LONDON – At the 2014 UKBC Finals on the fourth day of the London Coffee Festival, held in Shoreditch, East London, on Sunday 6 April, Imogen Ludman of Six Eight Kafe in Birmingham was named Best Newcomer, an award created by speciality coffee roasters, Union Hand-Roasted Coffee.
Imogen beat off stiff competition to take the Best Newcomer title, now in its third year: Heidi Beeton of London’s Prufrock Coffee and Emiliya Yordonova of Glasgow’s Avenue G Café.
The UKBC is designed to showcase the best UK barista talent and propel them, flying the flag, onto the world barista stage. But for the Best Newcomer, the working barista, winning offers up the opportunity to go on a trip to origin to meet the farmers and communities responsible for nurturing Union’s high quality coffees.
Last year, Chee Wong, of Taylor Street Baristas, won Best Newcomer 2013 and has recently experienced a trip to origin in Guatemala, with the award creators, Union. Chee’s Best Newcomer video can be viewed here.
In such a fast changing landscape, it’s important to embrace and harness the skills of the best people. Such is the standard of this competition, it can often seem overwhelming and ‘not for me’ for many baristas.
Union developed the Best Newcomer Prize to recognise this, and appeal to those baristas who might otherwise have had little chance of scoring as well as some seasoned competitors, and been put off entering.
Union Co-Founder, Jeremy Torz, comments: ‘The best reward we could think of is a trip to origin, to further inform and excite the winner to a career (not a stop-gap job) in the coffee industry and the many challenges and complexities held within.
‘What better person to be able to help the coffee drinking consumer understand more about their daily brew, and better recognise quality coffee than the barista serving them every morning.’
Steven Macatonia, Co-Founder adds: ‘It was fantastic to take last year’s winner, Chee, to Guatemala, to show him how we work so closely with these farmers to make great quality coffee, and how coffee production is helping the community develop.’
For the London barista, it was an eye-opening experience to find out how the cups of coffee he lovingly brews and serves, begin life.
Source: press release
