The European Union (EU) recently reached an agreement on a new "first-of-its-kind" piece of legislation, the EU Deforestation Regulation, with the aim of preventing companies from selling commodities that are linked with deforestation and forest degredation around the world on the EU market. With other countries (including the US, under the Forest Act) considering a similar shift from voluntary sustainability intitiatives to a more regulatory approach, this is an important and pivotal time to understand the impacts of "due dilligence" legislation. Raina Lang will lead a panel from Conservation International exploring the practical implications of the new legislation.

Everything is Cold
What are some of the cold coffee options at the forefront of broadening coffee’s consumer base? This sensory experience, a blind tasting of cold coffee options prepared in multiple different ways, was inspired by Cheryl Hung’s plenary talk and a seminar covering all the learnings of the Coffee Science Foundation's multi-year research project on cold brew with Professor Bill Ristenpart, Julia Leach, and Peter Giuliano.

What You Drink = Who You Are
Inspired by plenary talks from Andrea Hernández and Bill Durrant, this sensory experience explores the increasing diversity of consumer-packaged goods and how products are often used to show (or tell) people who we are by virtue of what we consume.

Specialty coffee consumers and experts alike agree that a key part of coffee quality is the natural sweetness that is a part of high-quality coffee flavor. Recent research has confirmed that, counterintuitively, the sweetness in coffee does not come from sugars in the bean. This has created something of a mystery among coffee experts and sensory scientists—if sugars do not make coffee taste sweet, what could be the reason for the sweet taste of high-quality coffee?

*This is part two of a two-part seminar designed for an audience who cup professionally or who are already familiar with some of the coffee value assessment system outputs over the past four years.

Over the past four years, the SCA has undertaken a project to evaluate, evolve, and expand the SCA cupping protocol as a part of its Coffee Value Assessment System development project. An early adopter form and protocol, based on the learnings of this project, will be released in early 2023. Across this double seminar session, Re:co participants will be introduced to the logic underlying the evolution of the cupping protocol in the first session before receiving first-hand practical experience with the early adopter protocol and form. The guided, intensive training session includes descriptive training, including how to use references, and a deep understanding of the affective section of the new system.

This seminar will be offered twice at Re:co 2023, with the AM session designed for an audience who may be new or less familiar cupping and this project. The afternoon session is designed for an audience who cup professionally or who are already familiar with the project's outputs over the past four years.

*This is part two of a two-part seminar.

Building a vision for a thriving and profitable coffee sector touches most if not all the actors in the coffee system. Moreover, this challenge calls for a new collective mindset and leadership capacity, being more conscious, purposeful, and strategic to create this future intentionally with greater possibilities for all actors in the coffee value chain.

Sustainability is not a goal, but a pathway that we need to continuously create to make coffee better, for all. As trailblazers, we need to shape and build new pathways for the development of the specialty coffee sector, embracing economic models and sourcing approaches that generate and distribute value equitably, fostering a global coffee community to make specialty coffee a thriving, equitable, and sustainable endeavor for the entire value chain. We also need innovative tools and the proper mindset to dynamically improve and adapt business models and sourcing practices towards this emerging future.

This double seminar session will help coffee companies and organizations in the specialty coffee industry create the awareness to trigger positive action on coffee sustainability. Participants will learn how to identify their most transformative ideas to become regenerative and distributive in their core operations before identifying the recommended changes needed to make their ideas a reality. By the end of the second session, participants will have built a “beacon” to guide themselves on their ambitious journey for assessing their current impacts, be able to generate transformative ideas in response to these assessments, and regularly explore business and sourcing redesign in order to meet their goals.

Inspired by the Theory U philosophy and the Doughnut Design for Business tool, this double seminar will speak directly to a specialty coffee context to create an impactful and dynamic activity for all who join.

Infused or Not Infused?
A blind tasting of "infused" coffees will illustrate the complexity of where we might choose to draw a line when it comes to questions of green coffee authenticity and adulteration raised by Dr. Mario Fernández-Alduenda on Wednesday and open for discussion on Thursday.

