2024 is well underway and the coffee event circuit is a crucial time to build relationships especially for anyone in B2B sales. Needless to say, the worst feeling around this time is making the investment to be present at key events and not utilizing the opportunity well. Perhaps what’s worse is thinking you are prepared, then getting to an event and realizing you need something that you don’t have and can’t run down to Walgreens to pick up. Who among us hasn’t felt that sinking feeling of regret, when a prospect asks you for your business card and you don’t forgot to get some cards printed in time. Lucky for you, we compiled a list of key things that you need to make sure you maximize your investment and make the most of the time.

There’s a special moment that occurs in coffee roasters everyday around the world. It’s the moment that green coffee samples arrive at the roastery. For mid sized roasters moving 3,000 - 5,000 lbs + a week, there are typically a handful of key people that engage with your samples when they arrive to their roastery.

Got a rebrand on the brain? Perhaps you think it’s time for a brand refresh or a full rebrand. How can you really know if it’s a good time to invest in a rebrand? Well, you are reading a blog written by a branding agency, I bet you are thinking that we’d tell you, “Now’s the time to rebrand!” but of course it’s a bit more nuanced than that.

So how did a city, known for tobacco production just 60-70 years ago, become known as the City of Medicine? Also, what’s this got to do with rebranding? Well, it wasn’t very long ago that Durham was a “thriving site of tobacco manufacturing facilities…for nearly a century…until medical findings about the health hazards connected to smoking played a part in the weakening of Durham's tobacco industry”. Now, Durham is often referred to as the City of Medicine and is known for the medical research that is done there and in the rest of the research triangle. Even buildings that were once factories for producing tobacco products are now being used as medical research facilities.

A few years back, I was working at a coffee roaster doing education…which meant I did account management, inside sales, events, and a whole bunch of other things. One of the “other things” I was involved in, was communicating to our current clients about the new coffees that we were about to launch. Sounds simple, right? Wrong! Every single time a coffee was released, I remember it being an intense, grueling, and cumbersome month(s) long process. Once, I remember, we received a coffee early in the summer and didn't release it till we were well into the fall.