I have to admit, I miss coffee events. Real life, in the flesh coffee shindigs, be they throwdown, expos, or coffee competitions, immersing oneself in a world of coffee for even but a day sounds wonderful, and I canโt wait to get back to regularly covering them as part of Sprudge Live. In America, we are still a VERY long way from experience such festivities. But in England, where a Boris Johnson-led government has somehow cobbled a sensible response (that seems to be working!) to the COVID-19 outbreak, the dream of the coffee extravaganza will soon be a reality with the triumphant return of UK Coffee Week this October. And now in its 10th year, UK Coffee Week is hoping to eclipse the ยฃ1 million charitable donation milestone.
Originally scheduled to take place back in Aprilโcoinciding with the now-officially-cancelled 2020 London Coffee Festival and London Coffee MastersโUK Coffee Week has surveyed all the facts, read the room, and decided to move full steam ahead with an at least partially in-person version of the festival to take place October 19th through 25th. Every year, hundreds of cafes, roasters, and restaurants across the United Kingdom take part in the form of parties, classes, throwdowns, competitions, and all manner of general coffee merriment, and 2020 will be no different. Sort of.
While in-store events will very much be a part of the 2020 UK Coffee Week, in a press release founder Jeffrey Young states that a handful of online coffee events and competitions will take place this year so that everyone can enjoy, no matter where you are.
UK Coffee Week is about celebrating our nationโs coffee industry as well as supporting our coffee-growing communities, and we feel that this is now more important than ever before. We are pulling out all the stops for UK Coffee Week 2020 with in-store activity, coffee-making tutorials, and a host of online events and competitions.
We want to celebrate coffee lovers and our supporters, from restaurants and coffee shops to roasters and other businesses. Whether we are enjoying coffee at home or supporting our local coffee shop this is a time to come together and raise a cup to our wonderful industry.
Like with previous iterations, there is a fundraising component of the 2020 UK Coffee Week, with 100% of the funds raised going to Project Waterfall, a charity created to bring clean water to communities in coffee growing regions. To date, UK Coffee Week has raised over ยฃ750,000 for Project Waterfall, and this year they are itching to break the ยฃ1 million mark.
But to do this, they need participation. If you have a coffee shop (be it a single location or a chain), roastery, or restaurant and want to take part in the 2020 UK Coffee Week, visit their official website for all the details on how to get involved. If you are a coffee lover, all you have to do is continue to love coffee during the week of October 19th and check out any of the participating companies listed on the UK Coffee Week’s website. Make sure you are checking back as more and more cafes sign up to take part. You’ve got a week to visit as many as you can, and you’re gonna want to make sure you’ve planned out the most efficient strategy for doing so.
But for now, I’ll just keep sitting here in America, wishing I could go outside and waiting for someone to visit my Animal Crossing cafe I long ago abandoned but have decided to check back in on now that I am jealous of the real-life fun other countries are getting to have.
Zac Cadwaladerย is the managing editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas.ย Read more Zac Cadwaladerย on Sprudge.
Top image via UK Coffee Week
