Wednesday, March 12, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

COFFEE FEST: whole Latte love

Trade show features what's new in the world of java

Photos by Jeff Scheid. Randy Counter of Sonofresco demonstrates a coffee bean roaster designed for use in small coffee shops. Lynne Merrifield is the inventor of a bib that's designed to prevent coffee spills while driving. A bin of oranges that awaits juicing in Zumex's extractor can yield another beverage for coffee shops to sell. Nunn Harbor's custom coffee cart can be used either as a permanent placed kiosk or as a mobile coffee shop. Coffee fiends love witty mugs, and these mugs from Screamingmanglobal.com feature off-kilter coffee themes.

The earthy, delicious scent wafts into the nostrils the moment a visitor walks into the Riviera's convention hall.

Coffee. Hot, freshly brewed, flavorful, stimulating, caffeinated bliss.

But a few other aromas also could be detected in the main exhibition hall of the Coffee Fest trade show, which recently made its third annual visit to Las Vegas.

Chocolates. Teas. Oranges and other fresh fruits. The doughy aroma of pastries, and even the more industrial-accented aromas of plastic, metal and paper products.

All are part of the world of coffee circa 2003, and all were well-represented at this year's Coffee Fest.

Show manager David Heilbrunn said the event is directed primarily toward coffee retailers. And, he said, the coffee business is -- pardon the pun -- perking.

"It seems to be gaining momentum in the past year-and-a-half," he said. "It's really rebounded.

"We enjoyed some incredible glory days during the early '90s and late '90s, and it appeared to tail off somewhat. Now the interest is more than we've seen in many years."

One reason could be "the downsizing of the current state of the economy," Heilbrunn said. "A lot of people who have been with major corporations a long time all of a sudden see the handwriting on the wall and are looking at (career) options that are available."

"And I guess there is some kind of glamour to this coffee retail business," he added. "It is a people business, and I guess it's appealing and fun and lucrative, and people are gravitating toward it in record numbers right now."

The show's exhibitors included sellers of coffee grinders, coffee brewers, coffee bean dispensers and coffee roasters, and purveyors of teas, flavored syrups and various permutations of smoothies. Also attending were manufacturers of coffee cups, coffee mugs, bags for coffee beans and cardboard coffee cup sleeves.

In fact, one of the biggest surprises to a casual observer was the amount of floor space devoted to items that were not, technically speaking, coffee.

Take Samba Inc., of Newport Beach, Calif., which was offering samples of Sambazon Aãaí, a puréed fruit mix made from Amazon palmberries that the company hopes will become the next big thing in America's coffee shops.

Jeremy Christian Black, the company's operations director, described the berries' taste as a cross between red wine and chocolate, and said they can be eaten in a bowl with a sprinkling of granola or as the basis of a smoothie.

According to Black, the berries contain more antioxidants than red wine, contain beneficial fatty acids and have an energizing effect that "makes you feel good."

Sambazon Aãaí has "gotten huge in the last five years in Brazil with athletes, surfers, jujitsu fighters," Black said. "Now it's in the best juice bars in pretty much all the big markets."

Black said the product can give coffee shops an alternative drink to offer to people who might not like coffee or who just desire an occasional cup of something different.

"I think people are just looking for something that's better for them healthwise," he added.

"And, it's something new from another place in the world. Another culture has found something amazing and now we have an opportunity to get that."

"We've only been doing trade shows a year-and-a-half, and people come back and tell us this is the best thing they've ever seen," Black said. "They're looking for something new, and this is definitely one of the newest things on the market."

In the same vein, don't be surprised if you walk into a coffee shop someday and discover you can order a cup of fresh-squeezed orange juice to accompany your java.

It's been a common coffee shop combo in Europe for years, said Bernardo Corachan of Zumex, a company from Spain that offers a completely automatic, compact machine that quickly -- and impressively -- extracts juice from whole oranges.

And, now, Corachan hopes American coffee shop owners will see the benefits of offering a bit of Vitamin C with customers' daily caffeine jolt.

"Really, if you think about it, people have the mentality (that) you have your orange juice and you have your coffee," he said.

It is, Corachon added, "a way to attract noncoffee drinkers to your outlet. Some people don't want to have coffee or don't like coffee. It gives an incentive for them to come in, too, which is what everybody wants."

Still, coffee remained king of the show. And for small shops seeking to offer customers something chain coffee shops can't, Sonofresco offered a coffee bean roaster designed for in-store use.

Traditional roasters are big, expensive and tricky to install because of the emission-eliminating equipment they require, said Dennis Miller, Sonofresco's chief executive officer. Sonofresco's roasters, in contrast, can roast small batches of beans right in the store so that the shop can offer truly fresh coffee.

The roaster also enables the small shop owner to capitalize on whole bean sales, said Sonofresco's Randy Counter, noting that green beans that cost $2 or so a pound can be sold for $6 or $7 after roasting.

Roasting beans in the store also carries a cachet that big chains can't match, Counter added. "Most definitely, everybody wants homemade."

Many of the show's booths were devoted to the subculture of coffee and the multitude of ways to serve it and enjoy it.

Brian Bibighaus of Screamingmanglobal.com offered a selection of mugs featuring humorous takes on the coffee lifestyle -- "What part of no decaf don't you understand?" -- paired with a drawing of a maniacal man by artist Robert Therrien Jr.

It was Bibighaus' first Coffee Fest, and he hoped his merchandise would appeal to coffee lovers with a slightly skewed sense of humor.

"If you like coffee, you like coffee and you like anything associated with coffee," he said. "Every morning, (coffee drinkers) can get a little chuckle out of their coffee."

And for coffee drinkers who aren't quite as neat as they should be, Lynne Merrifield was offering her line of commuter coffee bibs.

Merrifield knows about dashboard drinking: She's a former law enforcement officer from California who knows many police officers and attorneys who've suffered untimely coffee spills while driving their cars.

Inconvenience aside, such spills can be dangerous, she added. "When people spill something, they look down and then hit the car in front of them."

Merrifield sewed the first 300 cotton bibs -- which feature a Velcro neck strap and a pocket at the bottom to catch errant crumbs -- herself, and says she's sold more than 7,000 since 1997.

She's now working on a plastic laminate version that'll be affordable enough for coffee shops to use as customized giveaways.

Merrifield said her bibs also would be perfect as impulse purchases.

"Like people say," she said, "that's a hoot."

So you've finally decided that the coffee business is for you, but you aren't quite sure how to start out. Meet Peter Gaspich, president of Nunn Harbor L.L.C. in Orange, N.J., who was exhibiting a mobile coffee kiosk fashioned in the shape of a yellow coffee mug.

The 2,500-pound, 8 1/2-foot-diameter trailer is totally self-contained, features walk-up and drive-up windows and can be used either as a mobile coffee shop -- towed via trailer hitch to sporting events, farmers' markets or the like -- or as a permanently placed kiosk.

With a base price of about $30,000, he said, it's probably less expensive than opening a storefront shop.

The Coffee Fest was Gaspich's first show, and he said he received inquiries from both coffee shop owners who wished to expand their business and first-time entrepreneurs.

Gaspich said it doesn't hurt that the structure is designed to be visually appealing.

"We think it's cute. We think the public will think it's cute," he said. "It's a marketing machine."