AGA BUKOWSKA

Aga Bukowska is the expansion supervisor @coffeedeskpl and co-author of @coffeespotspolska :-) I spoke to Aga few days ago @kawiarniacoffeedesk :

“1. How did you get in to coffee? Where did the journey start for you?

I think it all has started in @coloursofcoffee training room, where my friend from old times brewed me an Ethiopian natural he was competing on during Polish Barista Championship (he actually came in 3rd). I still remember how it tasted, I even asked him if he hadn’t added some strawberry syrup to it! I simply fell in love with speciality coffee that day. As I travel a lot and I wanted to learn more about the third wave, I started discovering cities via its coffee scene. It turned out to be a fantastic way of exploring new places. I wouldn’t switch it back for typical sightseeing ever.

2. What are the most challenging and rewarding aspects of your job?

After 7 years in advertising industry and last 2 in a corporate environment, it was really difficult for me to get used to the fact that there is no routine on my job anymore. Every day is different, I am doing many things for the first time, there is a lot of research involved. It might be stressful at times but it’s also developing, mind-opening and never gets boring.

What I would call the most rewarding part of it, is the fact that you can see the actual, often physical, results of your work. I missed that when I was only a part of a long supply chain, now I am working hard on something that I can see, touch, measure its results, and often I’m responsible for the whole thing. It's simply amazing.

3. How does speciality coffee evolve in Poland and what is the future in your opinion? ☕️

Last 2-3 years were a blast, specialty coffee scene is blooming, new cafés and roasteries are opening at an incredible rate across the country and an average Polish customer is more and more educated. It's hard to say what comes next, there are some attempts to create specialty coffee chains, some roasteries are getting bigger or more successful than other. Right now we have a big amount of rather small players and probably some of them will develop into larger organizations. But Poles are also quite local when it comes to #coffee, and locals tend to choose local roasteries, for example everywhere near Bydgoszcz, you can drink @auduncoffee , in Lublin @kaffe_2009 and so on. There is a lot of possible directions for #polish coffee, I can't wait to see what comes next.

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4. Can you tell us more about your project @coffeespotspolska and what was your inspiration behind it?

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Last year Krzysiek with whom I am working on @coffeespotspolska published a guide called Varsavia Coffee Spots. It described all specialty cafés in Warsaw and by the very good reception of this publication one can see that people are eager to discover new coffee spots. As I was travelling through Poland and drinking coffee, one day we started talking about taking the Coffee Spots guide to the next, national level. Here we are now, spending every weekend in another city, talking with amazing people, writing notes, taking pictures. Before the end of summer we hope to turn it into a guide of around 120 places full of passion and coffee stories.