August 23, 2011

Café Imports

www.cafeimports.com

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

NEW BGA MEMBER BENEFIT!

The BGA Executive Council is always looking for ways to improve the standing of baristas and offer more to our membership. We are very excited to announce a new benefit for our members we hope will be of great personal benefit to many of our members.

BGA members now have the opportunity to purchase Health Insurance at discounted rates through access to a group provider. Our partner is Association Health Programs (AHP), who offer access to top notch health insurance programs nationwide. They currently represent 2.5 million people which helps bring down the cost for individuals, like our members. The BGA is excited to offer this opportunity to our members because we realize that they don’t always have access to health insurance through their employers and that buying insurance on your own can be expensive. If you are interested in this benefit please contact membership@scaa.org to get all the info.

Answers to some frequently asked questions:

1. Can coverage offered through the carriers represented by AHP be accessed throughout the United States?

Yes.

2. Will all doctors and hospitals that accept insurance work with these carriers?

Yes.

3. Does the individual health insurance program cover pre-existing conditions?

Yes, on insurable conditions such as asthma, high blood pressure, cholesterol ... No, on uninsurable conditions such as heart problems, malignant cancers, strokes, Crohn's, diabetes... AHP can direct members to state health plans for those considered uninsurable and/or provide coverage for a limited medical policy.

4. Do pre-existing conditions affect the insurability of an individual policy? Do they also affect the premium rates?

Yes, each case is individually underwritten. Pre-existing conditions can cause a rate increase at the time of application. Rates cannot be increased due to future medical conditions after the policy is effective.

5. Are members required to take a health examination before applying for a policy?

No.

6. Do I need to be a current BGA member to get the information and benefits of these policies?

Yes, you must be a member to take advantage of this benefit program.

7. Will the BGA/SCAA have access to my personal information?

No, they simply connect you with AHP.

8. Do I have to be employed to get/retain my health plan?

No, your coverage is valid as long as you pay the premiums.

We wanted to inform you that the NWBRC will not be held in conjunction with Coffee Fest Seattle in September 2011. Both Coffee Fest and SCAA have worked hard this past week to work through all the planning details and, in the process, discovered that production costs would be much higher than we originally anticipated. Coffee Fest worked especially hard in trying to accommodate our needs, but since their agreements for Seattle were already in place, there wasn’t much room to move this year. However, we do see the potential for future events to take place in partnership.

As much as we would have liked to hold the NWRBC in conjunction with CoffeeFest this year, we recognize this change offers a bit more planning time for competitors, which we heard from some, would be a good thing.

We've definitely taken note of the comments about preparation time and will do our best to make schedule announcements further in advance in the future. We'll inform you of new dates and venue as soon as we have them secured. Thank you for your understanding.