With summer approaching, we’re once again reviewing the carbon footprint of our services.

Digital platforms are an increasingly significant contributor to global carbon emissions. Since launching Marketplace – with the aim, in part, of reducing the coffee industry’s environmental impact – we have conducted an annual review of our footprint. Our objective is to reduce the emissions generated per user each year.

Since 2019, we’ve reduced the carbon footprint of our services by more than 75%. Explore our journey: https://unitedbaristas.com/action/climate-change/#our-footprint  

There have been several noteworthy developments and trends from the past 12-18 months.

Structural Improvements

Bringing all United Baristas services together has significantly reduced overall emissions.

For example, each page view of a job listing now uses just 50% of the electricity required by the previous version of Jobs. And consolidating services also enabled us to implement more efficient database tables, lowering the intensity of search queries.

In addition, all our servers are now powered by renewable electricity.

Recent reductions

The majority of content on United Baristas is user-generated. Over the past year, we’ve made further cuts to emissions by:

• Enhancing page caching across our services
• Optimising image handling and serving content in WebP format
• Improving how we deliver video

These changes have improved load speed while reducing resource use.

Ongoing challenges

Like many online services, our sites are frequently crawled by bots. While we continue to restrict a range of crawlers, bot traffic remains an ongoing challenge. Wherever practical and beneficial, we block bots to reduce server demand.

We’ve also embraced the use of AI. Some applications are integrated into our services, while others are used internally for administrative purposes. At present, we don’t yet have a reliable method for estimating the associated emissions. As our use of AI grows, we’ll need to find ways to monitor and account for these impacts.

We’ve also seen increased traffic from AI platforms. While it’s encouraging to know our content is being referenced, we are mindful that AI responses typically require more energy than traditional web searches.

The bigger picture

United Baristas’ emissions are minimal, especially compared to the energy consumption of an espresso machine or the overall footprint of a coffee shop. We are committed to further cutting our own emissions but appreciate that the great opportunity remains helping the coffee industry better understand its environmental impacts and identify viable, sustainable strategies to reduce the carbon footprint of cup of coffee.

Explore the actions we’ve taken:

 https://unitedbaristas.com/action/climate-change 

Coffee tasting notes can better connect coffee drinkers with beans and brews. At present, descriptors often hinder more than they help.

Use the new Coffee Tasting Framework to systematically assess colour, aroma, mouthfeel, taste and flavour.

The framework can:

• identify a coffee's defining characteristics
• explain why some coffees are tastier than others
• provide language to accurately and compelling communicate each coffee's flavours

Coffee Tasting Framework

The framework consists of three parts:

Coffee Assessment Sheet: A guide for assessing colour, aroma, mouthfeel, taste and flavour – plus evaluating tastiness based on mouthfeel, balance, ‘alignment’ and complexity.

Coffee Aroma Map: 101 key aromas grouped by dominant aromatic compound, plus a method for plotting aromas to appreciate quality.

Coffee Flavour Wheel: A continuous wheel of 73 distinct, natural flavours grouped by family, with adjacent flavours placed side-by-side.

Despite all the possible aroma and flavour combinations, tasty coffees commonly share three traits: a pleasant mouthfeel, harmonious taste balance and strong alignment between taste and flavour.

You can explore the new Coffee Tasting Framework at https://unitedbaristas.com/coffee-tasting/ 

Rationale

Specialty coffee needs to better match coffees to consumers to ensure their satisfaction and support specialty coffee's price premium.

Current flavour descriptions are not fit-for-purpose. They often confuse coffee drinkers more than they help. Plus, poor quality tasting notes give the impression that tasting coffee is difficult, subjective or a hoax. This is an unpardonable position to be in for an industry that defines itself by the quality of its coffee.

More info: https://unitedbaristas.com/articles/ideas/reinventing-the-wheel/ 

Writing Tasting Notes

Write coffee tasting notes that sell, guide and delight.

