August 23, 2011
Café Imports
Café Imports is proud to announce the 2011/2012 USBC/WBC origin trip sponsorship location has been selected! The 6 regional USBC winners, plus the USBC Champion, and the WBC champion will travel with Café Imports to Costa Rica in January 2013. After our maiden Barista Origin Trip to Brazil in 2011, Café Imports learned a lot about what champion caliber baristas desire to learn about on the ground at origin. These dedicated and talented coffee professionals made this one of Café Imports best trips ever. Having that level of personal commitment within all the trip attendees really changed the complexion of the trip and allowed us to delve deeper into educational components and have valuable conversations on the ground about complex coffee issues and how those issues effect baristas.
Photo: the 2011 USBC Champion Pete Licata
For us and the origin partners, this was a truly memorable trip. Café Imports is extremely excited to be partnering with Exclusive Coffees in Costa Rica for this trip. Francisco Mena and the staff at Exclusive Coffees bring extensive origin expertise. Their support will help the baristas get the most in depth educational experience possible. Exclusive Coffees has been a huge pioneer in the microlot and micromill revolution in Costa Rica, and many baristas use these Costa Rican Microlots for competition. Café Imports believes that this partnership is the perfect situation for a trip like this one. This trip will connect the front line of both sides of the coffee industry.
Photo: the 2011 Champs on their maiden trip to Brazil
We look forward to returning to origin with these talented coffee professionals. Seeing the excitement that this new sponsorship category for the USBC and WBC last year generated, Café Imports’ hope is that Costa Rica in 2013 will be a motivating factor for more baristas to train harder, learn more, and earn themselves an opportunity to delve deeper into firsthand coffee education on the ground at origin. Café Imports fully supports baristas and values everything they do to help grow and develop specialty coffee as a whole.
-Noah Namowicz, Café Imports
