When Coffee Festivals Went Virtual: How Coffee Events Moved Online in 2020

A dated history of 2020's coffee event cancellations, from the SCA Expo to the world championships, and the online events that replaced them, from the Virtual Coffee Festival to Re:co online.

By Jay Arr Updated

What was canceled, and when

Each date is the announcement’s, as the trade press reported it at the time; “by” marks the date of the report when the announcement itself isn’t dated.

Date in 2020EventWhat happened
Mar 9London Coffee Festival (Allegra Events)Postponed from April 2–5 to July 23–26
By Mar 16World of Coffee, Warsaw (SCA)Moved from June to October 15–17
Mar 24Specialty Coffee Expo and Re:co Symposium, Portland (SCA)Canceled; exhibitors offered a credit for 2021 or a full refund
By Jul 16London Coffee Festival, rescheduled; Amsterdam Coffee FestivalBoth canceled
By Aug 4World Coffee Championships (World Coffee Events and the SCA)Canceled: the barista and brewers championships planned for Melbourne in November, and five more planned for Warsaw in October
Sep 2World of Coffee, Warsaw (SCA)Canceled; the SCA said World of Coffee was next scheduled for Athens in June 2021

When the SCA canceled the Portland Expo, its chief executive, Yannis Apostolopoulos, wrote to exhibitors that “no other viable dates were available for the show to take place in Portland in 2020.” The SCA planned to return in New Orleans in April 2021. The championships were canceled, as World Coffee Events and the SCA put it, “due to the impact of pandemic-related international visa and travel restrictions.”

What went online

Organizers of every size tried something. These are the 2020 events we could date from the organizers or from reporting at the time.

The Virtual Coffee Festival, March 29. Alex Kitain, founder of the Amsterdam subscription company The Coffeevine and of Freshdrip, organized five sessions on a Sunday afternoon, from 1 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. Central European Time. Barista Magazine’s preview listed the speakers and topics: Ronny Billemon on water for brewing, Joe McTaggart of Comandante on grinding, Talor Browne on choosing coffees, Matt Winton on brewing basics, and the World AeroPress Champion Wendelien van Bunnik on the AeroPress. Each session was a 25-minute talk and a 20-minute Q&A, streamed on YouTube and Facebook with the hashtag #virtualcoffeefestival. It was free, with donations invited for Doctors Without Borders. The Coffeevine’s own account a week later reported €2,000 raised for the charity and more than 2,000 people watching by April 6; its later posts refer to a second edition in June 2020.

The SCA’s Expo Weekend, late April. In place of the canceled Expo, the SCA hosted a virtual “Expo Weekend”, Tea & Coffee Trade Journal reported.

Weekly tastings from roasters. From the spring, Sprudge published a weekly roundup of online coffee events. Its list for April 27 to May 3, 2020, for example, included two weekly Instagram tastings from Counter Culture Coffee (#YouBrewYou, Fridays at 10 a.m. Eastern, and a Tuesday tasting with its coffee team), alongside events from Boot Coffee, Peace Coffee, The Crown (Royal Coffee’s lab and tasting room) and Urnex.

Re:co Symposium online, July 16–17. The SCA’s symposium ran as two full online days. The talks were pre-recorded, each followed by a short live Q&A with the presenter, and US residents could buy a home experience kit with ingredients and equipment. Its topics included “Race, Specialty Coffee and the Urgent Need for Progress.”

The Global Coffee Festival, October 30 to November 1. Allegra Events, which runs the London Coffee Festival and others, brought its festivals together online for free, with advance registration. Barista Magazine listed city café guides from Los Angeles to Seoul, interviews with figures such as Tim Wendelboe, home coffee and food workshops, and two competitions: Coffee Masters, and a new plant-based barista competition filmed in a London studio and broadcast as a recording.

Further afield, Costa Rica’s Sintercafé conference also announced that it would be virtual in 2020.

What the 2020 online events had in common

Across the events above, a few choices recur:

That’s a description of these events, not a claim about every online coffee event since.

2021

The SCA held Re:co online again in 2021, on May 12–13, “for the second straight year”, Tea & Coffee Trade Journal reported. Each topic had several speakers followed by discussion rooms, there was a new speed-networking session, and tasting kits were sent to registered participants. For the movement behind these events, see our third-wave history; for the cities whose festivals went dark, our coffee cities guide.

Sources

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