Fresh Cup Magazine, providing specialty coffee and tea professionals with unique insight into the trends, ideas, products and people that shape their world.
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OFF THE WIRE NEWS BRIEFS THE SCAA EXPO COMES TO PORTLAND All the info you'll need to get amped up on coffee—and coffee knowledge—in a town famous for its brews PUT A BEAN ON IT Portland has the hip cafés. It has the boutique roasters. And now, for the first time, it has the annual SCAA Exposition. Though the industry's largest trade show has been held each year since 1989, not until this month did it land in the ever-caffeinated Rose City. It's not surprising, then, that the conference, which runs from April 18-22, will be aiming to celebrate the host location just as much as the product at the center of it all. "We really want to encourage attendees to take the time to explore Portland," says SCAA marketing and new media manager Tara Shenson, "and more specifically, for them to go to at least one SCAA member café." Getting a taste of Portland's independent café scene shouldn't be too tricky for out-of-towners—the city is rich in coffee and tea shops—but the SCAA is making the process even simpler by team- ing up with a number of cafés throughout town to create a tour of notable coffee spots. Each of the participating coffeehouses will feature coffee from Honduras (this year's SCAA portrait country), and the SCAA has created a coffee-crawl map in its expo show guide, which is available for free on the show floor. In addition, the first-ever SCAA expo smart phone app lists all the participating shops in its local information section. Other Portland-centric possibilities for show attendees include guided coffee tastings at several Stumptown Coffee locations; tours of the roasting facility of the conference's host sponsor, Boyd's Coffee; and a Friday night Portland Roasting-hosted party called "Coffeelandia," in which seemingly every Portland stereo- type (craft coffee, strong beer, food carts and naked bike riding) will be combined into a single fundraising event for Portland Global Initiatives, which focuses on international water projects. Shenson says the fact that many of the world's most coffee- obsessed roasters, baristas and producers will be descending on a town where espresso is omnipresent has created a level of 18 Fresh Cup Magazine freshcup.com excitement most industries probably never feel around a trade show. "It kind of feels like the planets are aligning," she says. The 2012 show will feature more than just local coffee pros showing off their respective rosettas, of course. The expo has long been among the best spots for different links in the coffee chain to intermingle in person, and this year is no different. One new and noteworthy international-themed event will be a pair of lectures presented by SCAA partners in Asia. One talk will focus on South Korea and the other on China, and both will look to enlighten attendees on the recent dramatic growth of the specialty coffee scenes in those nations. The Korea presentation takes place April 20 at 2:30 p.m., while the China event is April 21 at 2:30 p.m. The expo app is another new attendee-aimed development. The technology can be downloaded for free onto iPhones and Androids and can be accessed as a mobile Web page on Blackberry devices. Once users have the interface loaded, they can bring up a map of the trade show floor and sort exhibitors by category. That search-ability means those attendees without the time or desire to wander through every aisle on the floor can easily check out the vendors they want and then get on with their days. "Say I'm here to buy green coffee," says Shenson. "You can sort the exhibitors by that one option and, boom, everyone just gets listed for you. And you're a click away from seeing the full exhibitor pro- file and mapping them on the show floor map." Also, the show will once again be offering its full line of skill- building classes, many of which count toward roasting, cupping or barista certifications. And finally, competition will be front and center, with the finals of the United States Barista Championship and the Brewers Cup being held alongside the Roasters Guild Coffee of the Year, the U.S. Tasters Championship and the Best New Product Competition, which for the first time will incorpo- rate text voting from attendees. —Dan Leif continued on page 20