Visit our new blog to read more.

The Open Round was held on Saturday and the following 6 baristi qualified for Sunday’s Finals:

Jesse Bladyka of Coal Creek Coffee, Laramie, WY
Greg Lefcourt of Ozo Coffee Co, Boulder, CO
Robin Crosby of Coal Creek Coffee, Laramie, WY
Philip Search of Sole Coffee Roasters, Boulder, CO
Emily Kryska of Caffee Sole, Boulder, CO
Thai Patton of The Cup, Boulder, CO

Results of Sunday’s Final Round:

3rd place- Philip Search
2nd place- Jesse Bladyka
1st place- Greg Lefcourt!

Above results via Mike Strumpf’s blog and his post on coffeed.com. Congratulations to Greg Lefcourt and all the participants!!! By winning this regional championship, Greg automatically qualified for the semi-finals of the 2009 United States Barista Championship to be held in Portland on March 5-8.

Mike Strumpf of Allegro Coffee Company (which is again acting as host) commissioned us to create sets of custom cobalt blue cappuccino cups for the top three finishers (hand inscribed by the artisan with the event and place of finish) and custom black cappuccino cups for each competitor. Last year, Allegro awarded red espresso cups to the top 3 finishers and black espresso cups to all participants, so baristi who competed last year and are coming back this year will be able to collect both espresso and cappuccino cups.

The winner will receive 6 Terra Keramik cobalt blue cappuccino cups plus a TORR espresso tamper handcrafted by Cafe Kultur in Germany from FSC-certified Palisander wood with a stainless steel base.

Good luck to all the participants! We will post the final results after the competition.

Thank you Mike and Allegro Coffee for selecting Terra Keramik to create these prizes for your regional barista championship.

Our selection of coffees includes a couple of African coffees from Kenya (from the Kangocho farmers in Nyeri, Kenya) and Rwanda (Bourbon coffee varietal, from the tiny agrarian community Humure in the province of Byumba, northern Rwanda). We also purchased a Central American coffee, the Finca El Puente (the “Purple Princess”) from Marcala, Honduras (Catuai coffee varietal) and a coffee from Asia-Pacific, Kuta from the Waghi Valley, Papua New Guinea.

We completed our Holiday coffees with Counter Culture’s Northern Italian espresso blend, Aficionado, wonderful either pulled as straight shots or as a base for cappuccino or latte.

Single Artisan, Product Focused Website

In November 2006, we launched the terrakeramik.com online marketplace to introduce a single artisan, Terra Keramik of Switzerland, to the North American marketplace. Because we represented exclusively Terra Keramik, we created the initial website under the Terra Keramik brand with a focus on its 12 tableware products. The initial online marketplace was organized around beverageware, dinnerware, and a section called studio.

Business Challenges

We faced several business challenges with that product centric approach. For example, to launch the Terra Keramik coffee beverageware in North America, we had to build a premium brand from ground zero that appealed to the professional and home barista markets. We wanted to differentiate ourselves from the numerous online stores that sell $5 white and brown, machine-made, porcelain coffee cups displayed on “catalog pages” with little information about the product and no other subject relevant content or advice.

Rich, Relevant and Interactive Content

We wanted to provide useful information about the product, show how the products are used by professionals and home consumers, and provide a rich, interactive browsing and buying experience with relevant information about the entire coffee trade (growers, roasters, baristi, cafes, consumers). In effect, we wanted to build vertical online communities without duplicating the content and features already offered by successful online coffee communities such as coffeegeek, home-barista, coffesnobs, baristaexchange, and coffeed. We wanted to provide some of the basic and necessary information and tools that these much larger communities may lack, may be hard to find, or present them in a more user-friendly format.

Multiple Artisans, Vertical Communities

In late 2007, about a year after launching the Terra Keramik tableware, we introduced a second Swiss artisan, Glasi Hergiswil and its lead-free, mouthblown crystal glass products, to the North American market. This was followed by the launch of Café Kultur of Germany and its handcrafted espresso accessories. We now faced a third business challenge, how to convert from our online marketplace representing a single artisan with few products, to multiple artisans with potentially hundreds of products, each with its own distinctive brand and product lines. It reinforced our desire to build vertical communities and also compelled us to start thinking about creating an independent brand that would represent and support multiple artisans.

Rebranding – Part 1

In the summer of 2008 we began to organize our online marketplace around four vertical communities:

The following screen shots show the terrakeramik.com online marketplace as of December 2008, organized around the above vertical communities.

