A couple weeks back, Cameron Heath, Revelator’s Director of Coffee Operations, traveled from Birmingham to New York to attend the New York Coffee Festival. His bags were packed with Misfit, Petunias, Miramundo, Yabitu Koba, and one custom purple suit.
The Festival took place on October 12-14, bringing over 80 vendors and 12,000 visitors to the expo. Trade Coffee, a coffee matching and delivery service, invited Cameron to represent Revelator at the Trade Coffee booth. He was joined by our friends from Reanimator, Onyx, and George Howell, and spent the days brewing Misfit, Petunias, Miramundo, and Yabitu Koba for the milling crowd.
“These events are always cool because you get to see your industry friends, who you don't see every year. You just walk five feet and say, “What's up!” You also get a chance to meet people from coffee companies that you know but don't interact with. So, you know, just wheeling and dealing and brewing up coffees all day.”
Revelator’s featured coffees were a hit, of course, even if they were slightly overshadowed by Cameron’s purple suit, which he had bought on an origin trip to Rwanda. “A little bit outside the main city, Kigali, there's a warehouse with several vendors. It’s controlled chaos. We went in, with our driver helping us navigate everything, and we came across this guy named Job. He had a bunch of fabrics and said, 'I can make whatever you want.' I wanted a suit, and Emma (Revelator’s co-founder and green buyer) got a bunch of dresses made. There were way too many options. To begin with, I wanted an all-yellow-and-brown suit, because I thought, ‘If I'm going to stand out, I want to stand out really, really well. A yellow suit looks gaudy as all hell.’ Unfortunately, they didn't have enough fabric for my very long body, and I opted for the purple fabric instead, which happened to match the Yabitu Koba label almost perfectly. It all worked out well.”
The match is almost uncanny, and drew a fair bit of attention. “People were coming up to me all weekend saying ‘I love your suit.’ It was a real Venus Fly-Trap situation, let me tell you.” So much so that Sprudge declared Cameron the winner of the New York Coffee Festival fashion contest.
But don’t get too attached. “I knew up front that I was only going to wear this once a year. I don't want to be the guy who whips out this suit all the time. It's a special occasion thing, for sure.”