The London Coffee Festival is one of the premier global coffee events on the calendar each year. Routinely drawing over 20,000 people to the Truman Brewery in Shoreditch in East London for four days of coffee, competitions, talks, new tech, and more coffee, the London Coffee Festival is a lively blend of trade show and consumer-facing event that always promises an over-caffeinated good time.
And now it is under new management. UK hospitality group William Reed has acquired the London Coffee Festival from the Allegra Group.
Started over a decade ago, the Allegra Group brought together a unique blend of coffee shops and roasters, DJs, live music, artists, foods, cocktails, educational experiences, and coffee competitions under the banner of the London Coffee Festival. In the years since then, the event has over quadrupled in size and spawned similarly positioned events the world over in places like New York, Los Angeles, Amsterdam, Milan, Cape Town, and Sao Paulo. But now LCF, the original event, is being turned over to William Reed, a 160-year-old hospitality, research, and events group.
Per World Coffee Portal, Allegra’s coffee news outlet (which William Reed has a stake in), William Reed will continue to work with Allegra to “develop the London Coffee Festival and Coffee Masters brands.” With the acquisition, William Reed plans to grow the London Coffee Festival even further by “opening access to targeted channels for exhibitors and sponsors.”
Per Allegra Group founder and CEO Jeffrey Young:
I am very proud of what we have created at Allegra and I am pleased that we have been able to pass the baton onto William Reed who I think are perfectly placed to take the festival to the next level. This will also free up our time to be able to focus on future plans for the coffee industry that we have around the world.
The press release did not mention the fate of the remainder of Allegra Group’s slate of global coffee festivals, some of which host Coffee Masters events, whether they are part of the acquisition or remain part of the Allegra Group’s portfolio. The first look at any potential changes William Reed brings can first be seen April 20-24, 2023, when the London Coffee Festival returns to the Truman Brewery.
Zac Cadwalader is the managing editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.
