Its been exactly one week after we returned from Coffee Fest Seattle and I feel like things are just winding down from the show. Just in time for a Thanksgiving break eh? It sounds nice but a break in the momentum doesn't help us out much.
Once we return from any trade show the work is only half done. We have show orders to invoice and complete and even ship out in some cases. This is especially true of Coffee Fest Seattle as this is generally our biggest booth and showing throughout the year.
Coffee Fest was great this year. Working the floor is usually a lot of fun. It is nice to see good friends and this year's parties were better than ever. Coffee Fest's show floor was as big or bigger than I had ever seen it before and I've seen quite a few in my time.
Espresso Parts was also bigger this year as we committed to 30 feet of booth instead of the usual 20 feet. If that wasn't enough we also sponsored an in booth Latte Art Competition for $5.00 a pour. Proceeds went to benefit "
Bikes to Rwanda" and we voted on "daily winner" for each day (Friday and Saturday) who won a tamper, a Pallo Coffee Tool and a container of Joe Glo. The overall winner in addition to their daily winnings took home a brand new Scace2 in a version of our new Scace Case.
We had quite a few entries consider we worked on a limited schedule out of our main booth. By my calculations we had some 32 pours, and we threw in an additional $40 for a total of $200 going to Bikes to Rwanda.
The big winner of the weekend will come to no surprise to some... Justin Teisl barista trainer extraordinaire for
Alterra Coffee. We have gotten to know the Alterra folks pretty well over the last handful of shows. They are always a class act and always fun to hang out around, I expect nothing less from Wisconsinites.
For those who don't know
Alterra Coffee is a great company that is roasting excellent coffeesthe right way. They possess a relatively large presence in the Midwest/Wisconsin region and for as big as they are they maintain a professional yet refreshingly genuine "indie" presence in everything from their t-shirts and marketing materials to their website. We like that! Justin it was a pleasure, congrats! Scott sorry we missed you this year!
Another first for us was the printing of
t-shirts for sale. Now we've done plenty of shirts before however always as a promo and never in big numbers. This year we made more of them and made them available to all. They sold like hot cakes, most sizes sold out in both designs. For those interested or even still interested if you attended the show you can find the on our
web site here.
We also had ordered promotional buttons in two designs that we meant to give out at Coffee Fest but sadly they disappeared on us until we made it home and got unpacked. I do know the buttons are being sent out free in orders shipped after Coffee Fest but if you aren't the gambling type and have a specific design in mind you can purchase those off our website as well.
