Canadian Barista Championships / Coffee Tea Expo

–From: “les kuan” <*&^%$#@!@yahoo.com>To: <*&^%$#@rocky-mountain.com>Sent: Mon, Aug 14, 2006 at 11:44

Subject: Canadian Barista Championships/Coffee Tea Expo

Hello Jean, Here is a summary of our telephone conversation regarding cross marketing opportunties with the Coffee Tea Expo/ Canadian Barista National Championships, and BTAC.

Background

The Canadian National Barista Championships ( CNBC), is a series of contests held in Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal annually, to determine regional barista champions who will go on to compete in the National Championships, thus crowning a Canadian Barista Champion.

The CNBC was created, along with the Canadian Barista Academy, to help educate the consumers and the coffee industry, on the proper methods to prepare specialty coffee drinks such as espresso, cappuccino and caffe latte.

The specialty coffee had become rather fragmented with respect to technique and extraction principles, so it was time to introduce some guidelines into the art of making these coffee based drinks.

It was decided that the best way to do this was to create a world barista championship. So that countries could train and send their national champions.

The first world’s championship was held in the year 2000 at Monte Carlo, and was won by Robert Thorenson of Norway.

This past May, the 2006 WBC was held in Berne Switzerland, with 40 countries involved. China, Italy, France, Brasil, even smaller countries like Slovenia, Lebanon and Guatemala were represented, so it is truly a global championship.

Canada didn’t enter the competitions until 2004, but in the last three years, our national champions, have medalled, winning silver, bronze and silver

To put this in perspective, until this past year no American had medalled in any of the previous championships. No Italian has ever been on the podium, which has been dominated largely by scandinavian countries, who have the highest per capita coffee consumption in the world.

The 2007 world’s will be held in Tokyo, and Canada will determine its National representative on September 24,35 at the Trade and Convention Center in Vancouver, during the Coffee and Tea expo.

Proposal

As per our telephone conversation, we have secured the interest of a new TV series that will air on the Food Network Canada, Fine Living in the United States, BBC Canada, as well as further European distribution. The series is called “Glutton for Punishment”, featuring Bob Blummer from the “Surreal Gourmet” series. They will be filming at the contest Sept 24/25.

(Just as a side note, Bob Blummer might be an interesting person for your industry, as he just recently competed in the leg of the tour de France, fimling for ” Glutton for Punishment”, riding on a sponsored bike for a French Manufacturer, the name escapes me at the moment ).

The TV exposure was only confirmed last minute, and we are now scrambling to create a stage that is truly television worthy, as the shows will be aired during primetime, January 2007.

The stage setup requires us to build three L-shaped competition set-ups.

Each set up is basically comprised of two tables:

36″ high, 36″ Deep and 72″ long and sturdy enough to support the espresso machine, without side to side movement. Side table 36″ high, 24″ wide and 72 ” long. ( see attachment)

In the past, conference tables were raised/reinforced/braced with a fabric drape, to hide the hideous truss structure. This worked well, however it was not a reusable alternative nor lightweight enough for shipping from province to province.

It was suggested to the plywood industries, structural metal truss companies, or trade show booth manufacturers for possible permanent solutions; but then someone suggested using this opportunity to showcase canadian aluminum and the bicycle industry.

The concept of using painted ( and obviously branded) bicycle frames, either stock or modified, as table supports seems to have hit a resonant chord with all the organizers and would make for great television.

Our budget is limited, as much of the events run on a high percentage of volunteers, so obviously there is no room for a series of competition lightweight bicycle frames. However, we are hopeful that the media package we have put together, and the international exposure possibilities will convince a manufacture or BTAC to consider joining into our fray.

The tables will become the official and permanent tables for all future events across Canada, and will open up all sorts of possibilities for two way cross promotion across the bicycle and Specialty Coffee industries.

In Europe this symbiotic relationship between cycling and racing has a history, but in Canada/USA, it is under developed. We feel this is a positive brand association pathway, that is has a good lifestyle and demographic overlap.

Again, apologies for the short notice, but we did not expect the television coverage to come so quickly. If you feel this is an opportunity for mutual benefit please or require any more information please feel free to contact me.

Looking forward to your response and future cooperation between BTAC and the CNBC/ Coffee Tea expo.