Mas(a) Attributes, Mas(a) Value
Inspired by Mel Bandler's presentation and the two seminars on the SCA's forthcoming Coffee Value Assessment, this sensory experience explores the different ways in which “fairness” (sustainability) attributes determine a product’s value through the lens of a product operating along a similar "commercial-to-special" continuum, masa harina. 

*This is part one of a two-part seminar.

Building a vision for a thriving and profitable coffee sector touches most if not all the actors in the coffee system. Moreover, this challenge calls for a new collective mindset and leadership capacity, being more conscious, purposeful, and strategic to create this future intentionally with greater possibilities for all actors in the coffee value chain.

Sustainability is not a goal, but a pathway that we need to continuously create to make coffee better, for all. As trailblazers, we need to shape and build new pathways for the development of the specialty coffee sector, embracing economic models and sourcing approaches that generate and distribute value equitably, fostering a global coffee community to make specialty coffee a thriving, equitable, and sustainable endeavor for the entire value chain. We also need innovative tools and the proper mindset to dynamically improve and adapt business models and sourcing practices towards this emerging future.

This double seminar session will help coffee companies and organizations in the specialty coffee industry create the awareness to trigger positive action on coffee sustainability. Participants will learn how to identify their most transformative ideas to become regenerative and distributive in their core operations before identifying the recommended changes needed to make their ideas a reality. By the end of the second session, participants will have built a “beacon” to guide themselves on their ambitious journey for assessing their current impacts, be able to generate transformative ideas in response to these assessments, and regularly explore business and sourcing redesign in order to meet their goals.

Inspired by the Theory U philosophy and the Doughnut Design for Business tool, this double seminar will speak directly to a specialty coffee context to create an impactful and dynamic activity for all who join.

*This is part one of a two-part seminar designed for an audience who cup professionally or who are already familiar with some of the coffee value assessment system outputs over the past four years.

In order to facilitate the training and tasting portion of this seminar offering, attendance is capped at 40 participants for each session.

Over the past four years, the SCA has undertaken a project to evaluate, evolve, and expand the SCA cupping protocol as a part of its Coffee Value Assessment System development project. An early adopter form and protocol, based on the learnings of this project, will be released in early 2023. Across this double seminar session, Re:co participants will be introduced to the logic underlying the evolution of the cupping protocol in the first session before receiving first-hand practical experience with the early adopter protocol and form. The guided, intensive training session includes descriptive training, including how to use references, and a deep understanding of the affective section of the new system.

This seminar will be offered twice at Re:co 2023, with the AM session designed for an audience who may be new or less familiar cupping and this project. The afternoon session is designed for an audience who cup professionally or who are already familiar with the project's outputs over the past four years.

Coffee's interest in understanding multimodal perception on coffee experiences has most recently focused on cup shape, size, and weight or environmental ambiance like color, music, and texture. As home coffee consumption continues to increase even as pandemic restrictions ease, so too has our interest in understanding packaging (an element of the coffee experience making its way consistently into the home) through a multimodal lens. Dr. Fabiana Carvalho shares the latest round of results of an ongoing study exploring the effect of packaging on the perception of specialty coffee.

Drawing on her plenary talk, "Stories About Uncertainty, Priorities, and Hope," Cheryl Hung offers a more in-depth look at why we should care about market research and data as well as how to use it in your business through a number of case studies. 

*This is part two of a two part seminar for those new to coffee value assessment or cupping. In order to facilitate the training and tasting portion of this seminar offering, attendance is capped at 40 participants each session.

Over the past four years, the SCA has undertaken a project to evaluate, evolve, and expand the SCA cupping protocol as a part of its Coffee Value Assessment System development project. An early adopter form and protocol, based on the learnings of this project, will be released in early 2023. Across this double seminar session, Re:co participants will be introduced to the logic underlying the evolution of the cupping protocol in the first session before receiving first-hand practical experience with the early adopter protocol and form. The guided, intensive training session includes descriptive training, including how to use references, and a deep understanding of the affective section of the new system.

