Three of us here at Earl were lucky enough to attend Manchester Coffee Festival (MCF) by Husky Events and All Together Brewing (ATB), hosted by SIOPTEC, last weekend. It was a crazy busy weekend on the stalls, but such a fulfilling one.

In the lead-up to the festivals, we had lots of fun planning and building our stalls and graphics, and ensuring we had the best products to showcase and sell.

All Together Brewing

We started the weekend early on Friday at All Together Brewing. This was held at All Together Otherwise, a really great co-operative space located in the centre of Manchester. The event was organised by our good friends at SIOP Shop/SIOPTEC, who brewed some exceptional coffee as well as being brilliant organisers/hosts.

It was great to meet and sample coffee from some of the best roasters in Europe, including Plot, Scenery, AMOC, Redbank, and Squaremile, to name a few. It was also great to loan out several DF Grinders, zeroHero Grinders, LEBREW Burrs, and other equipment and get feedback from experts on the products that we sell. We received nothing but amazing feedback!

As well as a great event, SIOPTEC arranged a brilliant launch party at their new roastery with great music, pizza, and wine on offer.

A final and special thank you to Iwan, Alex, the All Together Otherwise team, and everyone who made the event happen and who we met. We thoroughly enjoyed it and can't wait for the next one.

Manchester Coffee Festival

On Day One, it was so lovely to meet some of our customers in person and say hi to many a cute baby and dog (humans were also lovely, we may add). We couldn’t quite believe how much stock we had sold out of come 6 PM on Saturday! Our metal nano scales were the big sellers of the day, but, admittedly, it was our stickers that were the true favourites.

Saturday night and Sunday morning were filled with replenishing stock, and we were then set to welcome you all at 9:30 AM come Sunday morning.

Day Two was more focused on the demonstration of our electric grinders and customer interaction with our products. Here at Earl, we believe in accessible price points without sacrificing quality; MCF-goers were able to have a play around with our products and see this promise play out for themselves.

From a personal point of view, it was humbling to be a small part of such a great coffee community and to interact with other traders.

To summarise, we just wanted to say a big thank you to all who attended, all who dropped by our stalls over the weekend, SANREMO for very kindly loaning us a YOU Espresso machine, and especially those who were kind enough to support Earl—whether that be by buying some of our products, picking up a sticker, having a chat with us, or entering our competition. The list is endless, but again, thank you.

We are looking forward to seeing you all soon at the next festival next year when we go international.

Dublin Coffee Festival, we are coming for you…