It’s happening. The New York Coffee Festival opens tomorrow, and not only will coffeepeople from New York be representing hard, coffee folks from around the globe will be present to celebrate the thing we all love to love: coffee.
Coffee Festival has rocked London and Amsterdam, and it is set to bring its A game to the mean streets of NYC.
It seems like only yesterday the festival coordinator mentioned New York Coffee Festival as a young idea in while we stood line for snacks after the opening ceremonies of SCAA in Seattle last April. Since then, things have coalesced into a coffee event that promises to be everything a festival should: fun, exciting, inspiring, and memorable.
Part of the reason I, personally, am so jazzed to spend my weekend inside the 69th Regiment Armory on Lexington Ave and 26th St is because so many of my very favorite people involved in New York’s coffee game will be there doing what they do best.
Buck Berk of Brooklyn’s Coffee Mob shop on Newkirk Ave will be strutting his style and pizzazz at the Coffee Masters competition, where he will prepare signature drinks for a panel of judges and embody what it means to live a passion and to pursue what you love in the form of a business, an art, and a super comprehensive self-taught education and lifetime of inquisitive experimentation.
Devoción, Variety, Toby’s and many more of the city’s finest roasters will be manning stands, showcasing their very different, but equally fine, beverages.
The Coffee Music Project will give stage to emerging artists. A percentage of ticket prices support Charity Water. Consumers and industry bigwigs will be walking the same floor. There are not many opportunities for the behind-the-scenes people and the scene-making people to overlap, but that seems precisely like what will being going down at New York Coffee Festival this weekend.
I am genuinely eager to attend New York’s first chance to host Coffee Festival, and, when it has gone down in the city’s history as a household name, I will dust off my shoulders and say, ever so smugly, “Yeah, I was there the year it all started.”
Come hang and let me know if you want to connect! I’ll have a few copies of When Coffee Speaks in my purse (because I’m a New Yorker, therefore I hustle) and I will also be selling some super exciting green coffee, but more about that later. For now, get your dog walkers/babysitters/plant waterers in order and get yourself to New York Coffee Festival before it’s gone!
When Coffee Speaks 