FLTR

31/08/2026

Comment NYC and I’ll send you the list.

31/08/2026

27/08/2026

Instead of guessing what customers want, I asked them. Find out what they said in Season 2 of the People’s Choice Coffee Awards.

Comment PCCA and I’ll send you the newsletter.

25/08/2026

Patrik Rolf built a hand grinder. I wondered why. So I asked him.

Comment APRIL and I’ll send you a link to the interview.

24/08/2026

Coffee Plz returns to Makati three times bigger, with 29 international roasters and something for every kind of coffee drinker.

I wrote about how the festival began, why it’s coming back and what its organisers hope people will discover.

Comment PLZ and I’ll send you the article.

22/08/2026

Coffee companies talk about community all the time. But community isn’t something you can put in a brand deck and expect people to believe.

I recently hosted the Home Barista Show at Espressolab’s roastery in Istanbul. While I was there, I saw how they’ve turned a coffee roastery into somewhere people have reasons to visit beyond drinking coffee.

Ceramics. Painting. Yoga. Pilates. Theatre. Live music. Workshops.

The scale is impressive, but that isn’t the lesson. You don’t need a 6,000-square-metre campus to build community.

You need to give people a reason to gather, something to do together and a reason to come back. And perhaps most importantly, you need to ask them what they actually want.

I wrote about what I learned in this week’s FLTR Paper.

Comment EL and I’ll send it to you.

20/08/2026

Congratulations to the Top 10 of Season 2 of the People’s Choice Coffee Awards.

Loved this season. Some interesting notes. Like King Experience making the list again. Two cafes from Dubai. Congrats Kurasu UAE & THE KAF | Coffee Concept Store. And a coffee truck! Congrats Brewsmiths Cafe Kingston.

Ultimately, there can be only one champion. And that place goes to Flat White Specialty Coffee. Congratulations team!

19/08/2026

I’ve just wrapped up Season 2 of the People’s Choice Coffee Awards. Here’s how people voted.

Stay tuned to see who won.

18/08/2026

A better espresso starts with a better grind.

Grind size controls how quickly water moves through the coffee. Particle distribution affects how evenly it moves. Dose changes the resistance it encounters.

And then there are the things you notice every day: consistency, retention, cleaning and how easy it is to make small adjustments when your coffee changes.

That’s why choosing the right grinder matters so much. You’re not just buying something that makes coffee smaller. You’re buying control over how your espresso extracts.

Comment ECM for a guide on how to choose the right espresso grinder for you.

17/08/2026

A simple campaign from a Dubai coffee shop reminded me that the best marketing ideas rarely start with a bigger budget.

They start with a better understanding of people.

Comment TOM and I’ll send you the latest newsletter.