Java-happy Seattle home to Coffee Fest

David Heilbrunn initially fought the idea of starting the trade show Coffee Fest.

His boss and father-in-law thought java-happy Seattle needed a celebration of coffee, along the lines of his company's Bite of Seattle and Taste of Tacoma food festivals. Heilbrunn figured they were too busy already.

"Fortunately for me, he didn't listen," said the humbled son-in-law.

Coffee Fest became so successful it was spun off as a separate company, LifeStyle Events, based in Bellevue and run by Heilbrunn and his wife, Marni. Her father and the originator of Coffee Fest, Alan Silverman, is the third owner of the business, whose annual revenues are less than $3 million.

Next month, Seattle will host the company's 49th Coffee Fest, a three-day event at the Washington State Convention & Trade Center. Along with the flagship event here, the company holds two other Coffee Fests each year in various cities including Chicago, Washington, D.C. and Las Vegas. Next year, it will debut an international Coffee Fest in Hong Kong.

At first, the show was open to the public. By the late 1990s, it had become a full-fledged trade show, offering courses to coffee-shop owners in dozens of topics from "Unlocking the Mysteries of Decaf" to "Wrestling the Mermaid — Competing with the Chains."

More than 8,000 attendees are expected in Seattle this year from all over the world. Marni said some are Coffee Fest groupies who go to all the shows so they can attend more seminars.

They will be courted by some 400 vendors hawking coffee machines, coffee cups, cup sleeves, stuffed animals and apparel to be sold in coffee shops.

"If it looks like coffee, smells like coffee or goes with coffee, they're welcome," David said.

A new vendor this year sells big advertising balloons that stand 8 to 20 feet tall and can be shaped like just about anything, including a coffee cup or a Starbucks to-go cup.

Boulder Blimp, based in Boulder, Colo., has sold 20-some giant inflatable cups to Starbucks, which uses them for grand openings, said sales manager Terry Goodhart.

If he sells 15 to 20 balloons at Coffee Fest in Seattle, that will make the trip and the nearly $2,000 booth fee worthwhile.

Although Boulder Blimp has done well with big brands like Pepsi and Captain Morgan, it has yet to crack the coffee-shop market, Goodhart said.

"We never went after it aggressively before," he said, "and it's growing."

— Melissa Allison

Seattle-based Paper Zone , which sells paper, business supplies and crafts, has emerged from bankruptcy proceedings and now operates under a slightly different name, New Paper Zone LLC.

The company said the merchandise strategy is unchanged at its 10 stores in Washington state and Oregon. It filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection earlier this year, citing problems integrating more than a dozen scrapbooking stores it bought in 2005 from Salt Lake City-based Memories & More. — AM

Seattle's Pacific Place says it's going green. The downtown shopping center has been working with Waste Management and Cedar Grove Organics Recycling on a new program that's expected to divert more than 1,000 tons of trash from landfills each year. Pacific Place shoppers will soon see more recycling containers for their plastic, paper and cardboard throwaways. — AM

Nestlé plans to open as many as 40 U.S. boutiques over the next four years to sell its Nespresso coffee machines, Bloomberg News reported last week. Switzerland-based Nestlé has Nespresso boutiques all over the world, from Paris to Tel Aviv to Sydney, and opened its first U.S. boutique in Manhattan last year. — MA

Apple's University Village store will be closed for renovations Oct. 22 to Nov. 2. The store's Web site redirects customers to other Apple locations at Alderwood mall and Bellevue Square for the 12 days.

— AM

Longtime Starbucks honchos are branching out. Maveron Capital, a venture-capital firm co-founded by Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz, has invested $27.5 million in a Los Angeles-based dessert chain called Pinkberry. Meanwhile, former Starbucks Chief Financial Officer Michael Casey has joined the board of the Vancouver, B.C.-based athletic-apparel company Lululemon Athletica. Casey resigned as Starbucks' CFO on Sept. 30, but continues to work as a senior adviser for the coffee company. — MA

The One Campaign , an effort to fight global disease and extreme poverty and bring fair trade and AIDS treatment to the African nation of Lesotho, has joined the fashion label EDUN for a second year to sell One.org T-shirts at Nordstrom stores.

The shirts cost $40, of which $10 goes to the Apparel Lesotho Alliance for Africa fund, which provides antiretroviral drugs to factory workers and their families in Lesotho, one of the world's poorest developing countries. Nordstrom will match the $10 donation for every T-shirt sold in the United States, up to $100,000. — AM

B.R. Guest Restaurants plans to open Ocean, its first West Coast restaurant, in Seattle in 2009 inside the 1 Hotel and Residences downtown. Begun in 1987, B.R. Guest Restaurants' properties include Dos Caminos Soho in New York, Blue Water Grill in Chicago and Fiamma Trattoria in the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. — MA

The NikeTown store in downtown Seattle will collect used athletic shoes through mid-February as part of Nike's Let Me Play initiative, which seeks to get young people involved with sports. The used shoes will be recycled into new sport and play surfaces for hurricane-ravaged New Orleans. — AM

The Seattle area is the fourth-fastest city in the country for wait times at a variety of restaurants, stores and banks, according to a study by the Mystery Shopping Providers Association.

With wait times averaging 3 minutes, 40 seconds, the Seattle area trails only St. Louis, Sacramento and Indianapolis. Wait times in New York City average nearly 5 minutes and in Houston are more than 8 minutes. — MA

Washington's fastest grocery bagger is 66-year-old Harvey Unruh, who works for Brown and Cole in Bellingham. On Thursday, he beat out eight other baggers in a state championship sponsored by the Washington Food Industry Association. Unruh won $500 and a trip to Las Vegas in February to compete in a national "bag-off" sponsored by the National Grocers Association. — MA

Retail Report appears Fridays. Melissa Allison covers the food and beverage industry. She can be reached at 206-464-3312 or mallison@seattletimes.com. Amy Martinez covers goods, services and online retail. She can be reached at 206-464-2923 or amartinez@seattletimes.com.