Tasting notes are simultaneously marketing copy to encourage sales, a promise to the consumer and a translation of a sensory experience into a narrative. Good tasting notes typically combine factual information, accurate descriptors combined and evocative descriptions.

A guide to writing tasting notes: https://unitedbaristas.com/articles/guides/how-to-write-coffee-tasting-notes-that-sell-guide-and-delight/ 

Marketplace has a new design, enhanced integrations and is easier to use. You may need to transition to new fields when updating a listing created before April 2025.

Enhancements and updates

• It's easier to search and scan coffee equipment listings on Marketplace for key information with the new design. Plus, it's easier and faster to list new items.
• We also added Rolling listing plans, so for a monthly fee the listing remains live until you cancel it. It ideal when you need to sell multiple units of the same item, for example you have a a dozen cartons of coffee cups to sell.
• Marketplace listings are now more deeply integrated with Directory and Equipment, so relevant information is presented when you need it.

Transition away from legacy features

New options are now available for some listings.

If you created a Marketplace listing before April 2025, fields that are discontinued will remain available when editing for the duration of your listing, but not necessarily displayed to the public – please follow the notes when updating listings.

And, when updating a listing created before April 2025, you may be forced to transition to new fields to ensure that your listing is displayed correctly.

We are updating Marketplace listings to prepare for new functions and general improvements.

As we update templates, there are several impacts:

• Marketplace listings may have awkward styling
• Components may be displayed multiple times on the same page
• Some components are common across United Baristas Services, so aspects of other pages on Equipment, Events and Jobs will be temporarily skew-whif

When adding, or updating, a Marketplace listings:

• new options will be available for some listings

• when editing listings created before April 2025, fields that are discontinued will remain available when editing for the duration of your listing, but not necessarily displayed to the public – please follow the notes when updating listings
• when updating a listing created before April 2025, you may be forced to transition to new fields

Why are we doing this?

We are refining the design, making it easier to list and buy items, adding new functions and deepening integrations with other United Baristas services.

Disruptions

Apart from some temporarily awkward styling and changes to fields, disruptions to functions and features are expected to be minimal. This is part of our strategy to make smaller, but more regular, updates to United Baristas services and a benefit of the improvements we made to United Baristas over 2024.

Should you encounter an issue, please check our current status and reach out to Support if the issue persists.

We've rolled out updates across United Baristas Store to make buying new coffee equipment easier and to prepare for forthcoming updates across United Baristas.

•  Mahlkönig grinders are now available on United Baristas Store, including the new E80W GBS
• Coffee companies can opt to pay in 3 or 12 monthly instalments with Iwoca
• Deepened the integration with United Baristas Equipment for enhanced product-specific information
• Added refurbished equipment section for used equipment being sold by United Baristas

Explore Store 👇

 https://services.unitedbaristas.com/store/ 

We have started work to refine the product pages on United Baristas Store. The update adds enhanced product information as well as better explaining options and features.

Each product page, particularly coffee equipment, needs to be manually updated to benefit from the new design.

As we incrementally roll out these changes it's possible that some information will be duplicated, outdated, irrelevant or missing.

If you have any pre-sale questions, please contact Support.

United Baristas is now easier to use and even more connected.

We’ve just launched the latest version of United Baristas Services, making it simpler to search for items on Marketplace, set up job notifications, source equipment or keep track of upcoming coffee events. This release is another milestone in our mission to better connect the specialty coffee community.

A unified design

This update marks two key milestones. Firstly, we (finally) have a unified design across United Baristas. We released a new design for articles in 2024, which has been a real success.

We designed the templates with our services in mind. Now that they’re implemented across United Baristas Services, browsing listings is smoother than ever, it’s faster to scan key information and the site is better formatted for all devices and screen sizes.

Introducing Events Calendar 2025

Second, our Events Calendar is now fully integrated into United Baristas Services. It features both upcoming events and the coffee events calendar, making it easy to plan the year ahead. Plus, event organisers can add their own coffee events and everything connects seamlessly with our other services.

