Every year, the WBC champion wins a trip to visit Swiss Water. This year, Dale Harris will use his trip to help clean up the community.
BY ASHLEY RODRIGUEZ
BARISTA MAGAZINE ONLINE
Photos courtesy of Swiss Water
Folks are starting to trickle home after this year’s Specialty Coffee Expo, in which we crowned the 2019 World Barista Champion (WBC), Jooyeon Jeon of South Korea. Along with prizes from a number of sponsors, Swiss Water, the folks responsible for making your coffee both caffeine-free and yet still delicious, awarded a prize: a trip to “decaf origin” to visit the Swiss Water facilities just outside of Vancouver, Canada.
The 2017 WBC winner, Dale Harris, will be traveling to Vancouver on Tuesday, April 16, to claim the prize he won in Seoul, South Korea. Instead of just taking a tour of the facilities, however, he and the folks at Swiss Water will host a community clean-up of Crab Park at 5 p.m.
“Join forces with WBC Champion Dale Harris and Swiss Water to clean up our community! We’re proud to welcome Dale to Vancouver and together give Crab Park a clean-up,” the Eventbrite page says. “This park was chosen as it’s right near the Port of Vancouver, where so many goods arrive from all over the world—like coffee!”
Swiss Water is known throughout the industry as using only water and temperature to extract caffeine out of coffee—there’s no residual chemicals on any of the coffees. Swiss Water wanted to focus Dale’s trip not just on learning more about the company but also giving back to the community. Along with the community clean-up event, Swiss Water will also be partnering with Pacific Foods to organize a food-boxing event, where they’ll pack foods and donate them to food insecure families in the Vancouver area.
After the community clean-up, folks are welcome to head over to Revolver to take a breather and grab a drink and some food with Dale. The event is free to attend—and keep an eye out to see how the 2018 champion, Agnieszka Rojewska of Poland, and the new 2019 champion, do when they venture to “decaf origin.”
