This is my contribution post to #MarketFriday initiated by @dswigle (👈🏽 That's her, Denise) and posted by me @c0ff33a (👈🏽 That's me ☕️). This week we are visiting an Exhibition Festival of coffee taking Place at the Old Truman Brewery in Brick Lane in London. The London Coffee Festival is the biggest single coffee event in the UK, and has stands from an eclectic range of business's from coffee shops, coffee roasters that supply shops or retail, coffee machine manufacturers, coffee roasting machines - everything.
So my Wednesday started with a train ride from Halifax to London Kings cross station.
After a quick Uber rider from the train station to the Old Truman Brewery, I checked into the event and got my exhibitor pass to find these two crates on the stand. The big one shipped straight from Turkey to the Logistics company that then brought them to the stand prior to the even build up. The small crate I packed 3 weeks ago at work with the 1kg roaster and everything I would need for the stand. So I turned up today with a drill and mission to take these crates apart and make a stand out of them.
This is a good view down on the exhibition build up, the big crate has 12 screws holding down the top piece of wood. Easy way to remove them? Climb on the small crate, climb on top of the big crate and sit up there going around the edge removing one screw at a time. I got some funny looks as people passed me up there but it did the job! Lid off and start on the sides, some of the screws have been power drilled in so hard my drill won't pull them out - I have to use a manual driver to work them loose before the drill will remove them. Slow, painful work applying force so the driver doesn't slip and strip the head.
Progress is made we can see the Coffee Roasters! The little red roaster still weighs 80kg, so that's an easy two man lift. The logistics people who brought the crates in, I also paid for the use of "two men" for 5 minutes to lift the roaster onto it's trolley. In the end they were so busy they only had one man free, so I had to share the lifting - ooh my back. How much for 5 minutes with a burley man? £20, not sure that is good or not Ladies?
So with the little red roaster on it's trolley I built up, and with the help of the man and his pallet truck the big roaster moved to it's correct position - we are literally cooking coffee with gas at this point.
And with some final tidying up, I reach as far as I can get on the Wednesday night. Time to hit the hotel and get an early night ready for a busy day at the show Thursday morning.
And here we are, ready to start the London Coffee Festival - let's see what is inside.
My completed stand for one, with Banners put up to try and cover the crate panels of the big roaster. The roasters are what people are here to see anyway, that is the big draw and hopefully I will sell a few to cover the costs of this stand!
So let's take a walk round and look at the stands, this is a cold coffee brew stand - they even have cans of cold coffee.
Not just coffee though, this is a hot chocolate stand.
Coffee machines, we will see many coffee machines!
KeepCups - reusable take away cups for coffee shops.
Chai!
Clifton Coffee Roasters with a very fancy branded machine.
Answers on a postcard as to what this lot do?
Some brewing going on with the Roasting Shed
Union Hand Roasted - this a big coffee roasting business.
All the gear....
Expensive machines...
Inside expensive machines
Expensive signs for expensive machines
Fancy lever operated machine with visible mechanism.
Fancy digital displays as well.
Lavazza have their own stand, I sell this Italian brand of coffee myself.
A red coffee machine to go with my red roaster
Plenty of coffee brewing going on.
Some drinks are free samples, some you have to pay for.
And then we hit the food counters.
This isn't coffee, Kraft brewed beers in cans.
Coffee lovers everywhere ☕️
Lot's of stands, and lot's of people. This is a busy popular event, I don't know they exact capacity for the show but they nearly filled it today.
The main stage, where over the four days of the exhibition many competitions and demonstrations will take place.
And the opposite side of the main stage, just to give you a different angle.
This one is interesting, the motorbike was the inspiration for the design of the Espresso Coffee Machine they have called Speedster.
And a closer look of the Motorbike inspired coffee machine.
Beer Coffee...Coffee Beer!
Coffee roasting machines from Holland
These could be classes as competition against the roasters I sell - but these are the premium market machines and the ones I deal with are the basic, functional get the job done kit.
Coffee Emoji!
And now it's time to say goodbye to The London Coffee Festival for today, I will be back Sunday for the last day of the show and then to put everything back into the crates. I hope you enjoyed my quick walk round with you, these were some of the stands at this show - the first day is the busiest and I spent pretty much all my time on the stand dealing with enquiries and answering questions - I had many potential buyers today discussing the roasters and taking their details to send more information. Hopefully a few will buy because that will help cover the cost of being at this event.
Sunday I will hopefully get chance to have a closer look round, and take some better close up shot's of different brew methods - for a different post.
Some of my previous posts you might have missed
Coffees of the World Vietnam Arabica
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Kolegas tag Week 2 - Graffiti |
Sublime Sunday with me @c0ff33a
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Kind thanks to @enginewitty for employing his Ninja graphic design skills and producing this 🔥 banner
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