Artigenda
International Coffee Day
When: anually, October 1.
1 October is International Coffee Day. The day was declared by the International Coffee Organization.
Is there any point in talking about coffee? About what it is? Everyone knows what coffee is. Even about the history of coffee, enough has been said actually.
There is an international organization dedicated to coffee trade, and many countries are members of that trade organization. More information is available on this page.
The mission of the Organization is to strengthen the global coffee sector and promote its sustainable expansion in a market-based environment for the benefit of all actors in the Global Coffee Value Chain (G-CVC).
Origins of this day
Contrary to what you might think, it was not the ICO itself that came up with this day. There was an American version and there was a British version. The American version consisted of a whole day (National Coffee Day) and the British one only a morning. The weird thing was just that the British called this “The World’s Biggest Coffee Morning”. As if they were able to organise the biggest coffee morning.
Well, not quite. In 1990, the idea of raising money for charity through a coffee morning was born. The charity was the fight against cancer. More information is listed on this page.
Yet it was the Americans who go down in history as the real inventors. Their history of this day is the oldest. There is just one problem: neither day falls on October 1. Both the American and British versions fall on September 29.
Why September 29?
On 29 September 1723, the first shipment of coffee beans was shipped from Brazil to the US. Hence, National Coffee Day in the US. With that, the confusion is actually not quite complete…
October 3...
The first edition of the international version of The Day of Coffee took place on… October 3. It was decided in 2015. The idea was to draw more attention to coffee planters around the world. It was later decided, a reason was not given, to move the date to October 1. So: 1 October, Coffee Day.
