[T]he Specialty Coffee Expo is overwhelming. From hundreds of exhibitors filled with ambition, to dozens of brilliant lectures and panels, to the slickly produced World Barista Championship and World Brewers Cup, to the thousands of attendees ambling through aisles, to awe-inspiring cuppings tucked away in tiny conference rooms, to all-day trainings, to boisterous parties all over Boston, and so much more, this global gathering of coffee professionals is a lot. While Fresh Cup Magazine has exhibited at the Expo since its founding in 1992 (then the SCAA), 2019 marked the first Expo for our current editorial team, editor Caitlin Peterkin and myself.
While it may be cliché, we both found the Expo to be a welcoming community full of passionate individuals. Meeting roasters, baristas, growers, importers, and equipment manufacturers from all over the world fueled our own budding passions for an industry we personally have only scratched the surface of. We would like to say thank you to everyone we met for all the stories you inspired and the generosity with which you shared your hard-won knowledge. Through the glamour of Expo weekend, we recognize the hard work and dedication that every person there has in order to attend, and we hope to tell as many of those stories in the coming weeks and months as we can.
Expo allows the industry to recognize each other’s hard work, innovations, and artistry, and to celebrate the superlatives around us who are pushing coffee and the industry to be better. Find all of this year’s award winners below:
The 2019 Best New Product winners are:
- Kruve Inc. EQ: Coffee Accessories
- Bellwether Coffee: Commercial Coffee or Tea Preparation & Serving Equipment
- Breville Barista Pro Model BES 878: Consumer Coffee or Tea Preparation & Serving Equipment – Electrical
- Cafélat Robot Espresso Maker: Consumer Coffee or Tea Preparation & Serving Equipment – Non-Electrical
- Cometeer Coffee Capsule: Open Class
- Steeped Coffee S-101: Packaging
- 1883 Maison Routin elixirs d’ exception ~ truffle: Specialty Beverage Flavor Additive
- Ghirardelli Sweet Ground Powder: Specialty Beverage Flavor Additive (Honorable Mention)
- Dona Chai Spiced Soda Pink Peppercorn Lemon: Specialty Beverage Stand Alone
- Ifinca Coffee Chain: Technology
- Tierra Nueva Nudge Coffee Butter: Food
The 2019 Design Lab Winners are:
- Rishi Tea. Design by Studio MPLS: Branding Category
- Greater Goods Coffee Roasters. Design by Michael Hsu Office of Architecture: Spaces
- Blue Bottle Coffee Can. Design by Elaine Fong and Neil Day: Packaging
- KRUVE EQ Glassware Line by KRUVE Inc. Design by Michael Vecchiarelli: Vessels
In addition to Best New Product and Design Lab, judges select the Best Booth and Best Pop-Up Café winners at this year’s event:
- Bellwether: Inline Category
- Anacafé / Guatemala: Island Category
- Slayer: Pop-up Category
2019 World Barista Championship
- Jooyeon Jeon, South Korea, Momos Coffee
- Michalis Dimitrakopoulos, Greece, The Underdog Roasters
- Cole Torode, Canada, Rosso Coffee Roasters
- Mikael Jasin, Indonesia, Common Grounds Coffee Roasters
- Wojtek Bialczak, Germany, Five Elephant Coffee
- Mathieu Theis, Switzerland, Mame
2019 World Brewers Cup
- Jia Ning Du, China, M2M Coffee
- Patrik Rolf, Sweden, April
- Alessandro Galtieri, Italy, Aroma
- Chikako Nakai, Japan, UCC Holdings CO
- Hsu Shih Yuan, Taiwan, UCC Coffee Taiwan
- Daniel Hofstetter, Switzerland
