Cafebiz was a really interesting experience in lots of ways. Crowd mix on Saturday inspite of being a public day would have been about 50:50 industry. On the Sunday Crowds were a little less but still very consistant all day. Barista Competitions - Cant say much about them as i didn't have time to watch but they were drawing a good crowd and had a big screen setup with camera to watch proceedings. i am sure for those interested results will be posted on the Cafebiz site or their Facebook page in due course. Main Floor - of good and services covered a very large range of products from cleaning to food and snacks to machinery to accessories to milk & beans. Given the nature of the event and who it was pitched at the lack of the Big Bad boys (S, S and LM) of the Espresso machine world and Mazzer on the grinder front was disappointing, maybe they are of the opinion they are so cool or dominate in their part of the industry they don't need to attend these sort of shows? I did get to have a bit of a look at the new San Remo Roma TCS and got a nice coffee out of it from The Bean Barn along with a nice Kone of Yirg they had on offer. A few of the other machine importers of manufacturers were there along with some maintenance companies. Missing in the main was any domestic machine suppliers and given there was an open public day included this was a little disappointing. The Roaster importers of Australia were well represented with most of the major players present. Proaster from Taiwan was there, they look fairly well put together in the flesh and the train one is very cute. i think the only actual roasting going on for the weekend on the floor was from Greg Pullman and myself on the Hottop making chaff and smoke. Snacks and Nibbles, Frappes, Yoghurt mixes were there a plenty but of limited interest to me and due to a lack of time skipped most of the stands except the Sweet by Nature guys next door to us who kept the 'free samples' of sugary goodness coming our way. On the accessory front nothing much new apart from 9bar doing milk pitcher rinsers locally, a new Pullman Tamper the Nexus, and Coffeelabs reentry? to the market with their Tamper. Beans and more Beans. their must have been 8 or 10 roasters present including Mahalia from country SA and the Bean Barn from Ballarat in country Vic. Some of this is a tie up between the Golden Bean roasting awards I am sure but great to see the smaller roasters mixing it with the likes of Di Bella, Ducale and others. Roasting and Equipment Lectures this was a separate mini event run by extra tickets only and was aimed mainly at the Home Roaster or user but the roasting sections of it I went to where Mark Beattie from Coffee Roasters of Aus spoke and the outstanding Joseph Rivera from the US talking about the scientific changes to the Bean during the different stages of roasting. These 2 speakers were worth the $50 ticket price alone without the goody bags and the alternate brewing and machine maintenance talks I missed. Then there was the Sandwiches for Lunch and as much coffee as you could handle. Lack of food on the floor was an oversight, even a BBQ Sausage in bread by the local school/SES or whatever would have done! Would I go again yep certainly if comparable speakers were on offer in conjunction to it I would even head to Sydney for it. If it was just the trade show maybe not. Still learned heaps and met lots of great people which is a large part of what it is all about I reckon. 🙂