This seminar will be offered twice at Re:co 2023, with the AM session designed for an audience who may be new or less familiar cupping and this project. The afternoon session is designed for an audience who cup professionally or who are already familiar with the project's outputs over the past four years.

As technology advances and our understanding of sensory attributes improves, it's possible to put more power in the hands of coffee professionals who seek to make coffee better. Get the latest update about this multi-year research project aimed at measuring espresso chemistry, correlating those measurements to sensory attributes, and laying the groundwork for science-based useable tools for the coffee industry.

Dr. Mario Fernández-Alduenda is joined by Andres Felipe Ospina, a member of the expert group working to assist the SCA Standards Development Panel, in this fishbowl discussion designed to tackle the questions raised in Mario’s plenary session on stage. Before you attend this seminar, we recommend participating in the “Infused or Not Infused” sensory experience.

This year’s class of eight Re:co Fellows will contribute to the event in numerous ways: first and foremost, with the Fellows Talks, which will take place during Thursday’s Seminar Program. With their wide range of backgrounds and areas of expertise, the 90-minute seminar led by the Fellows promises to be one of the most engaging, thought-provoking sessions of the event. The Fellow’s Talks will draw on the experiences of these coffee and research professionals to examine topics including: the role of coffee brewing technology in shaping our understanding of “good” coffee; specialty coffee as a vehicle for economic growth and autonomy for women in the value chain; and the history of gentrification in Portland.

Delegates will find some of the big-picture themes from the Plenary Program, like the idea of specialty coffee embracing diverse tastes, reflected in the perspectives offered by the Fellows, who are working to apply these ideas in a variety of supply chain roles and cultural contexts.

Everything is Cold
What are some of the cold coffee options at the forefront of broadening coffee’s consumer base? This sensory experience, a blind tasting of cold coffee options prepared in multiple different ways, was inspired by Cheryl Hung’s plenary talk and a seminar covering all the learnings of the Coffee Science Foundation's multi-year research project on cold brew with Professor Bill Ristenpart, Julia Leach, and Peter Giuliano.

What You Drink = Who You Are
Inspired by plenary talks from Andrea Hernández and Bill Durrant, this sensory experience explores the increasing diversity of consumer-packaged goods and how products are often used to show (or tell) people who we are by virtue of what we consume.

Infused or Not Infused?
A blind tasting of "infused" coffees will illustrate the complexity of where we might choose to draw a line when it comes to questions of green coffee authenticity and adulteration raised by Dr. Mario Fernández-Alduenda on Wednesday and open for discussion on Thursday.

Mas(a) Attributes, Mas(a) Value
Inspired by Mel Bandler's presentation and the two seminars on the SCA's forthcoming Coffee Value Assessment, this sensory experience explores the different ways in which “fairness” (sustainability) attributes determine a product’s value through the lens of a product operating along a similar "commercial-to-special" continuum, masa harina. 

The market for cold-brewed coffees has grown remarkably over the past decade, and innovations in style and process have meant that there is a broad diversity of sensory experiences available to consumers. Learn more about the findings of this multi-year project from its collaborators as it worked to produce scientifically rigorous data that identifies the impact of variations of key extraction and holding parameters on the chemical, physical, sensory, and consumer properties of cold brewed coffee.

This is part one of a two-part seminar for those new to coffee value assessment or cupping. In order to facilitate the training and tasting portion of this seminar offering, attendence is capped at 40 participants each session.

Over the past four years, the SCA has undertaken a project to evalute, evolve, and expand the SCA cupping protocol as a part of its Coffee Value Assessment System development project. An early adopter form and protocol, based on the learnings of this project, will be released in early 2023. Across this double seminar session, Re:co participants will be introduced to the logic underlying the evolution of the cupping protocol in the first session before receiving first-hand practical experience with the early adopter protocol and form. The guided, intensive training session includes descriptive training, including how to use references, and a deep understanding of the affective section of the new system.

