This weekend I was in Washington, DC for CoffeeFest. It was awesome. Here’s my review as a first time participant.
Barista Championships
This is one hard competition. It was always hard for me to imagine what a coffee-drink-making competition is like and I’m glad I went to see it first hand. The competitors are serious about their craft. It’s an art and a science, which is what I love about coffee, too. For the average person that sees only art, only science, or neither about a given skill we seem a little weird.Geeks.
As I said my local coffee shop, Aldo Coffee, entered three competitors. There were 27 total competitors and only six could advance to the finals. I watched about half of the competition before the finalists were picked. I saw Belle and John perform and I thought they all did a fantastic job. It’s hard to know from the audience just how a barista is doing up there. A huge part of scoring is the quality of the drink and espresso shots pulled, however, presentation and style play a role in the score. From where we sit everything is polished and pretty, the music is nice, and the sensory judges look like they’re in heaven. Competition looked really stiff.
How did Aldo do? Every barista made it to the finals. Half of the finalists are from the best damn shop in town. When I moved to Mt. Lebanon I had a personal goal of making the community my community. Coming to CoffeeFest to cheer on the people that make me great coffee is an expression of what that means to me.
At the finals Belle won! Third time is a charm I suppose. What’s amazing about her presentation is that near the end she lost touch with the breadstick she was serving a judge and it landed in his lap, then on the floor. She was so cool and calm under pressure. Her response was simple and sweet. “I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t mean to throw food at you.” She won even though she threw sticks at a judge. She’s that darn good.
Seminars
The whole point of going to CoffeeFest is that you’re part of the industry. It’s also acceptable if you want to be part of the industry, like me. Incidentally, you don’t get into the CoffeeFest trade show or any of the classes on the merits of being an enthusiast. This is for industry people. As a potential entrant to the world of retail coffee I decided to attend a few classes in the mornings. Overall I think they were good.
The topics I went to were, in very particular chronological order:
- Opening a new Café?
- Getting Profitable
- Beginning Your Espresso Operation
- Basic Barista Techniques – The Best of The Best
- Brewing a Hot Brand – 27 day action plan
- The Ambiance of Your Cafe – Getting Crowds in Your Door
- The 10 Commandments to Build Skyrocketting Profits
In my seven hours of classes I tried to stay away from classes that were obviously run by people who are selling a product, where the class is explicitly about their product, and they don’t have a strong, obvious reputation for being fantastic consultants in a retail industry. Most of the presenters were known, quality consultants in branding, barista training, shop management, and retail layout and design. One was a shop owner sharing his experience and another was a barista and trainer for a roaster. I felt it was a good mix for my introduction to the industry.
The talks I enjoyed most were on branding and identity, ambiance, and how paying attention to the details makes a huge difference. Since I approach most activities from the art and science perspective this kind of thinking is natural to me, that every detail should be considered and should matter.
In particular, the talk on Brewing a Hot Brand was fascinating because the speaker is a straight shooting branding consultant. At the end of his session he stated, “Unfortunately I don’t have time to look at all of your ugly babies. I know you want to show me your logo and shop name, and unless it was professionally made by designers I’m probably going to tell you it’s ugly.” I appreciate someone willing to tell the truth.
Trade Show Floor
Another of my local shops, Coffee Tree Roasters, was at the event and we ran into each other on the trade show floor. I spend a chunk of every weekday at my local shop as a customer so the manager of that location was surprised to see me, naturally. They asked me what I thought of CoffeeFest and, being that we were on the trade show floor, I answered with the foremost thought in my head, “The industry is a lot different than I imagined.” Mr. Bob (yes, that’s right), the owner of CTR is a bright fellow so he asked me the obvious question, “How so?”
Here’s how: Everyone I know who loves coffee loves the actual coffee. They drink espresso, coffee, macchiato, and so on. They don’t drink iced-frappa-smoothie-chai-extra-shot-of-sugar-86oz-strawberry-milk drinks. Yet, the real business of retail coffee is all that fake stuff. If you want to make any money at all you must have a blender, six racks of syrup, a lot of ice, fake tea (including chai) and the nerve to serve it.Solution: Don’t serve minors.
It’s news to me that the purists among us must serve that stuff in order to, eventually, make a real, quality drink. Mr. Bob was pleased with my answer but I kept noodling. More on that later.
After Hours and Around Town
On Friday night I went to murky coffee in Arlington for the first ever Barista Exchange meetup. It was a good time. I met a very nice woman in the process of opening a shop in Miami. She was fascinating in that she had already been a school teacher and lawyer, for a decade each, and is now going into the coffee business. She inspired me, really, and reminded me there’s a lot of life to live.
Before the murky coffee event I crashed Erin Hartigan’s going away party. She’s Marc’s girlfriend and the (recently former) food and entertainment editor for washingtonpost.com. There must’ve been 40 people out to celebrate and I was shocked it was possible to create so many friends at a job. I’ve worked mostly for smaller companies so my circle of friends has always been smaller. To skew me further I have worked from home half of my career. It’s hard to go out for a drink with co-workers who live in other states even though – with the help of a lot of modern technology – we still try to at Socialtext.
Saturday
After posting about going to CoffeeFest I got a frantic email from Faisal (Subject: omg dc coffee) that said “Go to Tryst in Adams Morgan.” Faisal is a trusted source for these kinds of tips so I always follow his recommendations. Saturday morning I got up early to walk up to Adams Morgan to have breakfast at Tryst. Most of their folks were at CoffeeFest. They even had a few competitors in the barista championship. They have a cool atmosphere. It felt like The Beehive done right. Less clutter, no nicotine everywhere, the staff was nice. My macchiato was pretty good, too.
Saturday night was a huge pile of fun. I went up to the Counter Culture Coffee education center in Adams Morgan with Marc for a party. They have a La Marzocco Linea and a La Marzocco GB/5. That second machine is pretty new, shiny, and amazingly cool. It’s the same machine used in the competition. John (from Aldo Coffee) showed me how to pull a shot on a commercial machine last December at the first Barista Jam in Pittsburgh. I felt it was fitting to ask him to show Marc how to do it, too. Marc pulled his first shot at this party and it wasn’t bad at all.
We spent some time on the Linea because they have a La Marzocco Swift grinder paired with it. This grinder is automatic. It dosses and tamps for you which is a bit funky. It wasn’t dialed in for the machine at all so we pulled shot after shot trying to get it set. I think we finally did get it figured out and pulled a few decent shots. But when I tried to steam some milk for a latte I really screwed it all up. I need a lot more practice doing that.
I got to joke more about frozen smoothie drinks with some of the Baristas at this party. We came to the conclusion that the optimal solution is to have a completely separate – but in-store – smoothie and frozen drink stand. First, you order your double espresso from the coffee bar. Then you take it to the smoothie stand and politely request, “Here, please break this.”
Sunday
On Sunday morning Marc took me to a really funky place called Busboys and Poets. It’s a food books film coffee stage internet bar. That’s a lot of stuff. It seems they need a dedicated staff of tens to run the place but they pull it off. Breakfast was pretty darn good. The atmosphere was just about right, but he acoustics were all off. It was very loud.
Lunch on Sunday was insane. It was so good. We went to Brasserie Beck, a French-Belgian Bistro. Seriously, go there. Now I’m trying to rest off lunch, waiting for Zac to get into town so we can go to The Brickskeller for the evening.
Tags: aldo coffee, beer, Coffee, coffeefest, recreation, scaa, washington dc
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