Barista-Led CPG: Why the Cafe Supply Chain Should Be Built—and Owned—by Coffee Professionals
(Room 23 BC)
11 Apr 26
10:30 AM
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11:45 AM
Every year, roughly a million independent cafés purchase tens of billions of dollars’ worth of coffee-adjacent products. These products are meant to complement the work of the barista community, a hive of some of the most thoughtful, innovative operators in the world. Yet despite the community’s outsized contributions to the broader F&B world, it has had essentially zero involvement in creating these products; baristas are largely left out of the process and they capture little-to-no economic value within it. That should change.
In this lecture, we’ll explore how the industry arrived here, how products flow into cafes, and chart a path toward a supply ecosystem of CPG brands that truly represent — and are owned by — the best our community has to offer.