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.
  Keep in touch via email: vanessa@bellpublishing.com Twitter: @TCTradeJournal or LinkedIn: Tea & Coffee Trade Journal

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This two-day event, which takes place at the Ernest M Morial Convention Center, combines industry trade show classes with a consumer coffee festival atmosphere The trade and industry day (targeting regional coffee shop owners, baristas, coffee buyers for grocery stores and F&B directors) takes place on 15 September. On the 16^th, the show opens its doors to consumers to experience the exhibit hall, lectures and skills classes, including special classes for home brewing. More than a dozen of the south’s leading roasters will have their coffee available for free sampling.

NOLA Coffee Festival co-founder Kevin Richards points out that New Orleans is a natural location for a serious coffee industry event: “The Port of New Orleans is [one of the largest points] of entry for green coffee in the United States. Accordingly, we have more than a thousand industrial coffee jobs here. [Folgers, PJs Coffee and Reily Foods] all roast here. Those are industrial coffee giants and all that imported green coffee passes through the Port of New Orleans. Our city of a natural leader in coffee.”

Echoing that sentiment, Felton Jones, chief roastmaster, PJ’s Coffee of New Orleans, shared, “The Port of New Orleans provides a sizeable contribution to the amount of coffee imported into the US, and this festival helps to highlight the role that New Orleans plays in the industry. With major brands like Folgers, Community Coffee, and PJ’s Coffee calling New Orleans home, I think New Orleans has been grossly under appreciated by the coffee industry — [and yet, the city has] so much to offer to the industry. I feel this was a big part in the decision of the organisers to create this unique experience for the local coffee heads.”

Jones noted that the NOLA Coffee Festival will allow these local brands to be on display for all to see. “The embracing of micro-roasters and small coffee shop owners to take part in this event not only gives them a place to unify and know that they are in great company locally, but it also gives them an opportunity to [become noticeable to the industry outside of New Orleans as the event grows]. This is [a chance] for everyone else to see that there is more to New Orleans than coffee and chicory,” he said, adding, “we absolutely have some passionate and dedicated roasters and baristas in our community, and this will be their [moment] to shine!”

Coffee education is a focal point of the NOLA Coffee Festival. “We’re seeking to bring together coffee industry professionals and coffee enthusiasts alike under one roof for learning, collaboration and good times. We expect the outcome to be a stronger regional coffee scene,” explained Richards. “Our focus in building the coffee education platform has been to solicit speakers who are southern coffee subject matter experts. In New Orleans alone, our city is estimated to serve 20 million cups of coffee annually. We can double that number for consumption across the Gulf South region.”

In terms of education sessions, NOLA Coffee Festival speakers include:

• Felton Jones, chief roastmaster for PJs coffee, who will lead a roaster best practices roundtable;
• Andrea Allen, Onyx Coffee owner and national barista champion, who will talk about her recent documentary and lead a barista class on ‘How to be Effective in Barista Competition Events’;
• Chris Kornman, green coffee expert and education director for Royal Coffee, who will lead classes on Arabica and the coffee flavour wheel;
• Rhiannon Enlil, NOLA cocktail expert, who will lead an exploration of cocktail innovation using coffee as the key flavour ingredient.
• Poppy Tooker, Louisiana food writer and food historian, who will explain the significance of African American calas cakes and their use by 19^th century enslaved women to purchase their freedom;
• Trey Malone, co-owner of Common Co-Labs and Northshore Specialty Coffee in Mississippi, who will lead discussion on the cold coffee extraction method and RTD cold coffee product trends;
• Noah Namowicz, svp of Café Imports, who will lead a geopolitical discussion of the current global coffee landscape;
• Liz Williams, NOLA food historian and founder of the Southern Food & Beverage Museum, who will lead talks on the coffee heritage of New Orleans and the importance of the Port of New Orleans.
• Suzanne Stone, book author and docent at the Historic New Orleans Collection, who will lead a review of historical and current female coffee leaders in New Orleans;
• Bob Arceneaux, owner of Orleans Coffee and regional coffee leader, who will explore modern coffee blend strategies;
• Lauren Fink, owner of Cherry Coffee and NOLA coffee leader, who will lead roaster roundtable discussions;
• Miguel Gomez, PhD candidate at University of Houston, who will introduce his new research to reveal why Robusta is now in position as a ‘first to market value driver in the U.S. market’;
• Eric Brenner, assistant director at the Center for Coffee Research at Texas A&M, who will lead a review of rust resistance data in Central America and provide action items for farmers there to convert their arabica varieties;
• Anna Guiterrez, director of brand development at Barista 22, who will lead classes on coffee shop menu development and innovating signature coffee drinks;
• Melissa Dixon, a lead educator at La Marzocco, who will lead a session on foundational espresso tasting and brewing development;
• Deniseea Taylor, social media blogger for Chicken and Champagne, who will relate new coffee and cocktail creations to the black heritage roots that inspired them;
• Zella Palmer, director of the Ray Charles African American Program at Dillard University, who will air her award-winning documentary The Black Hand Stirs the Pot and discuss the impact of creole cooking in New Orleans cuisine; and
• Prince De’Araujo Lobo, creative director at Addis Nola Ethiopian Restaurant, who will deliver a daily Ethiopian coffee blessing for the exhibit hall and in the classrooms.

