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Lockdown Latte Art Competition

Lockdown Latte Art Competition

The end of march Lockdown #1 was announced. All cafés had to close and were only allowed to do take-aways. By oktober the lockdown was hitting us harddddd still and we wanted to do something fun to shine some light over these shitty days. We were thinking about throwing a Latte Art competition for a while, but had to be a bit creative to make it happen without overrunning any Covid-rules. The idea of the Lockdown Latte Art Competition was born.  

We invited 12 espressobars to join and took the time to come up with a game-plan. We fixed a latte-art dice, asked three jury-members for the finals, made a planning and set up a point system. Monday the 26th of oktober, we rolled the dice for the first time. Zwart Wit Koffie from Eindhoven and Sip First from Breda kicked off with a hanging heart pattern.

Both bars had three attempts to pour their best pattern and had to pick one to compete with. We also made a video of the three attempts and to introduce the bar to the people following the competition. After posting the two pictures, it was up to the public to vote for their favorite on Instagram. Winners of the first rounds were going to the next round: The semi finalssssss.

I bet you’d like to know who were the 12 bars to compete in this game before you keep on reading and find out who won.

  1. Zwart Wit Koffie from Eindhoven
  2. Sip First from Breda
  3. KoffieLeute from Utrecht
  4. Fixedgearcoffee from Maastricht
  5. Mecca from Rotterdam
  6. Jimmy coffee and food from Gorinchem
  7. Cupp from Utrecht
  8. Blackgold from Amsterdam
  9. Livingstone from Amersfoort
  10. Bonza from Rotterdam
  11. Fortin from ’s-Hertogenbosch
  12. Gesha from Nijmegen

What a list aye. After every competition, the public had 24 hours to vote. Many people voted and it took is quite some time to count. Sometimes the results were so tight, and the winning bar only won by a couple of votes. So you understand we had to make sure we counted the votes reeeeally accurate. For example Jimmy Coffee and Mecca, both from Rotterdam were so competitive throwing their best stacked tulip, they went head to head. More than 300 people voted and decided Mecca was the winner of this round.

Who were the winners of the first round? Sip First, Mecca, Fortin, KoffieLeute, Cupp and Livingstone. Next up: finals. Same same but different. The dice decided what pattern they had to pour and the public voted for the third place. This time, a three-headed jury was deciding who poured the best and were crowned as number #1. Jury members were: Nick Vink (three times Dutch Latte Art champ), Yakub Aydin (running his high end coffee service on location Coffee Crafters) and the one and only Jeroen Vos from Alleborgh espresso. Want to find out who the winner was? Keep on reading.

What we loved about this competition was bars interacting with eachother even though the whole country was in lockdown. Sip First got to know Fortin for example. I remember Sip First’s head Barista Pepijn visiting Fortin after the competition, how nice. Very refreshing for the bars to pour in a porcelain cup instead of a take-away cup as well we imagined.  We also had a lot of fun filming the videos and put the bars in the spotlight. For the finals, I asked our friend Matin (bartender at Fifth NRE but also actor) to join and host the video where we interviewed the finalists.

Finalists were Sip First, Mecca and Cafe Fortin. Although everyone did such a good job and were all winners in our eyes, there could only be one LLAC Champion. And that was…. Mecca from Rotterdam! We had so much fun and highly recommend checking out the videos on our instagram if you have not watched them yet. Link below:

Also, watch our channels, cause we don’t rule out we organise a second edition one day 😉

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