Home Page with neutral gray, top navigation bar showing the 4 communities and the studio (about us, etc.) tab.

Coffee & Tea Community, highlighted in green on the top navigation bar. Pages with a 3-column CSS layout.

Wine & Beer Community, highlighted in red on the top navigation bar. Pages with a 3-column CSS layout.

Dining Community, highlighted in orange on the top navigation bar. Pages with a 3-column CSS layout.

Home Décor Community, highlighted in light blue on the top navigation bar. Pages with a 3-column CSS layout.

Studio tab, highlighted in cobalt blue on the top navigation bar. Pages with a 3-column CSS layout.

My Account section, accessible with the “Account” button above the top navigation bar. Pages with a 2-column CSS layout.

Gift and Wedding Registry section, accessible with the “Registry” button above the top navigation bar. Pages with a 3-column CSS layout.

Stay tuned for details on building out the vertical communities

The winner for the fourth time is Sammy Piccolo, who is both the Manager of Caffè Artigiano’s Burnaby (Vancouver) location and an owner (together with his brothers Michael and Vince) of 49th Parallel Roasters, also located in Vancouver. Sammy will represent Canada at the next World Barista Championship planned for April 16-19, 2009 in Atlanta, Georgia. He placed an unprecedented 2nd, 3rd and 2nd at the 2004, 2005 and 2006 World Barista Championships (three consecutive top 3 finishes). He did not compete after the 2006 WBC, and the following two years, Colter Jones and Mike Yung represented Canada at the WBC, with Colter placing a strong 7th in 2007 and Mike finishing an excellent 5th at the WBC earlier this year. Both Colter and Mike represented Caffè Artigiano (Mike is still there and Colter moved on to 49th Parallel Roasters). In summary, the Caffè Artigiano “barista gang” will have represented Canada for 6 consecutive years at the World Barista Championships! Wow!

Congratulations to all of the competitors for elevating the quality of specialty coffee and exhibiting a true passion for your craft. Chad Moss and Anthony Benda may be a little disappointed with their placings (Chad won the 2004 South Australia regional barista competition; Anthony placed a fantastic 3rd at the Canadian Barista Championship in 2007 as a first-time competitor), but we congratulate both on their achievement to train for months and represent their artisan craft so well. Both Chad and Anthony competed with Terra Keramik espresso cups and cappuccino cups, as did Laura Perry (who unfortunately missed the finals) of Bridgehead Coffeehouses in Toronto. We thank you for placing your trust in our handcrafted, eco-friendly “competition grade” products. We also have a special partnership with Anthony (full disclosure!), who provides content for our online marketplace, including videos, recipes and tips around everything that is coffee and espresso.

And of course John Manzo would like me to mention that Western Canada continues to rule (see his blog) the Canadian coffee scene barista competitions (sorry Anthony!).

We also encourage you to check out the archived video coverage available at ustream.tv, as well as Liz Clayton’s coverage of the competition and Anthony Benda’s wrapup.

The top six baristi from the first round who qualified for the finals (starting at 12 noon Eastern Time on Tuesday, October 22) are as follows (in no particular order):

Notable is that that 5 out of the 6 finalists hail from Western Canada, with Anthony Benda the only representative from the Eastern part of the country. Many will point out that this wouldn’t necessarily reflect the quickly changing Eastern and Central landscape for specialty coffee in Canada, which has many excellent roasters, cafes and baristi (Montreal alone has several top cafes, including Cafe Sante Veritas, Anthony’s former employer, and his soon to open Cafe Myriade).

Video coverage (live streaming and archived videos) is available at ustream.tv.

Anita Fried – Logans Espresso
Nolan Dutton – Conscious Coffees
Vajra Rich – Sole Coffee Roasters
Susan Price – The Black Cup
Jon Lewis – Long Story Short Coffee
Heidi Bickelhaudt – Trident Cafe

Results of Sunday’s Final Round:

3rd place- Heidi Bickelhaudt
2nd place- Nolan Dutton
1st place- Jon Lewis!

Congratulations to Jon Lewis and all the participants!!! By winning this regional championship, Jon automatically qualified for the semi-finals of the 2008 United States Barista Championship to be held in Minneapolis on May 2-5. Please read Jon’s blog to learn more about the event and the participants. Also check out Mike Strumpf’s blog (Allegro Coffee was the host).

Baristas Abuzz With Caffeinated Competition is a great article about the Region’s coffee scene with short biographies of 4 competitors.