“Coffee education is a key need in our region,” said event co-founder Jim Currie. “Of the 3,500 coffee shops located in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, very, very few have ever attended a national coffee conference or training event. We want to flip that around and make great coffee education easily accessible for the thousands of baristas, coffee shop owners/managers and green coffee roasters that work in the gulf south.” He believes that better networking and better classroom discussion will directly lead to new coffee innovations, noting, “Southern chefs have always been national trendsetters and culinary flavour leaders. It is no different for our work in coffee.”

Richards added that visitors to the NOLA Coffee Festival “can expect to taste over 25 coffees from our regional roaster community, take part in over 60 hours of free coffee education, interface with companies from across the coffee industry, hear talks from New Orleans’ finest historians about the roots of coffee in New Orleans, watch exciting barista competitions, experiment with home and commercial coffee equipment, explore artwork from our coffee community, meet coffee farmers from Central and South America, and more. And, of course, you be able to find a fantastic cup of chicory coffee.”

To register for the NOLA Coffee Festival, or for more information, click here.

• Aubrye McDonagh Leigh

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Since Port NOLA launched the Clean TRIP programme in 2016, 101 short-haul drayage trucks have been replaced with cleaner burning engines, reducing fine particulate emissions from each truck by 96%, which is equal to taking more than 116,000 cars off the road.

The programme offers a 50% ($35,000 maximum) cost incentive for the voluntary replacement of drayage trucks that service cargo terminals and warehouses within the entirety of Port NOLA’s three-parish jurisdiction (Jefferson, Orleans and St Bernard).

Clean TRIP is made possible with funding by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (LDEQ). Port NOLA has received five competitive grants to date providing truck replacement rebates supporting our local Port trucking industry, helping reduce local air emissions, and increasing reliability and efficiency of on-road movement of freight.

“The ongoing success of the award-winning Clean TRIP initiative highlights the Port of New Orleans’ deep commitment to greening the supply chain,” said Brandy D Christian, Port NOLA president and CEO and CEO of the New Orleans Public Belt Railroad Commission (NOPB). “As the shipping industry in general prioritises sustainability, Port NOLA and our private partners are staying ahead of the curve by investing in greater sustainability at the second container terminal project in St Bernard Parish, the Louisiana International Terminal.”

The Louisiana International Terminal in Violet, which is in the design and permitting phase, will incorporate the latest green technologies. That includes shore power, allowing vessels to plug in at the dock, eliminating the need to run diesel engines. This can cut local vessel emissions by up to 98%. Operators also plan to invest in an electrified equipment fleet, further reducing local emissions impacts.

Like the Uptown facilities, the Louisiana International Terminal will also be equipped to provide container-on-barge services, which move containers by water rather than road to reduce air emissions. Port NOLA’s current container-on-barge service has reduced more than 11,000 short tons of carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions and saved one million gallons of diesel fuel. The container-on-barge service moves an average of 30,000 TEUs per year between New Orleans, Port Allen, Memphis and now St Louis.

Port NOLA has been Green Marine Green Port Certified since 2015 and now four major port tenants are also Green Marine certified. Green Marine is a voluntary environmental certification programme for the North American maritime industry.

Port NOLA’s subsidiary, the New Orleans Public Belt (NOPB) railroad is also focused on greening rail operations. NOPB has 10 EPA-classified Tier 1 locomotives in their fleet, which replaced older, dirtier locomotives in 2020. NOPB has also deployed 45 solar powered switches across its network.

The Port of New Orleans will continue to accept applications for truck replacements, while funding is available. Eligible applicants must fully own a drayage truck with three years of remaining life that currently operates and consistently services facilities within the Port of New Orleans jurisdiction. More information about Clean TRIP eligibility can be found at cleantrip-portno.com/eligibility.

The NOLA Coffee Festival will celebrate the unique heritage of the area’s coffee industry. The annual industry trade show and consumer festival was created to celebrate the joy of coffee products and to celebrate the many people who serve this industry from farmer to distributor to roaster to shop owner and barista.

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