By NCA Next Gen

With much built-up excitement and anticipation, Sintercafe made its triumphant return from November 9^th through November 12^th, 2022 at the Los Sueños Marriott in Costa Rica. The first event of its kind since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was welcomed with open arms and boasted record attendance with over 600 attendees! The attendee list included many National Coffee Association members and representatives, including our very own Bill Murray, President and CEO of the National Coffee Association (NCA), who delivered a keynote entitled “Consumers, Coffee, and Change: The Evolving U.S. Market.” He also served on a panel of coffee association executives to discuss global challenges facing coffee and how association are uniquely positioned to help.

In addition to providing a platform for many great lectures and customer/client interaction, the event saw the inaugural launch of a collaboration between NCA Next Gen, SCTA Next Gen, and Sintercafe Next Gen with a beach cleanup and paddle boarding experience. The NCA Next Gen Council is looking forward to building upon this initiative and collaborating more with our Next Gen coffee counterparts around the world!

Hear from some of our NCA Next Gen Council members below regarding their experiences at Sintercafe 2022:

“What a great feeling to be back amongst colleagues and friends at Sintercafe 2022! The dynamic of finally being able to attend an in-person event was truly wonderful.  Our very own NCA Next Gen Council members were lucky enough to be invited to participate in a “beach cleanup and paddleboarding” event on Thursday afternoon!  This creative and inclusive activity gave us the opportunity to begin to explore the synergies between our Council and other established and blossoming Next Gen groups developing across the globe.  Attendance was high, moods were even higher, and we are very much looking forward to seeing even more familiar faces in Tampa!

Further, it seemed that there were more and more new Next-Gen-aged participants. This is great to see, and we look forward to bringing more and more young coffee professionals into the fold of the NCA Next Gen!”

-Janet Colley Morse (NCA Next Gen Chair) & Kyle Bawot (NCA Next Gen Vice Chair)

“The event was very well attended by an extremely diverse group of industry members. Producers, exporters, cooperatives, importers, and roasters all flocked to Sintercafe in droves. To me, this is what makes Sintercafe unique in our industry. Nowhere else can you have almost every member of the coffee supply chain, sitting down together, in a meeting, talking about our lives and experiences, negotiating additional business, or making new friends.

It connects roasters to producers, exporters to warehouse keepers, and CEOs to first-year attendees. This was my first Sintercafe and most certainly will not be my last, particularly for that reason.”

-Bent Dietrich (NCA Next Gen Council Member)