
Another interesting thing which I encountered on this trip was a completely different coffee crowd than I am used to mixing with.  It has been interesting for me to spend a weekend with people who are completely focused on drip coffee (filter coffee in Europe) and have hardly any connection with espresso.  The companies who move the Technivorm in Europe are either big commercial roasters or they tend to be equipment distributors.  So it was interesting to be with people who were together for the sole purpose of celebrating an amazing coffee maker, but don’t have the same focus on the coffee as we do within the specialty coffee market.  Having said that, the folk in Norway seem to be very serious about their filter coffee and have a coffee institute focused on establishing standards in brewing and grinding and doing all kinds of research.  This is simply unheard of in Canada.

All in all, the weekend was amazing and I met so many wonderful people.  We spent the days touring little towns and farms in the east part of the Netherlands (including the little cheese factory above), and the nights eating great food and drinking good wine.  I also got a chance to hang with a bunch of Danes and as a result had a good primer with my Danish before I fly there on Tuesday.  Europe is so different from North America, in so many ways, and I am not sure if one is better than the other.  Having said that, one thing that is definitely better in Holland than Canada is the number of people - young and old - who are riding bicycles everywhere.  People are more fit, and they eat much better food.  So if we could only do a bit more of that at home, things would change dramatically.

OK, enough for now, I am writing this on the bus to Dusseldorf, and then off to London.  I am looking forward to that, and will write some more as I spend some time with Square Mile and the coffee culture within East London.