✉️ This story was featured in this week’s Coffee News Club
👋 Get the Coffee News Club newsletter in your inbox weekly—sign up.
Over the past decade, coffee competitions have experienced a surge in popularity—baristas, roasters, and cuppers can all showcase their skills in international competitions. Green coffee competitions, such as the Cup of Excellence, celebrate coffee producers. There’s even a whole network of competitions dedicated to brewing coffee on a specific piece of gear, the Aeropress. But what about those unsung heroes of the industry: coffee technicians?
In an effort to highlight the people who maintain your coffee brews and keep your espresso machines running, Nuova Simonelli, the espresso machine manufacturer, created the Nuova Simonelli Technicians Competition. The competition aims to provide a platform for technicians to demonstrate their skills and showcase the profession as a whole.
“Creating a competition dedicated to technicians was a natural decision,” Nicolas Poirot Crouvezier, general manager of Nuova Simonelli’s French division, said in a press release. “They have the expertise and pressure-handling skills that deserve a spotlight.”
The inaugural competition took place in April in Dubai, featuring eight technician competitors from around the Middle East. The competitors faced off in head-to-head battles tackling various espresso machine-based challenges: they had to take machines apart at speed, diagnose malfunctions, and fine-tune equipment in what the company called “a true test of speed, precision, and professionalism.” Judges assessed the competitors’ knowledge, organizational skills, and ability to work safely and efficiently.
In the end, John Paul Alcantara from the equipment distributor Boncafé came out victorious. “Our work is often solitary, but competitions like this allow us to feel part of a community,” Alcantara said. “It was stimulating to come face-to-face with other professionals, push my boundaries, and share my passion for this trade.”
The next event will be held in September at the Paris Coffee Show.
Read more about the coffee tech competition from Comunicaffe here.
