As every year on October 1, we at Dabov Specialty Coffee celebrate our birthday. This year is our 16th in a row!
1 October is an important date for all coffee lovers around the world, by the way. It’s International Coffee Day and it’s a good omen for us that we founded our roastery on it in 2008.
As birthdays are a time for reflection, we want to look back with you and trace our journey over the years.
In 2008, we founded our company with one goal in mind: to meet the Bulgarian market’s demand for high-quality hot beverages such as coffee, tea and hot chocolate.
In 2010, after a demand for high quality tea, we created the DelmarTe brand and began importing selected, quality teas to the Bulgarian market.
Since 2010, Jordan Dabov has been certified as a barista instructor by the European Specialty Coffee Association.
In the summer of 2010, we founded the Bulgarian Barista Association in our desire to train more baristas, educate more coffee lovers and spread the coffee and tea culture in Bulgaria. In the same year we created our DABOV Academy. Until today, as the main lecturer in our academy, Jordan Dabov has trained over 3000 baristas and coffee lovers.
Since 2012 we have been a member of the Alliance for Coffee Excellence, organizer of the only international competition for the selection by tasting of Specialty Coffee. Until now, we are the only Bulgarian member of the organization.
Since the following year, 2013, Jordan Dabov has been a member of the international tasting jury of the Cup Of Excellence competition. And until now he is the only representative from Bulgaria. So far he has participated in the competitions in the countries of Brazil, Colombia, Honduras, Costa Rica, Guatemala and Ethiopia. Our caffeteria player Jordan Dabov was among the invitees to the 20th anniversary edition of the competition in Brazil in 2019.
In 2015, we purchased and imported for the first time coffee from the international auction of Cup Of Excellence Costa Rica – the coffee of the Dona Ileana farm.
In 2016, we purchased at the Alliance of Coffee Excellence online auction the best coffee in Guatemala and the second highest rated coffee in the world for 2016 – the Kalibus La Sierra coffee, which won 1st place in the Guatemala competition.
In 2018, Jordan Dabov was invited to be a member of the Best of Panama jury in Panama, and has judged there three times so far. The same year we purchased at the Best of Panama online auction – the Dona Elvira coffee that won 16th place in the competition. The following year, Jordan Dabov again participated as a judge in the VOR, and we won the Geisha Ironman V coffee, placing 13th.
In 2018, Jordan Dabov became a judge at Oro de Santa Barbara in Honduras and brought back from the online auction two coffees by Finca Valentina, which won 4th and 15th place in the competition, and a Ventura coffee, which won 17th place in the competition.
In 2019, Jordan Dabov became a member of the jury of the Cup Of Excellence in Honduras and we purchased at the online auction of the Alliance of Coffee Excellence in Honduras the Santa Lucia coffee, the highest rated geisha at the SOE competitions this year, winning 1st place in the competition.
In 2020, Jordan Dabov became a jury member of another international coffee competition – Gems of Araku in India. We purchased the coffees that won 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 5th place in the competition at the online auction. In 2021, our coffee maker repeated his participation in the competition as a judge.
In July 2020, we opened our first showroom outside Bulgaria in Madrid, Spain.
On 01 September 2021 we also officially opened our showroom in Prague, Czech Republic.
In 2021 was the official opening of our showroom in Skopje, Macedonia
In 2021, we were able to purchase four unique racing coffees from various auctions around the world. After participating in the Cup Of Excellence Salvador and Mexico auctions – we acquired two pearls.
Of course, our main plans are related to continuing our simple but meaningful mission – to put smiles on your faces by offering you a better cup of coffee every day, day after day. We are working towards making the coffees we choose and roast with such care, skill and dedication able to reach more and more people – not just in Bulgaria, but in even more new and diverse places around the world.
We can say that the appetite comes with the eating and from here on we continue to draw plans for development – to continue to develop the culture of specialty coffee in Bulgaria and around the world, together with the help of our farmers, of you – our friends and fans of specialty coffee and of the many specialty coffee roasters popping up every day in the country – a fact that also shows us that we are on the right track.
