A couple weekends ago, several thousand coffee people gathered in San Diego for the annual Specialty Coffee Association event, World of Coffee. This massive trade show and conference happens every spring and moves around from city to city, and I’ve attended all but two since 2013 (my first miss was during Covid, when a lot of people were still a little skittish about gatherings of any size, much less one that big). I skipped this one; for only the second time in 12 years, nobody from Higher Grounds attended. The logistics just didn’t make sense this time; flights are expensive, and we didn’t have any specific business to attend to at the show.
me with HG's GM Josh, SCA Expo Chicago 2024
But missing this event has me feeling a little bereft. Expo, as it used to be called, has come to represent for me a confluence of all my coffee influences and interests: I’ve attended classes and achieved certifications and made dozens of friends there. I’ve tasted more coffees than I could begin to count. I’ve wandered the show floor for hours on end, discovering all the latest gadgets and tools being developed by engineers and marketers and baristas. I’ve hunted down the best little cafes and lunch spots and interesting restaurants in each host city, where I’ve then mixed business and pleasure (because: food). I’ve met coffee farmers and important CEOs and I’ve served espresso to many of them while volunteering as a barista.
Boston, Atlanta, Seattle, Portland, Chicago, Houston, and repeats of a few of those cities.
highly caffeinated at SCA Expo Chicago, 2024
On one side of the world, in these major metropolitan cities, thousands of people, mostly people whose jobs are on the consumer side of coffee, gather to sell things. Buy things. Learn things. Taste things. Invest in themselves and their companies. Connect with other coffee people; discover new research; discuss salient issues facing their businesses and the industry in general. These things ARE important. They are a big part of why I stuck around in coffee, moving beyond a barista job to try out other roles at HG. When I discovered that there was an entire flourishing industry where I could keep learning, that there were more opportunities professionally, that I could earn a decent living, all while working for a company that cares about the wellbeing of coffee farmers and also the wellbeing of the people it employs, I stayed, and I kept looking for more chances to grow and develop my expertise and skillset. If SCA Expo did not exist, I would not have pursued and achieved barista certification, or become an SCA-authorized barista trainer myself. I probably would not have become a Q grader. I wouldn’t have met some of my favorite people and closest friends (Hi ALJ + co!). I would not have witnessed the passion and dedication of competitive baristas; I would not have been inspired by the instructors and mentors who are my coffee celebrities: Trish Rothgeb, Ildi Revi, Alexandra LittleJohn, Peter Guiliano, Beth Ann Casperson, Richard Hide. All people who are doing good work, work that I believe ultimately benefits coffee producers. And it’s certainly true that other important connections happen at big industry events too, some that lead to big coffee transactions that ultimately keep all our businesses running.
And then there are all the coffee producers who remain tucked away in remote pockets of the world, with none of the resources that would allow them to even catch a glimpse of this massive, flashy (read: expensive) event.
a coffee farm in the San Marcos region of Guatemala, 2018
On far flung mountainsides, at ends of rutted dirt roads, are the lush farms where our favorite beverage begins. There, farmers work, so that we can fill our mugs. There, farmers live simple lives in simple dwellings, sometimes without electricity or consistent clean water. There, some farmers might stay their entire lives, never even seeing people with skin a different color than their own, or possibly never learning basic math or reading skills. They might not even get to taste their own coffee, since they need all the income they can get and simply sell it all for the sake of their own survival.
While those descriptions are certainly not true for every single coffee farmer around the world—some are able to gain notoriety through exceptional microlots and winning competitions; others get lucky and are “discovered” by intrepid coffee buyers who pay premium prices—they are also not hyperbole. The vast majority of coffee sold globally is produced by smallholder farmers whose worlds are very, very small. Coffee, unfortunately, is not an automatic path to financial security, and the farmers who are able to make their way to the U.S. or Europe to attend a global trade show are the exception rather than the rule.
me with Pedro Turcios of the COMSA organization in Honduras, SCA Expo Chicago 2024
Considering all this gives me complicated feelings about SCA and World of Coffee, a multi-million dollar event with complex logistics and lots of bells and whistles. What would those farmers think of all this? If we have the money to pull off World of Coffee, don’t we have the money to pay farmers enough so that they don’t have to worry about basic needs like clean water and shelter?
Working part-time now, with a different and more focused role than I’ve had in the years of attending the show, it probably doesn’t make a whole lot of sense for me to keep it on my calendar. But I’m not sure I’m ready to give it up entirely. There are people whom I’d probably never see again unless I go. I expect I’d start to feel disconnected from the industry that inspired me to dig deeper all those years ago. So I’ll keep penciling it in. Some years might not make sense. But maybe if I do attend, when I walk onto that giant trade show floor, I can keep the perspective of my farming friends close. I can advocate for them and honor them in my work and in my conversations. If we can just remember that all of this is because of them, hopefully we can keep our heads on straight.