London Coffee Festival 2024
It was our pleasure earlier in April to be invited to London Coffee Festival by La Marzocco and North Star Coffee Roasters to take over the True Artisan Cafe stand for the opening morning, serving up hundreds of tasty coffees and handing out our Flower/Coffee bundles!
The London Coffee Festival is an epic undertaking, and seems to grow each year, with the first 2 days open to the industry and the weekend to coffee enthusiasts. We were excited to be serving up one of our favourite coffees (the Natural from Finca La Bolsa, Guatemala - Marcella’s family farm!), and to get our hands on the new La Marzocco Swan grinder (it’s a solid 9/10 from us) and the new Strada espresso machine. The highlights for us were…
Meeting some extraordinary people working within the coffee and wider hospitality industry. Standouts were meeting the gang from Well Grounded who are doing a stellar job training NEET individuals in barista skills, catching up with the North Star gang (of course), and meeting a couple who own 13 cocktail bars across the South East who have recently discovered the potential and intricacies of speciality coffee and are wanting to re-orientate all their spaces around coffee as a key ingredient in evening drinks. We had so many inspiring conversations with people like them from all walks of the hospitality world - all super enthused for where the coffee industry is heading and how we can ride the wave.
Tasting some stunning coffees. Bailies and Carnival were top of the pile for us - look out for them on guest very soon! Not only were their coffees mind-blowingly good, but the passion and knowledge of their teams made them stand-out a mile.
Discovering that Stores now cover the South West. Stand-by for some of our favourite food & drink products hitting our shelves that we haven’t been able to get previously…
Meeting a surprising number of people who had heard of us and followed our journey from afar. We met a couple who had come down from Newcastle especially and queued early to make sure they got their hands on some flowers - wow! We loved walking around the event in the afternoon and seeing loads of attendees holding Little Perth flowers!
Coming home re-envisioned for providing the best possible coffee experience for our customers in Southbourne & Westbourne. The bar is constantly being raised and we want to continue to be Bournemouth’s go-to for speciality coffee lovers. We’ve already implemented some changes to how our coffees are served and how we talk about them - pop by soon to see!
We’ll be heading back next year and we’d absolutely recommend a visit if you’ve never been!