SPEAKER_00 0:04

Hi, hello and howdy, and welcome back to Tiny Sidecar. I'm Kate, your host in Sidecar Sidekick. This season we're zooming in on one remarkable weekend that shaped conversations, connections, and the future of women-powered coffee. That's right, we're talking about the Women Powered Coffee Summit of 2025. Think of this as your behind-the-scenes past. Equal parts, insight, storytelling, and the cozy moments that make coffee culture feel like home. And for season two, we're traveling through it day by day. Each episode traces a different leg of the journey from travel days to touchdown moments with candid interviews sprinkled in along the way. So you know the drum. Grab your favorite cup of coffee and let's get into today's episode, shall we? Hi and welcome back to Tiny Saicar. I'm so excited about this season, and I'm so excited to tell you about the 300 plus women that I got to meet at the Women Powered Coffee Summit. Today, even we're gonna hear one of their voices as we warm up the season to hear many, many voices. We're also going to just do some grounding and some metaphorical packing for the trip, as well as I will literally tell you what I packed, and also how this summit has started to shift and change the goals of Tiny Sycar. Nothing crazy. I think that we're just starting to find our feet truly. And this weekend really put that all into perspective for me. So again, I'm so grateful to share this with you. And I think to do it right, what if we just start with one of the women that I met at the summit? Let's hear from Alex first, and then we'll jump into some other things.

SPEAKER_01 2:01

Wait, I start with instruction for you. Okay. This isn't this is my first podcast thing, by the way, so I'm sorry if I'm not very chill while talking, but this is very exciting for me. Um hi. I'm Alex. Uh I have worked in coffee for 10 years. Um around roastering, roastering, but kind of my I guess what I really feel I found my place in coffee was uh working in green, specifically and connecting roasters to producers, um specifically impact projects. So in my last job I used to do um account management but also uh impact department, um and I really fell in love with this storytelling element that this kind of gift I got to get to try to the best of my ability connect the reality on the ground to the people who were then roasting this product, consuming this product on the other side of the chain. Um I think there's a huge amount of work to be done in communicating those realities. I feel that we oversimplify very complex networks, um, but I also feel there's a lot of incredible people working towards getting that reality across better and better in their various ways and with their various tools. I guess women who inspire me in copy, there's so many, there's so so many. Um I think one one chair I'd that comes to mind first is uh two women actually. Um so one of them is Jessica Para, who's a uh my Colombian friend. She used to work for our Colombian branch of import. I used to work for. Um she used to be a local buyer for the Pita Lito station. She also launched a women's project there, and she's just a tiny little fireball. I call her my little sister, she's older than me, but she is selfier and so tiny, um, and just so genuinely true to just giving good people good opportunities. Um, and then the other person would be Angela Caponia, who was my colleague in Europe, but also just one of my best friends. Um, she used to do a marketing in Europe. Um and also just a purely just good soul looking at how to use the access she has to help, I guess, communicate other people's truths. I don't know, it's it's a difficult word to uh concept kind of formulate, but um the reason I think of these two is because last year Jessica came to live with Angela and me in Amsterdam for three months. And we just all of a sudden, these three people who'd never been together in the same you know space, we we knew each other through work and through kind of web calls and stuff, but um never really had been able to come together. And with Jessica, who was such a such a force at origin um and so driven and so motivated. Um and then Angela who um has this beautiful commun uh ability to to communicate people's like souls through um various means. Um she really I don't know how she does it. Um and then of course I uh work in the impact department and having the access to the clients. Um when the three of us came together for these three months, it was just magic. And I feel personally whenever I felt doubt, I saw this support and reinforcement in the woman around me. I I truly remembered why I do what I do and why I love what I do because of these women. Um and we just I think within the first three months we came up with like a lifetime of ideas of where just us alone could have such a big impact or collaborate with other people to, you know, improve um access to markets, improve visibilities, like everything. And it just really reinforced the idea that all you need is the right people to come together in one space and then give them the capacity and give them the resources and the facility to to go out there and realize these ideas um that come together and you can achieve such great things. And it just makes me really proud now, also thinking about it, and I really miss them, and it was yeah, it was uh um just a really special moment in my heart.

