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February 2010 Posts
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Specialty Coffee Show Sets up its Tent in the Big Apple Area
Seattle, Wash. – February 23, 2010 – Coffee Fest packs up its bags to travel to the East Coast for its spring show at the Meadowlands Exposition Center on March 5-7, 2010, where entrepreneurs and veteran specialty coffee professionals will gather to network, learn, and accumulate a stack of coffee products and knowledge to transmute into a healthy bottom line.
“We welcome the energy of the East Coast and look forward to comparing notes with professionals from the New York metropolitan area,” says Greg Hartlein, Coffee Fest CEO. “Our goal is to continue as part coach, part teacher, part facilitator -- all in a concerted effort to help specialty coffee professionals experience success in their respective businesses.”
Fill Your Cup
The show offers attendees a three-pronged approach to business success – education and training, networking and trend watching over the course of the three-day show.
Educational Program -- Beginner, intermediate and advanced levels of classes designed to get entrepreneurs off the ground and to keep specialty coffee businesses on track. Friday through Sunday, 8am-noon.
Executive Summit –Top specialty coffee professionals come together for a daylong, pre-show seminar to help invigorate businesses with practical advice and tried and true marketing and sales techniques. Thursday, March 4, 8am-4pm
Pacific Natural Foods Top Cup Challenge ~ Soy plays the starring role in a contest to see which barista can whip up the tastiest and most creative soy-based drink. Saturday and Sunday 1-4 pm
Tinker’s Minute -- An old-fashioned take on new products. Emceed by Specialty Coffee Retailer’s Dan Bolton, the Tinker’s Minute highlights the latest innovations the industry has to offer with exhibitors’ one-minute “platform” speeches. Friday, March 5, 11am
Espresso Parts Aroma Challenge –The challenge pushes participants to match scents found in coffee with common descriptors. Participants who think they “know” their coffee can test their mettle here by sniffing a variety of vials matching aromas found in coffee. Friday through Sunday, show floor hours noon-5pm
Coffee Fest Free Pour Latte Art Championships – Forty baristas from around the country will compete for a $2,500 grand prize after 2 rounds of semi-finals that whittle the group down to the final 10 artists creating foam-based designs. Semi-finals on Friday and Saturday from 9am-12 ~ Finals on Sunday at 10am
Midwest Stopover
When summer rolls around, it’s off to the Midwest, where Coffee Fest unrolls its welcome carpet in Minneapolis, Minn., on June 4-6, 2010. Attendees and exhibitors can register for the Meadowlands or Minneapolis show at www.coffeefest.com.
About Coffee Fest
Coffee Fest has been bringing specialty coffee, gourmet tea and alternative beverage industry professionals together since 1992 when the show first got its start as a consumer coffee festival in Seattle. Since 1998, Coffee Fest has gathered coffee retailers, roasters, distributors and manufacturers together for thrice annual trade shows to help attendees build and refine their businesses, get the first peek at new products and remain current with coffee and tea industry trends. For more information about all the shows, go to www.coffeefest.com
Media Contact:
Kathleen Finn
503.528.2652
503.887.2998 (c)
bellaluna@hevanet.com
David Heilbrunn
425.295.3300, ext. 113
davidh@coffeefest.com
Seattle, Wash. – February 11, 2010 – Baristas armed with tamps and stainless steel pitchers battle it out in a good-natured competition to see who can craft the prettiest design atop a moving medium. The Coffee Fest Free Pour Latte Art Championship will kick off at the NY/NJ Coffee Fest held at the Meadowlands Exposition Center on March 5-7, 2010.
Latte art continues to draw big crowds and attract talented baristas from around the country as they deftly couple the nuance of coffee making with the whimsy of foamy creations. New Yorkers are getting in on the act and will represent coffeehouses from the various boroughs – Tamp, Tamp, Inc., Café Grumpy, Kaffe 1668, Counter Culture and Coffee Labs Roaster, among others. Watch as competitors from around the metropolitan spar along with a national field of coffee professionals that hail from Toronto, Canada, to Los Angeles, Calif., and Tokyo, Japan.
“Latte art is a light-hearted competition, yet it takes skill and knowledge to pull it off,” explains Greg Hartlein, Coffee Fest CEO. “Coffeehouse owners who engage their baristas in learning latte art and encouraging them to compete, move up a notch in their customers’ eyes.”
Pour it On
Baristas receive a 5-minute warm-up and a 5-minute ‘compete’ period to craft up to three drinks that will pass muster with the three coffee industry judges. Each cup will be judged using a 90-point scoring system spread out over four categories – aesthetic beauty and balance, color infusion, definition and creativity. Judges don headphones and view final drinks from a curtained area that keeps contestants identity anonymous. Just the cup is judged by industry stalwarts, Matt Miletto of Barista Exchange, Sarah Allen, publisher of Barista Magazine and Chris Deferio, two-time winner of the Latte Art contest.
Scores are posted immediately to a leader board that moves competitors up or out after each round. Larger than life shots of each pour are projected to the audience who can judge for themselves. The most dexterous combination of technical expertise and artistic whimsy will earn the top prize of $2,500, with second place receiving $1,000 and the third place victor takes home $500.
The Coffee Fest Free Pour Latte Art Championship is sponsored by Barista Magazine, Nuova Simonelli, Dillanos Coffee Roasters and Ghirardelli Chocolate Company.