This seminar will be offered twice at Re:co 2023, with the morning session designed for an audience who may be new or less familiar cupping and this project. The afternoon session is designed for an audience who cup professionally or who are already familiar with the project's outputs over the past four years.

Join Prof. Ted Fischer and Jeanine Niyonzima for a "fishbowl" style discussion on the "ocean of value" all around us. After a brief recap of the different ways in which value is constructed from Prof. Fischer's plenary talk the day before, participants are encouraged to "step into the fishbowl" and share their perspectives and experiences.

*This seminar requires a small amount of pre-event thinking and writing in order to make the most of your time during the session.

This seminar uses not-knowing as a way to think about new products and business models—in other words, creating and holding a productive space of not-knowing.

Clarity is required to create a productive space of not-knowing. The pre-work is designed to achieve this clarity about your business in three areas:

What you want to keep,
What you might be willing to change, and
What you definitely want to change.

The pre-work will take 30-60 minutes using this template.

During the seminar, we'll build on your pre-work to develop ideas for small, low-risk experiments aimed at discovering new customer segments, new products, or new ways of doing business.

Expect about 10 minutes of background from Vaughn, followed by a combination of individual work, small-group workshopping, and whole-group discussion. You'll leave the seminar with at least one fleshed-out idea for a low-risk experiment that you can implement within the next 60 days.

If Wednesday’s programming is about drawing a map of the emerging future for the collective, Thursday’s seminar sessions are about creating the space for each participant to begin to chart their own path through what lies ahead. Offered across four simultaneous rooms of presentation and discussion, this year’s seminars offer opportunities to engage with the existential questions facing coffee’s future, case studies and modes of thinking to approach the coffee businesses, and updates on the Coffee Science Foundation’s ongoing research projects. Several seminars this year, particularly those on the topic of coffee’s value assessment or distribution, are scheduled over two 90-minute sessions in order to allow for a more hands-on, workshop-like approach to the topic; others may ask participants for a small amount of pre-event thinking before attending in order to make the most of the time together.

SCA CEO Yannis Apostolopoulos officially launches the Coffee Value Assessment, now in beta, shares a vision for the future, and opens the SCA’s call for early-adopters.

Over the past 15 years, we’ve watched Re:co repeatedly create a vibrant network of emerging and existing leadership within the specialty coffee industry during its brief emergence every year. This year’s Re:co Symposium Fellowship, evolved in keeping with changes made to the structure and intentionality of this year’s programming, is designed to highlight individuals working to address the challenges and opportunities of specialty coffee’s emerging future and who wish to develop their leadership capabilities in the sector in order to further this work.

Thanks in part to the generous support of the 2023 Re:co Fellowship sponsor, Toddy LLC, we have awarded eight fellowships to qualified applicants, who you’ll meet in this brief introduction ahead of their seminar later in the day.

Kim Elena Ionescu closes out Day One of Re:co Symposium.

How do consumers navigate paradigm shifts across social, political, and environmental spheres? What can retailers do to support them in this tumultuous environment—and is it actually possible to build trust? Mel Bandler draws upon her experience as Sustainable Sourcing Manager at Bath & Body Works as well as her time working with grocery retailers to expand their responsible sourcing programs to propose a path forward.

We may be in an age of incredible technological advancements, but few of us are exploiting these opportunities. In this plenary talk, Miranda Caldwell shines a light on the power of mass customization and explores what each of the four types could look like in practice for the specialty coffee industry.

There’s no doubt of the increasing importance and recognition of extrinsic attributes as key drivers for a coffee’s value, but with such a wide variety of possibilities and an unknowable future, narrowing our focus–or even choosing an ideal destination–can feel daunting. In this session, we’ll explore substantial change taking place in the retail sector as an increasingly diverse audience seeks “unique-to-me” and “fair” products. What opportunities do these changes offer us as we seek to plan the route ahead?