2nd NOLA Coffee Festival expands while maintaining smaller-player focus
Credit: Vanessa L Facenda
The 2nd NOLA Coffee Festival took place 27-28 September at the Morial Convention Center in downtown New Orleans.
The NOLA (New Orleans, Louisiana) Coffee Festival launched in 2023 to offer small, independent coffee shop owners in the Gulf States (of which there are approximately 3500) an opportunity – and one they might not otherwise have – to advance their coffee and business operator knowledge and skillsets through educational lectures and to network with other coffee professionals. The first show enjoyed participation from 50 industry exhibitors and 2,000 attending coffee professionals and the 2024 show expanded upon that number, despite the impact of Hurricane Helene, which hit the Gulf Coast the day before the NCF began.
Although the NOLA Coffee Festival (NCF) targets smaller independent coffee shop owners/operators, many of the large Louisiana-based nationals and multinationals such as Community Coffee, Folgers (1850, Café Bustelo), PJ’s Coffee and Reilly Foods (French Market Coffee, New England Coffee, Luzianne Tea) all supported the show with booths. New England Coffee even exhibited and sampled its recently released compostable K-Cup coffee line. Locally-based green coffee importer Westfeldt Coffee, storage and warehousing company, Dupuy, the Port of New Orleans, and Community Coffee sponsored a series of educational posters in the hall.
NCF, however, is for the smaller players, of which there were many including Onyx Coffee, Evolve Coffee & Matcha, French Truck Coffee, Congregation Coffee, Orleans Coffee, Cherry Street Coffee, Cultiva Coffee Importers, Current Crop Roasting Shop, ICC Coffee Merchants, and Café de Mi Pueblo, a Honduras-based, female-owned and operated farm and exporter. There were also allied service companies exhibiting such as AW Vanguard, an accounting firm.
Following last year’s show, attendees were surveyed about how the NCF could improve, co-founder Jim Currie said two suggestions topped the feedback list:
- add more education around green coffee buying;
- add more education and access to artesian tea products.
Currie said that the 2024 NOLA event featured more than 60 hours of professional classroom presentations, as well as tea exhibitors and educational sessions. One tea exhibitor was female-owned and operated Tea Please, from Houston, Texas, which offered a selection of unique loose-leaf tea blends with fun names such as Peach Cobbler, Strawberry Shortcake, Vanilla Horchata, and Breathe EZ.
I moderated the new tea panel session, which was designed for coffee shop owners who wanted to improve their tea sales as well as tea shop owners. However, after taking a quick survey to see who exactly was in audience, surprisingly, an overwhelming number of attendees were not professionals, rather, they were tea enthusiasts who came to the show (NCF opens attendance to non-professionals on the second day) to simply learn more about tea. Given that, the panellists and I had to pivot our planned talking points and focus, and what resulted was a lively and engaging Q&A and conversation.
Currie that said the trade show plans to expand its tea focus next year, and although consumers will always be welcome, NOLA Coffee Festival will not become a ‘consumer festival’ — it is primarily a B2B show. The 2025 NCF will take place 3-4 October at the Pontchartrain Convention Center in Kenner, Louisiana, a suburb of New Orleans, located a short distance from downtown.
- Vanessa L Facenda, editor, Tea & Coffee Trade Journal.
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