Seminars give coffee fans an education on their morning brew

By Alejandra Pulido-Guzman - Lethbridge Herald on August 17, 2024.

Herald photo by Alejandra Pulido-Guzman Barista Smiley, shares his coffee knowledge with coffee seminar attendees Rebecca Forbes, Chris Manley and Emma Doyle prior to receiving his Coffee Master title and apron Wednesday at Starbucks.

LETHBRIDGE HERALDapulido@lethbridgeherald.com

For many people a cup of coffee is essential to begin their day and for those with very busy lives a coffee on the go is the most convenient way to obtain their caffeine fix. But what does it take for that to happen?

After hundreds if not thousands of inquiries about what happens before they taste their coffee in the morning, in 2020, Starbucks launched the Starbucks Digital Traceability tool,Â an online platform that lets customers follow a variety of Starbucks coffees to their origin and the journey from bean to cup.

In addition to that, in a more personal way of educating their customers, a local branch decided to offer a monthly coffee seminar with a dual purpose. To share their coffee knowledge with those eager to learn and also as a way of testing the knowledge of selected employees who aspire to become Coffee Masters.

Therese Begg, manager of the branch located at 1409 Mayor Magrath Drive South, said they began offering the monthly coffee seminars as a way to give an opportunity to the aspiring Coffee Masters to share their knowledge with their customers.

“We started doing the coffee seminars a few months ago because we had so many aspiring coffee masters who wanted to share their wealth of knowledge, that we thought let’s share this with our customers,” said Begg.

She said that the first seminar was so popular they decided to continue offering them on a monthly basis, with August being the fifth seminar so far.

“People just love to learn about where their coffee beans come from, what Starbucks is doing for sustainability, for the environment, the farmers, everything,” said Begg.

Since the process from bean to coffee has multiple stages and involves a few different processes, there is a lot of information to share. Begg said they decided to break it down into monthly sessions and so far, that has given them enough to plan up to the next few months.

For August’s seminar it was the turn of a barista who prefers to go by the name of Smiley to share what he had learned about coffee in hopes to obtain his black apron, a way to visually be recognized as a Coffee Master.

Smiley talked about the region of Latin America, the various flavours that are found in their coffee and how the different soils influenced this.

He also spoke about ways of pairing flavours with your coffee and demonstrated this by providing those in attendance with a small cup of black coffee, a small piece of brownie, a small piece of rice crispy square and a sample of strawberry sauce to be ingested in a specific order to experience a variety of tastes depending on the order.

Smiley also talked about the “Coffee Belt” which includes more than 70 coffee producing countries situated in the regions between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn around the world. But focused his seminar on Latin American countries on the belt.

In addition Smiley spoke about the way Starbucks is supporting farmers and global sustainability through ethical sourcing. The Coffee and Farmer Equity (CAFE) Practices was launched in 2004 in collaboration with Conservational International.

“They’re helping to create sustainability for coffee worldwide not just for the Starbucks stores,” said Begg.

She added that with climate change and environmental issues that come with it high-quality coffee is getting harder to grow, especially for the small farmers that make up the majority of the world’s producers.

“They’re dealing with rising production costs, weather change and diseases like coffee rust that can devastate an entire crop. To better understand these challenges, and how to help these farmers, Starbucks bought its first coffee farm “Hacienda Alsacia” in Costa Rica in 2013,” said Begg.

She said the mission of the farm is not to supply Starbucks with coffee but to help ensure the future of coffee for everyone.

“They offer their information and their seeds to local farmers for free so that they can learn new processes, new ways to grow and evolve their own coffee farms, because they want to make sure that they are sustaining coffee for everyone,” said Begg.

She said in addition they have support centres for their farmers in three areas of the world, one being in Costa Rica.

“They don’t only support the farmers, they also built the communities and they work towards building schools and housing for the farmers and their families, because in those communities a lot of the time the whole family is involved in some aspect of the coffee process,” said Begg.

For those interested to learn more about coffee, the September’s coffee seminar will be focused on the Asia-Pacific regions.

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