The London Coffee Festival, originally due to take place in the first week of April, has been postponed due to the ongoing coronavirus situation.
The decision was first revealed on the Instagram account for Socratic Coffee, which posted what appeared to be an excerpt from a message announcing the change of dates.
Since then, organiser Allegra Group said it had taken the "financially damaging" decision to postpone to July, ahead of any instructions from government banning large public gatherings – in a bid to "do the right thing".
CEO Jeffrey Young told the Standard: "We took the decision to be ahead of the game. It's going to be quite financially damaging. We just thought it's [coronavirus] going to get worse not better. We wanted to be part of helping to create a delay so the health authorities can delay the outbreak.
"It will cost hundreds of thousands of pounds to postpone this, ultimately."
He added: "We wish the government would take a bit more of a stance on this. We took the decision to do the right thing rather than sit and wait for the government to announce they are cancelling it. We chose to do this and not make the purely commercial decision.”
In the since-deleted Instagram screenshot posted by Socratic Coffee, a message from organisers read: “After a thorough assessment of the current coronavirus situation in the UK and globally, and in the interest of good event management and the safety of all our stakeholders, we have taken the difficult decision to postpone the London Coffee Festival 2020 to 23-26 July.”
The festival had been scheduled to take place at the Truman Brewery in Shoreditch from April 2-5, but will now take place in the last week of July. The message also says that all bookings and the full event programme will be transferred to those corresponding dates.
The festival, which marks its 10th birthday this year, was due to welcome 250 exhibitors and around 30,000 visitors this year in its “biggest celebration yet”. The show is also the setting for the Coffee Masters, in which 16 top baristas from around the world are due to go head-to-head in the coveted competition.
The postponement follows the delay of the Raw Wine Fair, which was due to take place this weekend, a decision which was also attributed to the global spread of coronavirus.
For more updates on the Lonmdon Coffee Festival, visit londoncoffeefestival.com.
This article has been updated to reflect the confirmation of the festival's cancellation
