London Coffee Festival visitors have voted Union Hand-Roasted and UCC Make Decent Coffee as their favourite exhibitors from the UK Coffee Week flagship event. “A huge congratulations to all our winners,” said Festival Organiser Ludovic Rossignol, in a statement. “We were overwhelmed with the creativity, exceptional stand designs and engaging coffee and food experiences on display at this year’s festival. Coffee is an exciting industry and each year we see our exhibitors push boundaries and elevate coffee standards to enrich The London Coffee Festival visitor experience.” Both industry and consumer visitors were asked to vote for their favourite stands, festival experiences and most innovative products in an online survey which attracted almost 2000 votes.
UCC took home two awards for the Make Decent Coffee Lounge feature, a space where visitors were able to learn from the experts in a series of brewing tutorials. The feature was voted both ‘Favourite Key Feature’ (for the second year running) and the ‘Most Engaging Stand Experience’. UCC demonstrated to visitors at-home brewing equipment such as the Chemex, Aeropress, French Press and V60. Union Hand-Roasted won the Ultimate Coffee Experience award for the third year in a row for its World Coffee Tour. The artisan roaster, who was also voted favourite in the Best Stand Design category, brought its San Francisco roaster to conduct live craft roasting onsite. “This year’s festival was our favourite to date, and proved there is a growing groundswell of passion and excitement out there for speciality coffee. The festival was full of energy, smiles and amazing people and we are thrilled to be recognised by the visitors who came, saw and enjoyed our coffee,” said Jeremy Torz, Director, Union Hand-Roasted, in the statement.
Other festival winners included KeepCup, who won Most Innovative Product for the KeepCup Brew, a barista standard glass reusable cup. Cravendale won The Festival Newcomer – Industry award, after launching a barista latte art competition with the chance to win a trip to Origin in Peru. Next year’s event will be held from 30 April – 3 May 2015.
