The Café Dispatch #14

The most apparent discovery at the Coffee Festival in Paris, a zero waste café in Vancouver and an excellent example of a café branding

Apr 14, 2026

Welcome to the Café Dispatch, a weekly letter about interesting café trends across the globe. If you enjoy it, please feel free to share it, and don’t forget to grab your favourite cup of coffee ☕️

The highlight of my weekend was (obviously!) Le Paris Café Festival. A morning spent running from one stand to the next, drinking coffees I had not yet had the chance to taste.

Too many pictures taken randomly to share over here, but packaging has become everything (?)

A few things I noticed which would be blasphemous not to bring up in this Café Dispatch;

There are many coffee roasters all over Europe today and to stay memorable packaging is absolutely everything. But too many don’t utilise it well enough. A good example of brilliant packaging execution in my eyes is FATHERS Coffee in Czech Republic. They’ve taken advantage of their bags to tell their founding stories which gives them a great platform to start a conversation with anyone passing by and wanting to know more about their coffee roasting philosophy
Coffee equipment is no longer JUST about functionality. It clearly is about design. How does a Delonghi, or Fiorenzato compete against La Marzocco, a coffee machine most cafés and individuals, dream to purchase one day?
It’s a good reminder that branding matters and La Marzocco has excelled at partnering up with brands that have elevated their name among coffee enthusiasts. Positioning while building trust takes you a long way.
Milks. A never ending topic. The Alpro stand was enormous and after chatting with the barista, they pour more alternative options such as golden milk or coconut matcha lattes than coffee based drinks and it made me wonder whether I could confirm that specialty coffee nerds do love their coffee with full fat milk (like I do (?))

I’m planning on publishing a deep dive on the state of specialty coffee in France, and mostly Paris so that’s all for today, but if you’ve gone to a coffee festival in your city, or state - maybe you travelled to World of Coffee in San Diego over the weekend, what were your observations?

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In today’s uncertain times, not that I need to remind us all what the heck is going on in this world, sustainability is a topic often mentioned in the coffee industry. And while doing research on reusable coffee cups, I came across this gorgeous space, NOMAD, in Vancouver and founded by Anette Kim.

📸 courtesy of Daily Hive & North Shore News, and Pedram

It’s the kind of place that breathes the owner’s values from the coffee cups, to the furnitures and the way baristas care about waste. It’s a hard thing to ensure everyone gets it but when it happens you get a zero-waste cafe like NOMAD.

What I’ll be ordering: A Monogram flat white with Oat milk

One of the reasons I no longer have Instagram is to avoid this pull for things I never wanted in the first place. I have never been addicted to shopping but I do think lots of things I thought I dreamt of, and wanted in my life, came from being on Instagram…

As this is no longer a space I visit after losing my facebook password post- deleting my entire account earlier in January, I now browse websites about coffee, art, travels and other topics I truly care about.

Through those, I wanted to share three links I feel will enhance your coffee passion;

A long read about Instant Coffee and its creation. A format well known in the USA but is slowly reappearing as a go to in Europe thanks to some brilliant coffee roasters like Fève Coffee.

A company that cares very much about zero waste and has invented a neat coffee cups format which I’d like to get my hands on!
A beautiful branding exercise for a really fun café in the Coachella Desert Valley where the atmosphere of the Desert really dictates the space, the menu, the merch… and one thing I personally love - a website where they share their café’s playlist. Don’t we all need to know what music is played before heading into any café to hang out at?!