I used to hate coffee, until I became a barista and had to work around it all the time. I was pretty ironic at first, a barista who hated coffee.
Anyways, I found gimme! coffee’s presentation to be extremely thorough and informative. Coffee is a luxury that we are lucky to have, and we tend to not think about that on our morning Starbucks runs. As a barista, I’m always really sad when we have to pour coffee down the drain when we remake it every two hours.
It was cool to learn some history and background about the stuff that I make for customers on a daily basis. I had never really thought about the history of coffee before, and I was really into the presentation. We even got to try coffee straight from Ethiopia (if I recall correctly), which tasted waaaaay different from your typical cup of Starbucks. Unfortunately, Starbucks is a huge multinational corporation, so they have to sacrifice quality for low costs.
I think it’s important to learn the history behind foods and drinks that we consume all the time, which we tend not to even think about. I’ll definitely be thinking about the history of coffee every time I brew it now.
I enjoyed the gimme! coffee presentation. Before sitting in on this I did not know about the coffee contests. I found it very interesting that gimme! could not make connections with African countries because of the vast influence of cooperatives, but found it in their best interest to focus on working with farmers in Latin America. I enjoyed learning about their approach and connections with the farmers. It seems like a very symbiotic relationship. It would have been nice to hear from the farmers themselves.
That’s so cool that you got to experience that presentation and coffee from Ethiopia. While I was visiting Central America with my family, we toured a Cocao Bean farm and got to see how cocao plants turned into coffee and cocoa. So I definitely get what you mean about Starbucks being a very different side of coffee.