Sustainable Harvest CEO David Griswold providing opening remarks at Let’s Talk Coffee 2018. All images courtesy of Let’s Talk Coffee.
Portland, Oregon-based green coffee trading company Sustainable Harvest is bringing back its flagship annual global event, Let’s Talk Coffee, taking place next Feb. 20-25 in Copan Ruinas, Honduras.
The invite-only event brings together leaders from throughout the specialty coffee supply chain, encouraging non-competitive collaboration to address some of the biggest challenges facing the coffee industry.
For Let’s Talk Coffee 2023, Sustainable Harvest is partnering with Cafe de Honduras and the Honduras Tourism Institute. The site of the 2023 event, Copán Ruinas, is a UNESCO world heritage site with Mayan ruins. It also happens to be in the heart of one of Honduras’s many renowned coffee-growing regions.
A scene from Copan Ruinas, Honduras.
“Honduras is a coffee origin that has rapidly grown in volume and quality in the past five years,” Sustainable Harvest Founder and CEO David Griswold told Daily Coffee News. “However, many coffee professionals still need to learn about the unique specialty coffees coming out of Honduras, and many have yet to be able to travel there. We searched all over Honduras in 2022, looking for the best possible venue to host a global Let’s Talk Coffee. We want to combine culture and coffee, and Copan Ruinas is the perfect place.”
This will be the 19th iteration of Let’s Talk Coffee produced by Sustainable Harvest, and the first global event since the COVID-19 pandemic first disrupted international travel.
“Covid has kept us from being face-to-face, and we have had to postpone the event for the past two years,” Griswold said. “As a result, many events moved online, and while that brings some benefits and certainly saves on travel expenses, it can’t replace the conversations and networking that happen in person at an event like Let’s Talk Coffee.”
A cupping event at Let’s Talk Coffee 2018.
The initial speaker lineup for Let’s Talk Coffee 2023 includes Andrea and Jon Allen of Onyx Coffee Lab, Elizabeth Whitlow, executive director of the Regenerative Organic Alliance, Rachel Peterson of Panama’s Hacienda La Esmeralda, Aida Batlle from El Salvador, Sarah Allen of Barista Magazine, and Cosimo Libardo of Barista Attitude, with more speakers to be announced soon.
Griswold said the event is a rare place where “transparent conversations can happen face-to-face between all members of the supply chain.”
“We may not be facing easy issues these days, but collectively we can manage the challenges better than trying to solve them in isolation,” Griswold said. “One never knows what idea, resource, or opportunity might be available until you widen the circle to more of the stakeholders who make up your supply chain.”
For more about Let’s Talk Coffee, check out the event page.
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