Ringing in the New Year with big changes

Implementing this new design has been a major undertaking. We began integrating our services in 2022 and with this update, we have not only re-styled United Baristas but also changed the platform which powers our templates.

So far, we’ve updated our most frequently viewed pages. You may still come across a page that looks slightly off, but we expect to have all templates updated by the end of February. If you encounter a critical glitch that persists for more than 24 hours, please let us know via our Support Centre.

View our work in progress and input your ideas

If you only use United Baristas Services a few times a year, you may notice big changes between visits. If something has changed, visit United Baristas Updates to see recent developments and our roadmap. You can also share your ideas for how we can make United Baristas even better.

We hope you find these updates useful for whatever you have planned in the year ahead.

Work is underway to implement a new design across United Baristas Services.

Temporary glitches and awkward styling are to be expected. We are not only implementing a new design but also a new platform on which the design is coded. This means we need to temporarily merge the existing and new platforms on United Baristas Services while it is live. Glitches and awkward styling may occur whenever the two systems are incompatible.

We have been preparing for this transition over the past six months and will endeavor to make the change as smoothly as possible. There will be updates across United Baristas. If something isn't working, please try again a little later. If an issue persists for more than 24 hours, please open a support ticket.

Why are we doing this

Earlier this year, we updated United Baristas with a new design – and it has been a real success. The site is simpler to use, articles are easier to read, more people are visiting than ever before and the new platform is easier for us to maintain and update in the future.

We now need to implement the same platform and design on United Baristas Services. This will further unify United Baristas and make future updates easier.

Unfortunately, it's not practical to push the platform and design changes to United Baristas Services all at once, so we are doing it incrementally. The Christmas – New Year period is the quietest time of year for our services, making it an ideal time to implement these changes.

We expect to have the new platform and the foundation of the new design in place by 6 January 2025. We will then progressively redesign each of Directory, Equipment, Events, Jobs, and Marketplace throughout 2025.

Thank you for using United Baristas. Please bear with us as we make these changes and all the best for the year ahead.

Just like 🎄 Christmas, it's best when we're all together. Over the past three years we have incrementally integrated all our services into United Baristas Services.

United Baristas Service has new features

We've launched new features such as powerful notifications, enhanced Profile functions, and improved services like Jobs.

Introducing Coffee Events 2025

In the new year, we'll launch the all-new Coffee Events. It's fully integrated into United Baristas and has been completely rebuilt to better connect the coffee community. You can now easily explore coffee events by location, format and type. Plus, events are automatically displayed across United Baristas based on your location.

More updates are coming next year

This concludes the first phase of our work building United Baristas Services, but we're only just getting started. The next phase includes a new design and additional features.

Thanks

It's great to have you as part of the United Baristas community and thanks for your patience as we've made these changes. We hope you find them really useful for the year ahead and all the best for 2025.

Here's some of the updates we've made to United Baristas Services so far:

Coffee Events are now integrated into United Baristas Services.

 https://services.unitedbaristas.com/coffee-events/ 

Introducing Coffee Events 2

Completely rebuilt to better connect the coffee community. You can now easily explore coffee events by location, format and type. Plus events are automatically displayed across United Baristas based on your location.

View Coffee Events

You can now browse, view, filter and search events, just like you already do with equipment, jobs and marketplace listings. For example, search for upcoming trade shows & festivals in London.

 https://services.unitedbaristas.com/service/coffee-events/ 

Upcoming Events Calendar

View events by year, month or week with the Events Calendar. For example, here's Coffee Events in February 2025.

 https://services.unitedbaristas.com/coffee-events-calendar/ 

Adding your Coffee Events

Add Coffee Events to United Baristas, just like you add jobs or equipment. Free events are free to list, plus Company Profile holders get extra features and discounted listings on their events.

 https://services.unitedbaristas.com/service/coffee-events/new/ 

We look forward to catching up with you at Coffee Events in 2025.