Birmingham Coffee Festival 2018

The Birmingham Coffee Festival logoThe list of the UK’s coffee festivals is growing. First there was London, still the biggest of the lot, followed by the likes of Manchester and Glasgow. Then, last year, slipping quietly in, was the inaugural Birmingham Coffee Festival, which I completely missed. It has such a low social media profile that I almost missed it this time around as well, but I was saved from that ignoble fate by my friends at Cakesmiths, who clued me in.

As luck would have it, I was actually in the country for the event (the usual reason I miss coffee festivals is because I’m abroad: it’s why, for example, I’ve never been to the Edinburgh Coffee Festival), so I decided to attend. It was held last weekend in the Custard Factory in Digbeth, from Friday (industry day) through Saturday and Sunday (consumer days). I was working on Friday, but headed up to Birmingham for the Saturday. Not sure what to expect, I’d only booked for the one day, but I found more than enough to keep me occupied, so returned on the Sunday, although I suspect that the average consumer will only need a single day (or part day) to see everything.

You can read a general overview of the festival after the gallery.

  • The Custard Factory, in Digbeth, home of the Birmingham Coffee Festival.
  • It's a big place, the Custard Factory, so you need to know where you're going.
  • The first sign that we've come to the right place!
  • Turn left at the first T-junction and aim for the large, internal courtyard...
  • ... and there it is, on the far side, on the left: the second Birmingham Coffee Festival.
  • You enter via a large, outdoor Street Food market (which we'll come back to). For now...
  • ... let's pause at the list of sponsors/exhibitors by the door, which is in the opposite corner.
The Custard Factory, in Digbeth, home of the Birmingham Coffee Festival.1 It's a big place, the Custard Factory, so you need to know where you're going.2 The first sign that we've come to the right place!3 Turn left at the first T-junction and aim for the large, internal courtyard...4 ... and there it is, on the far side, on the left: the second Birmingham Coffee Festival.5 You enter via a large, outdoor Street Food market (which we'll come back to). For now...6 ... let's pause at the list of sponsors/exhibitors by the door, which is in the opposite corner.7
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The first thing to say is that the Birmingham Coffee Festival was ridiculously good value for money, with a ticket for any of the days costing just £6.98 in advance (which includes a £0.98 booking fee) or £8 on the door for eight hours of coffee-based fun. At that price, it would have been a shame not to go.

The event itself is an interesting mix of local and national, with a strong showing from Birmingham coffee shops, roasters and suppliers, mixed in with national roasters and brands, although compared to both the Manchester and Glasgow festivals, the balance was more in favour of local names. Perhaps the most interesting local/national mix was in fact local/international, with home-grown espresso machine manufacturers Fracino side-by-side with La Marzocco. There was also a mix of (for me) new names alongside familiar faces, all of which we’ll get to in future posts. In the meantime, on with the round-up.

If you’ve been to a coffee festival before, then Birmingham Coffee Festival will hold no great surprises. There were fewer events than other festivals I’ve been too, but that suits me since I rarely get to attend them anyway, being too busy chatting away at the various stands. These were predominately either coffee shops or roasters with oodles of coffee available to try, and, compared to other festivals, there was less emphasis on machines/equipment, making it much more focused on the consumer than the trade. It was also the best-catered coffee festival I’ve been to, surpassing Glasgow in that respect. As well as a large, outside street food area, with six stalls on each of the two days I attended, there were several cake/sweet thing suppliers inside. Again, these will feature in more detail in a future post.

In the meantime, you can see what I made of the venue itself after the gallery.