Preliminary Rounds: Friday and Saturday, 9am-12pm
Finals: Sunday at 10am
Midwest Stop-Over
When summer rolls around, it’s off to the Midwest, where Coffee Fest sets up shop in Minneapolis, Minn., on June 4-6, 2010. To register for the Meadowlands or Minneapolis show, please go to our web site at www.coffeefest.com.
Film Screening: March 17, 2010 - Asia Society presents a documentary from Tea Dragon Films, by first time Director, Scott Chamberlin Hoyt
Tea has been bringing peace, calm, health, friendship, and wisdom into peoples lives for 5,000 years. The Meaning of Tea is a journey on film, and a collection of interviews recorded in several countries throughout the world. It travels to the tea gardens of present day Darjeeling, India, to visits with tea company executives and footage of the Japanese tea ceremony in modern day Japan, and in Northern Taiwan, it offers a glimpse into the lives of tea growers, tea pluckers, tea masters, tea musicians, a teapot maker, teen-aged tea drinkers, and traditional tea lovers. Interviews in England, Ireland, France, and Morocco are also featured, as well as the lives of people living in Tea, South Dakota, USA.
The rituals and ceremony of tea enjoyed in a myriad of cultures, is portrayed as a kind of global connective tissue. Within this common thread, is a weaving together of individual stories of tea in peoples lives. Ultimately, the inherent question that underlies this expedition, is whether tea has meaning, particularly in a world increasingly influenced by mass-marketing, fast food, and corporate coffee giants. The film also examines the role that certain forces play in threatening the survival of tea and its cultural significance, while supporting the imperative to take a stronger interest in tea in modern society that is fast losing its connection to the earth. The film pays homage to an age-old treasure still appreciated today for its charming characteristics, cheerful mood altering properties, and beneficial contribution to the lightness of human well-being.
This artistically rendered film embraces the essential spirit of tea, and the original music of the film complements many of the exquisite scenes around the globe.
The Meaning of Tea Film Screening at Asia Society takes place March 17, 2010 from 6:30 to 9 pm at the Asia Society, 725 Park Avenue, New York, NY - Members: $10, nonmembers: $15, students and seniors: $12
Event Registration (212)-517-ASIA (M-F 1pm-5pm)
Click here for details and online tickets.
New York, NY - Starfish Junction Productions, producer of Coffee and Tea Festival NYC, is getting ready to pump caffeine into the veins of New York City residents and festival attendees at the 5th Annual Coffee & Tea Festival: NYC.
This international extravaganza is being held on Saturday and Sunday, February 20th and 21st, 2010 at 7W, 7 West 34th Street, New York, NY 10001. The event is open to the public and the trade. www.CoffeeAndTeaFestival.com.
As seen on the Food Network’s hit show Unwrapped and selected as one of the 10 Best New York Events April 2009, by www.10best.com, “the Coffee And Tea Festival is a celebration of everything related to coffee and tea,” said Lynda Calimano, Event Producer. “It is quite a unique show in that it is open to the public and the trade”, she added. The lineup of exhibitors is sure to delight all attendees.
With programming sponsored by Imbibe Magazine and The New York Post, the event offers two days of fun and interactive classes/lectures/demos from well-known industry pros and pioneers. Programming highlights include Coffee Cupping & Tasting hosted by Marcela Zuchovicki of Jalima Coffee; Elegant Entertaining with Afternoon Tea presented by tea authority, Ms. Ellen Easton; interactive Chocolate Tasting led by Dina Cheney, Tea Cocktails demo with Tavalon’s Tea Sommelier Chris Cason, Think Outside the Cup with Chef Melody, the Life Style and Chef/Food Reporter for the Saturday Home Show with Jerry Leen (WOR Radio 710AM), and back by popular demand, tea master Yoon Hee Kim and her beautiful demonstration of the Korean Tea Ceremony.
Among the featured exhibitors, attendees will enjoy samples from Jalima Coffee, Tavalon, serendipiTea, Giraldo Farms Coffee, Harney & Sons Tea, Entenmann’s Coffee, Rishi Tea, Montauk Beverage Works, Fang Gourmet Tea, FUZE, Tea Beyond, Baileys Coffee Creamer, Red Bee Honey, The Tea Set, Shapna Tea & Coffee, and Abid—makers of the miraculous coffee & tea maker with the amazing shut-off filter. The event will also help raise funds and awareness for Cup for Education, a non-profit group that provides help to the poor rural coffee communities of Central and Latin America.
The entire schedule of events and corresponding times can be found at the event website www.CoffeeAndTeaFestival.com. Attendance at the event programs is included in the nominal, $20 all-day-pass. Goodie bags will be distributed to the first 1000 attendees each day.
Tickets, which include sampling from the international lineup of coffee and tea exhibitors as well as attendance at the classes/seminars/demos, can be purchased at the event website: www.CoffeeAndTeaFestival.com.
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PRESS CONTACT: 631-940-7290 Click to Email Coffee and Tea Festival Press Contactl
SBS Teas was proud to be a participant in the January 19, 2010 Sisterhood of Dreamers Into Doers Event in NYC in conjuction with Martha Stewart Studios.
The Event was called Enchanted Makeovers (www.enchantedmakeovers.org ) and it was helping women and children of domestic violence. Over 2000 women and children are helped each year and they are housed at Safe Horizon which is a domestic violence shelter. (www.safehorizon.org )
Each of the 54 apartments at Safe Horizon was furnished by donations from various groups and individuals.
SBS Teas was pleased to furnish enough cocoa, marshmallows, coffee and tea for all of the 54 goodie baskets that were delivered to each apartment.