SPEAKER_00 7:00

I was so lucky to get to spend a lot of the weekend with Alex and also to record about 10 minutes more with her, so that was just the slightest little sneak peek. But she truly is such a special person and special human, and I'm just really grateful to have met her and cannot wait to see what she ends up doing in the coffee world. Just top tier, you know what I mean? And she's wickedly funny, which hopefully you'll see a little bit in a later episode. Now let's back up and get some grounding going. Now, as you know, I knew that I was attending the summit for probably about three months, and the original feelings that were definitely starting to pile up for me were nerves and anxiety, and hoping that I didn't mess up this opportunity. Now, the beautiful part of that story is about a week before I left, I had this massive mind shift that was so necessary, and instead of going to this perfectionism route, I started to think about how I think about most trips when it comes to coffee. And that's this is an opportunity to learn and grow and to connect with people. And that mind shift was everything. Because instead of worrying about am I bringing enough cute tiny sidecar things, or did I pack the right shirts, I was thinking about what questions do I want to ask, and what opportunities do I want to give people, and what would make someone feel comfortable speaking to me when they just met me. And really that's what tiny sidecar is all about, and that's also what the summit was all about. It was really clear that we all had packed a similar mindset and that we were surrounded by students, not necessarily people that were there to educate. Now, I say that in the best regard. Not that there wasn't a bunch of women that could educate and that did educate, but also those same women that had an extensive amount of knowledge that wanted to learn and be there in the community as well. It's really common when you go to summits or conferences or expos or whatever they might be that there's this tier of people that are the educators, and everyone else kind of feels like just underneath. And that is not what the summit felt like. It felt like we were all there to learn from each other and be with each other, and it was so incredibly special. But here I am on an immediate tangent, and we need to back up, right? So let's talk literal packing. Come on, Kate, you can do it, stay focused. So, packing for the summit, obviously, this was one of the first times that I had brought my full tiny sidecar setup. So I brought my Yeti mic, which did so well in the ideas marketplace. By the way, when you were listening to Alex and the rumble and bumble behind her, that was the marketplace itself. And I think it's so special that you can feel the ambiance of the area that tiny sidecar was recorded, so you get to be right there in it with us. Um, but I brought my trusty mic and my computer, and those were the key elements that I really needed to record the interviews, which is ideal. And then I brought some tiny sidecar swag for people that did participate, and also a variety of clothes. Now, Beam Voyage was just top tier with preparing us, both with community calls, but also their team got down there like two weeks before the summit or something like that. And so they were there to be like, hey, the streets are cobblestone, hey, it's raining every afternoon, hey, X, Y, and Z to help us prepare for packing. And I took all of their advice to heart, and that is how I packed. So um definitely some rain jackets. The shoes I wore were incredibly comfortable, but also didn't have like slippery bottoms, so I didn't fall in the streets. And um, something else that was really cool that was on the agenda was there was another little morning 5K fun run thingy um for Girls Gotta Run. Which, if you remember, during SCA I had done a coffee run for Girls Gotta Run then as well, and it was one of the highlights of SCA for me this last year. So very excited to participate again with a group of women down at the summit. Another obvious thing that always makes it into my carry-on is snacks. Uh whenever I travel to somewhere I haven't been before, just being a vegetarian, I bring so much food. But I'm happy, happy to report that I didn't really need to eat any of it because the food was so good. Just so so delicious. And the summit kept us well fed from the lunches to breakfasts to these fun, like after party kind of um I guess it wasn't after party, it literally was a party. Um, but just constantly eating yummy delicious food throughout, and we'll talk so much more about food and coffee. Oh my god, the coffee is so good. But snacks were not needed, to say the least. Um other key things that I was really excited that I had brought with me, obviously. I love a good headphone for the airplane and lots of layers for