The (very special) specialty coffee community

The Prairies Regional Barista Championships in Calgary this past weekend was a blast. Of course we’re all thrilled that both Josh and Chad made it through to nationals—now another whole round of hard work begins for the boys. It was the first barista competition event that I’ve attended, and while the event itself was great, I also learned a ton about the coffee industry and met a number of interesting, kind, dedicated, genuine people, and truly experienced the specialty coffee community.

This sense of community was something that I was beginning to get a sense of over the past few months, but it really came into focus this past weekend. I first began to notice it when other café owners would come into the shop, and I noticed the kinds of conversations Poul would have with other roasters and baristas. I have to admit I was surprised. The amount of information being shared about what I would consider sensitive business information — roast profiles, green coffee sources, etc. — is something I couldn’t at first fathom.

You see, I come from the world of advertising, and while co-owning a little four-person shop in a relatively sleepy town like Edmonton was a very, very far cry from the big agency world of Madison Avenue — or even Toronto or Vancouver for that matter — I was still accustomed to a much more cut-throat industry. The ‘community’ in advertising is about as shallow as a puddle on a sidewalk after a light rain. The fact is in advertising, a person would never share a process, or an insight on strategy, or a supplier, or a conversation with a client, with anyone from another agency because you would always fear that person would use the information to steal clients, get a competitive advantage and put you out of business.

But in specialty coffee, that is just not the case. Thankfully, the ‘pie’ when it comes to the coffee market is so huge, that little shops and roasters don’t have to fight over the pieces. Really, the challenge in the marketplace is to help customers realize there is a much tastier pie, made with better ingredients and more love and care, right next to the giant, mass-produced pie with the burnt crust that they are used to eating. All they have to do is slide over and take a bite of the new pie; they’ll taste the difference, fall in love and never go back.

OK, that metaphor was beginning to get away on me there. The point is by working together, we can help restaurant and café owners, and the general coffee-drinking public to realize there is more to coffee then they first thought. We can actively grow the size of the specialty coffee market and continually create opportunities for ourselves.

There are so many possibilities for how the specialty coffee community could work together even more closely, especially in a way that demonstrates that camaraderie and the common philosophy, purpose and goals to coffee-drinking public. And those goals are much bigger than serving quality coffee, they are about social justice, sustainability and the environment — Poul got into this a little deeper in his recent post.

I was able to have a couple of interesting conversations this weekend where we just began to share and discuss some of these ideas and possibilities. Right now I’m doing a lot more listening than talking — trying to absorb where people are coming from and what moves them, but I’m looking forward to having more conversations about the possibilities in specialty coffee. Thanks to Chad and Josh, we’re going to nationals, and I’m fortunate enough to be tagging along, so hopefully we can continue the conversation within about a month.