  • The door, seen from the inside, with the ticket desk opposite.
  • In a prime spot, by the ticket desk, is local favourite, Quarter Horse Coffee.
  • The rest of the festival, in its bright and airy hall, stretches off to the left.
  • The previous picture doesn't quite give the sense of scale of the roof. It's huge!
  • The glass panels in the roof cast pretty shadows on the festival floor.
  • With all the glass, though, when the sun came out in the afternoon, it got really warm!
  • There's a small section of the festival in the space behind the ticket desk...
  • ... which formed a bit of a cul-de-sac.
  • At the far end was this custom mobile coffee tricycle.
  • Off to the the left of the door is the first of the festival's three main corridors.
  • This runs along the front wall of the festival space.
  • There's a second corridor running left-to-right down the centre of the festival space.
  • The view from the other end of the corridor, looking back towards the cul-de-sac and door.
  • Another broad corridor runs front-to-back along the left-hand side of the festival space.
  • There's a third area tucked away at the back...
  • ... which forms its own little cul-de-sac, although this one was much busier.
  • Off to the left, the third and final corridor runs along the back wall...
  • ... housing the remaining stands.
  • There was plenty of seating, including some outside, plus this cluster near the entrance...
  • ... and these long tables at the far left-hand end.
  • I took most of those photos at the start/end of the day. This is what it was like in full swing!
  • Finally, there was a live stage in the corner at the front.
  • I'll end with BWT, providing much-needed multiple water stations throughout the space.
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The venue, off the inner courtyard of the sprawling Custard Factory, is gorgeous. Not quite as gorgeous as the soaring hall of the Briggait, home of the Glasgow Coffee Festival, but definitely at that end of spectrum. Occupying a single-storey, roughly square building, with white-washed walls, the highlight is definitely (pun intended) the soaring saw-shaped wood and glass roof which  gave the festival an immense sense of space and light.

Sensibly, the festival had chosen not to cram too much in, with everything arranged around long, broad corridors with plenty of space between the stands. Even at its busiest, it was easy to move around and it never felt cramped. The layout was relatively simple, with a roughly square floor-plan, with a smaller square tacked onto the right-hand side at the front. For orientation, the door was at the front in the right-hand corner of this smaller square.

There was a U-shaped cul-de-sac of stands at the back of the smaller square, with the main body of the festival in the larger square, arranged along two broad corridors that ran front-to-back, one down the middle of the space (between the two squares, if you’re following my description), the other along the left-hand side. There were also three broad left-to-right corridors, at the front, middle and back. This made getting around the festival very easy indeed and there were usually at least two ways of approaching any particular stand.

On the whole, my experience was very positive. There was ample seating, both inside and out, plenty of food on hand, plus water was freely available from various water stations provided by BWT. My only complaints are relatively minor. The first was that once the sun came out, particularly in the afternoon, when the west-facing windows in the roof caught the sun, it did get rather hot, though never unbearably so. The organisers assured me that this was a one-off problem since by this time next year, air-conditioning will have been installed.

My second complaint is a perennial one from the London Coffee Festival: the music was too damn loud. In the case of the Birmingham Coffee Festival, there was a live stage in one corner, featuring a constant stream of local street musicians, in between which there was recorded music. I’ve nothing against music, but in this case, it was also broadcast by speakers throughout the festival area, so there really was no escape from it, even outside.

My main issue, though, is the volume. While not at the level of London Coffee Festival, it was still loud enough on many occasions to drown out my conversations, which, to me, is entirely counterproductive, since I see the main point of any coffee festival being to promote dialogue between the customers and exhibitors.

However, I don’t want to end on a negative note, particularly since I had such a good time. Don’t forget that I came with no great expectation, intending to only spend a single day there, but was so impressed that I stayed for two days. From almost an afterthought in my coffee-festival calendar, the Birmingham Coffee Festival has catapulted itself into a firm fixture and I’m already looking forward to next year.


For another take on the Birmingham Coffee Festival, see this report by Dr Jennifer Ferreira.


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9 thoughts on “Birmingham Coffee Festival 2018

  1. It sounds like a fantastic event to have gone to! There really are so many events dedicated to coffee that keep appearing – just demonstrating the continual growth in the number of avid coffee drinkers out there (like myself)! Coffee has really become more than a mere beverage, it has become a social club, and an experience. So it’s exciting to get the chance to mingle with others who share the same interest and to learn more about the world of coffee!

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