The 9th Annual European Coffee Symposium took place at The Hilton Budapest on 23 November 2016. Industry leaders from all over Europe gathered to hear an array of impressive speakers exploring the theme of Innovation in Changing Times.
Allegra Group CEO, Jeffrey Young commenced proceedings with an informative overview of the current and future European marketplace. Young shared some of the latest insights from Allegra’s Project Cafe17 Europe report, which unveiled the 5
th Wave: The Business of Coffee. Young stated this will be the most important trend for the marketplace in the coming decade.
Adam Mularuk, Brand President of Starbucks at AmRest, and Andrzej Jackiewicz, Managing Director of Costa Europe both provided a candid look into the latest strategies and innovations at Starbucks and Costa, respectively.
Professor Paul Whiteley PhD, from the University of Essex gave a highly educative presentation on the consequences of Brexit, one of the most important factors shaping the current market landscape.
Entrepreneurs Konstantinos Konstantinopoulos, CEO of Coffee Island in Greece, and Hans Tietema, owner of Kaldi in The Netherlands each gave a comprehensive overview of the success and growth of their chains in their home markets.
Local operator Tibor Varady, owner of Espresso Embassy reflected on the business of coffee, taking a subjective look at the development of the speciality coffee scene. While Maxwell Colonna-Dashwood, Founder of Colonna, and three time UK Barista Champion, discussed plans to challenge the status quo within the fast-growing coffee capsule segment.
The day closed with a gritty panel discussion on the challenges of rolling out quality food in a European coffee chain. Paul Ettinger and Marco Zacharia from Caffe Nero, Filip Spevak from Insomnia Coffee, Adam Mularuk from AmRest, and Marco Scharf from Coffeeshop Company debated the dos and don’ts for achieving a compelling food offer in their respective businesses.
The conference no doubt left the audience reflecting on the key issues the coffee industry will face over the next 5-10 years.
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here to read Allegra World Coffee Portal’s full event debrief summary.