Last month saw the return of the European Coffee Symposium (ECS) + COHO in Berlin. Across three days, Allegra welcomed 50 influential speakers from around the world to share their insights, inspiration, and bold ideas shaping the future of coffee and hospitality.
Over the coming weeks, 5THWAVE Podcast will be airing a collection of these unfiltered conversations, panel discussions and keynote sessions – direct from the ECS + COHO stages.
We start with a talk by Matt Chitharanjan, Co-founder & CEO of Blue Tokai – a coffee shop group and specialty coffee roastery in India.
In this session, Matt offers sharp insights into India’s rapidly growing coffee market, highlighting the huge opportunities in an underserved coffee landscape and the difficulties of balancing growth with profitability.
The future of the UK coffee shop market panel
In this session we turn our attention to the future of the UK coffee shop market with a panel of seasoned leaders in specialty coffee: Marta Pogroszewska, Non-Executive Director, Bread Holdings, Paul Kelly, Global Marketing Director, La Marzocco, and Caroline Ottoy, Managing Director, WatchHouse.
Growing a specialty coffee chain from Prague to the world – with The Miners
Next up is a talk from Egor Kolpakov, Founder & CEO of The Miners – an unconventional specialty coffee chain from Prague that’s expanding at remarkable pace across Europe.
In this session, Egor shares his vision to inject the energy of New York’s coffee scene into Eastern Europe, and discusses how The Miners’ fast-paced service model is designed for efficiency, connection and contemporary active lifestyles.
The Head of Coffee Summit
Next, we are at the COHO Head of Coffee Summit, led by James Hennebry, Co-founder of Rosslyn Coffee.
James is joined by an exceptional panel of leaders: Agnes Potter, Managing Director, Allpress UK, Josh Brown, Commercial Director, WatchHouse, Julian Weresch, Head of Coffee UK&I, Sodexo and Travis Wilson, Head of Coffee, La Maison.
This candid and inspiring session brought together some of the most experienced minds in specialty coffee to explore what truly moves the dial when scaling a high-quality coffee programme across multiple sites.
Stay tuned for part two of our roundup of unfiltered talks and discussions from the European Coffee Symposium + COHO 2025, with Hagen, Unity Coffee, Joe + The Juice and more.