the colder moments during the day. But it was a cozy little weekend. It went well. Now I also really planned a lot of you know the mindset of what I wanted Tiny Sidecar to bring to the summit and also the questions I wanted to ask and how I wanted to interact with people. And honestly, it was the flight down that I realized that setting some sort of goal for how many women I can bring onto Tiny Sidecar in 2026 was a top priority, and that this weekend would be kind of a test run to see how people were feeling about participating and what they wanted it to feel like. I landed on some pretty open questions. I really just wanted to create a platform for women to tell me whatever they want to do. So the leader questions that I started with for most was what's your story in coffee? What do you do? What aspect of coffee do you want to talk about? And who are some women that inspire you in the coffee industry and why? So those two very basic opening questions are what I asked every participant in uh the Tiny Sidecar booth. And if they wanted to talk about something completely different, that was absolutely okay too. And originally, while I was coming up with ideas for the ideas marketplace, I wanted it to be way more structured and I wanted to really guide the person through a series of questions. But then I realized that that probably wasn't necessary, and that if someone was participating, they probably had something they wanted to say. So I left it very open, and you'll see that all of the stories and perspectives that are told in the season all arrange wildly based on what that woman is going through, which I think brings a lot of flavor and loveliness to this community that we're building. Now, some key things to know before even getting on that plane is Bean Voyage really sat the table for us. This was their fourth year doing the summit, and you could tell. There were things like community calls that were optional, but I would highly recommend if you ever find yourself in the position that you're going to the summit. Um, agendas, uh things like dietary needs, your roommate was picked out for you. If you had one, I was lucky enough to have an incredible roommate. Again, we'll talk about her soon. And really creating this idea of safety, inclusion, and this leveling of the playing field. And we'll get into the nitty-gritty of all of those moments that ended up making the summit so incredibly special. But we gotta start by giving a huge hat off to Bean Voyage. What they are able to bring together and what intention they've brought to the summit was so clear through and through, and again, wildly impressed by them. So if I had one takeaway before I even hopped on that first plane to head down to the summit, I would say open mind. It was so hard for me to get to a spot where I wasn't just letting my perfectionism get in the way of actually doing what I wanted to do. And I think it's maybe one of the larger learning lessons that I still just absolutely need to keep on repeat, is that going and experiencing something is better than trying to be perfect, and trying is way better than not trying. It's like these are such obvious things, but it's funny because I think there's some of the repeating things in my life that I'm so scared to go out and try and do that it holds me back. And this was a situation where I'm so glad I did the thing. And I hope that that might resonate with you, and hopefully there's something that you're really wanting to go and do. I feel like Tiny Sidecar just on repeat has taught me that putting yourself out there and trying something new is the exact thing that I should be doing. So anyway, just really refreshing to be on the other side and to know that I'm just grateful. Grateful to have been a part of it, grateful to have gone, and so grateful to share it with you now. So, what I would tell you is that as the season goes on, if you have specific questions about the summit or about women that are on the show in the next couple of episodes, please feel free to find me on Instagram and send me a message or send me an email at howdy at tiny sidecar.com. You're gonna meet so many incredible women in the coming weeks, and I just can't, I like can't wait for you. I like know the stories that are coming and they're rich and good and wonderful. So I will see you right back here before you even know it. And again, I'm so grateful for you and so lucky to have you here. Have a great rest of your day, friend. See you soon.

SPEAKER_01 18:20

It's like an excitement for the for the yeah, unknown. And it's humbling, right? I feel the more people I've talked to, the more I'm aware of how little I know. And it's such a beautifully humbling feeling of like, I don't know anything. Oh my gosh, I've lived no lives. I've lived my lives. There's nothing in the lives out there.