International Coffee Day is a global celebration of coffee’s journey from the farm to your local shop— an opportunity to honor the people who grow and harvest the coffee we love. The first official date was 1 October 2015, as agreed by the International Coffee Organization and was launched in Milan. International Coffee Day falls on October 1st every year and is a whole day dedicated to celebrating the well loved beverage.
Here are a few fun facts about the International Coffee Day that you probably didn’t know. Enjoy!
- Coffee is the world’s second most valuable traded commodity, only behind petroleum.
- The world consumes close to 2.25 billion cups of coffee every day.
- Legend has it a 9th-century Ethiopian goat herder discovered coffee by accident when he noticed how crazy the beans were making his goats.
- In Japan, there is a Cat Cafe where you can go to drink coffee and hang out with cats for hours.
- Coffee is a psychoactive. At high doses it can make you see things and can actually kill you.
- The lethal dose of caffeine is roughly 100 cups of coffee.
- A few hundred years ago a Turkish law made it legal for a woman to divorce her husband if he did not bring home a daily quota of coffee.
- In Italy the average Barista age is 48, and it is a very respected profession.
- The first webcam was invented at The University of Cambridge to let people know if their coffee pot was full or not.
- Espresso is regulated by the Italian government because it is considered an essential part of their daily life.
And now, it’s time to use your imagination and make the most out of the day. Here are a few ideas to get you started on planning to celebrate it:
- Host a coffee cupping in your home, office, or local coffee shop
- Run a promotion or discount offer in your coffee shop
- Make a video about your love for coffee to upload to social media using the hashtag #InternationalCoffeeDay
- Host a lecture with your local coffee expert
- Run an art competition with coffee as the theme and hold an exhibition to display all the entries (photos, poems, short stories, paintings, any medium)
- Host a coffee workshop or masterclass – perhaps an introduction to brewing techniques or roasting
- Organize a visit to a coffee farm and/or washing station to get the general public interested in growing coffee
- Start a fundraising campaign to benefit development programmes in a coffee-growing region
- Have a screening of a coffee-related film
So, how are you celebrating #InternationalCoffeeDay?
Sources:
- https://internationalcoffeeday.org/
- https://www.awarenessdays.com/awareness-days-calendar/international-coffee-day-2017/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Coffee_Day
