Reflections on Hosting the 2025 Canadian National Barista Championship
With the 2026 Canadian National Barista Championship just around the corner, we have been reflecting on last year. In 2025, we had the honour of hosting the competition right here in Edmonton, and it was a truly incredible experience. We wanted to share what that actually looked like from the inside.
Why We Did It
We have competed in the Canadian National Barista Championship for the past few years. Santiago, our co-founder, has stood on that stage. So has Kat, one of our store managers, and Kean from our roastery team. We know what the competition feels like from the inside. When the opportunity came to host an event we had competed in for years, we were genuinely excited to step into that role.
Part of our motivation was deeply personal to this city. The Canadian specialty coffee conversation tends to orbit Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal. Edmonton's coffee community is world-class, and we wanted the country's top baristas and judges to arrive here and feel that firsthand. We wanted them to leave with no doubt about what this city is capable of.
We also saw this as our contribution to the Canadian specialty coffee scene. Hosting an event at this level requires a significant investment of time and money, and we took that on willingly. It felt like the right thing to do for a community we care deeply about.
OEX2 Building · 102 Ave NW, Oliver
Event Sponsors
Alongside these sponsors, none of this would have been possible: Specialty Coffee Association, Swiss Water Process, Pacific Barista Series, ECM Prime, Victoria Arduino, Timberline Coffee School, Ceado Coffee, Water for Coffee, and Eight Ounce Coffee.
What Hosting Actually Means
There is a misconception worth clearing up: as the host organization, you are not managing the competition itself. The Specialty Coffee Association of Canada handles that. What you are responsible for is everything else. And everything else — the venue, the infrastructure, the hospitality, the experience — was on us.
We needed a space that could hold two full competition stages running simultaneously, a private competitor staging area, a dedicated equipment cleaning zone, and a completely separate judging area, because the judging process is confidential. That last requirement alone eliminated most options.
We found our venue at the OEX2 building in the Oliver neighbourhood on 102nd Avenue, a stunning space that hosts weddings, with the aesthetic to match. Second floor, floor-to-ceiling windows, a beautiful tree-lined street just steps from the river. It was the right space, and it set the tone for everything that followed.
From there, we built out the entire event infrastructure from scratch. Two full competition stages. A competitor lounge with couches. Custom staging areas. A professional sound system. Full audio-visual setup for judging and scoring. We designed and produced all of the signage ourselves, carrying a cohesive branded aesthetic throughout the entire space so that every corner felt intentional.
What the Days Actually Looked Like
People do not always picture what it means to run an event like this day to day. Our team was in the building just after 6 AM each morning to open up, get everything running, and have the space ready before the first competitor arrived. We stayed until the last person left each evening, then reset the entire space so that everything was clean, stocked, and exactly as it should be for the next morning.
We had a wonderful volunteer roster supporting us throughout the week, along with our own team coming in for shifts across the full event. We also had a unique internal challenge: two of our own people were competing. Santiago and Kat were focused entirely on their routines, which meant part of our team was in competition mode and part was in host mode, running both simultaneously throughout the week.
On top of that, multiple news broadcast teams came in to film live coverage throughout the event. Managing that alongside everything else was its own layer, and honestly, a really exciting one.
Across the week, we welcomed 38 competitors and approximately 50 judges. Every detail was ours to hold.
Hospitality Was the Point
If you know The Colombian, you know hospitality is not something we layer on top of an experience. It is the experience. And we approached hosting this championship exactly the same way.
Our goal from the start was simple: every competitor, every judge, every volunteer should feel taken care of, appreciated, and comfortable enough to trust that every detail was handled so they could just do their job.
Competitors arrived to a personalized welcome note and a Colombian pin waiting for them. Unlimited snacks and drinks were available throughout the event. There was a lounge area with couches where people could decompress between rounds.
The judges were cared for at a different level. We attended to their needs from the moment calibration began through the final day of competition. Unlimited snacks, pastries, and drip coffee throughout each day, with lunch delivered daily from some of our favourite Edmonton restaurants, Jerusalem Shawarma and Greek Little Village. Personalized signage greeted the judges in their private space so they felt seen from the moment they walked in.
Food sounds simple until you are actually doing it. You have to account for dietary needs across dozens of people, think about what will hold well, what will be nourishing, what will be enough. The entire food program across judges and volunteers was gluten-free, every single day. Every order was thought through carefully.
One of our international judges told us it was the nicest welcome with the best food and snacks she had ever experienced as a judge at a competition. That meant everything to us.
The Competition Itself
Watching the competition unfold in a space we had built from the ground up was something else entirely. Seeing competitors wheel in their equipment, set up their stations, and pour their hearts into every routine, all inside a space we had created for them, was genuinely moving.
Making It Feel Like an Event
We wanted the week to feel like more than a competition. We wanted people to experience Edmonton, our community, our culture, our coffee.
We parked the Coffee Mule outside the venue each day. Inside, our team served from-scratch food items for attendees to purchase. On the rooftop patio, we set up lawn games so people could slow down and connect between rounds.
Eight Ounce Coffee sponsored a pour-over pop-up bar where different roasters and baristas served throughout the week, a natural gathering point for the community.
On Saturday evening, we hosted a party: gluten-free pizzas from Campio, natural wine, and Caffeine Sheriff beer from Bent Stick Brewing. A real celebration of the people who had shown up for this.
The Part We Did Not Expect
Being on the hosting side gave us something we had not fully anticipated: the chance to really connect with people we would never have had the opportunity to meet otherwise. Competitors, judges, coaches, volunteers, roasters from across the country, all gathered in one place for an entire week. Getting to know so many incredible people within the Canadian specialty coffee community was genuinely one of the highlights of the whole experience.
Why It Felt Like Us
Hosting this event was not a departure from what The Colombian is. It was an expression of it.
Our mission has always been to introduce people to Colombian specialty coffee through simple yet extraordinary hospitality. We make magic through hospitality. We are the bridge to Colombian specialty coffee, and we bring coffee from our family to yours.
This was a chance to bring The Colombian experience off-site, to share it with the Canadian specialty coffee community in a space we had built from nothing. The same care, the same intention, the same warmth.
To everyone who came through that door last year: it was a privilege to have you in Edmonton. We hope you felt it.