It's been just over one week since our time at the London Coffee Festival, we've finally recovered physically and mentally so it's only right to make a quick blog post about our time there.
If you followed our socials, you would have seen that the wheel bust on our suitcase before we even made it to the train station. I found it hilarious, of course, because I wasn't the one dragging it around London for the next 2 hours.
Day 1 was Wednesday, where we had to unpack our pallet and build our stand ready for the event the day next day. It wasn't too bad and 6 hours later we were able to find our Aparthotel in Canary Wharf. We stayed at Vertus Edit, which I would recommend for a place to stay in London.
Our first 2 days (Thursday and Friday) were B2B and was a chance to drum up business opportunities if needed. Better for those who were looking to get leads or wholesale accounts etc Personally, this wasn't much benefit to us as we are mainly B2C (Business to consumer). We were able to meet and chat to other importers and farms, which was probably the most useful thing for us over the first 2 days. A positive note, when talking to Brazil importers the crops for future harvests are looking much better!
Our location wasn't the best and we had issues being spotted by the visitors so we ended up changing stands to be more visible on the B2C days.
Day 3 and 4, the B2C days are what we had focused on prior to the event. From a money making point of view, it wasn't what we had hoped for due to the high amounts of free samples having to be given out. But, we had really positive feedback from people regarding our branding and our most popular coffee, Monkey Punch. People loved the uniqueness of the brand and were intrigued by the story behind the monkey. I thought someone was taking a photo of me, when in fact I was in the way of their photo op with the monkey on the wall! How rude of me!!
But the positive feedback on our coffee was also down to our barista, Katie. Despite her already having a full time job as a manager, she still took time out to help us over the weekend. We trust Katie to serve our coffee, and she did a great job serving up those piccolos and espressos over the weekend! She also did a great job putting up with my constant talking and Steves moaning over the 4 days! That takes a lot.
We had lots of good conversations and met some great people that weekend. We talked a lot of coffee, a lot of future plans and the future for specialty coffee. It was nice to talk to other people who appreciated the craft of specialty coffee and how there is a whole chain of people involved in order to bring you that delicious cup of coffee.
We were also really fortunate to have great neighbouring stall holders, which was absolutely needed on a long tiring 4 day event! They kept us going!
Overall, it was certainly an experience but I can't say it's something we will be in a rush to do again!
So, what's next for us? We have The Tendring Show coming up in July which we always look forward to doing. It is our third year attending this event and we will have a stall serving drinks plus a 2nd stand selling our coffee beans. We hope to see you there!
We are also focusing on expanding, but in all honesty it's been a struggle finding the right place to move into. I'm sure when the time is right, something will come along. We don't want to rush into a place if it's not right for us.
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Thanks for reading guys and have a great week!