In France, Service is the New Specialty: A Recap of the 2026 Paris Coffee Show

This year’s Paris Coffee Show made one thing clear: In France’s coffee industry right now, how you treat your customers matters more than what’s in the cup.

BY SARAH CHARLES
BARISTA MAGAZINE ONLINE

Photos by Sarah Charles

Paris will always make you walk, and the city is unapologetic about it. Parc Floral de Paris, on the eastern edge of the Bois de Vincennes, required just that: a proper walk through one of the city’s most beautiful green spaces in order to reach the show venue. A fitting choice, perhaps, for a city fast-becoming one of Europe’s greenest, where public green space is increasingly central to how Parisians live and move.

The 2026 edition of the Paris Coffee Show, organized by the Collectif Café—France’s main professional coffee federation, founded in 1959—brought 21 conferences with more than 80 speakers, 18 workshops, 10 cupping sessions, and 5 recognized competitions over three days to European coffee sector stakeholders. It is the premier coffee trade show in France, a model that has since spawned regional editions in Tours, Bordeaux and Lyon, and a growing number of independent events alongside them.

Laure Jubert, coffee consultant and co-organizer of both the Paris Coffee Show’s conference program and the Bordeaux Coffee Show, puts it plainly: “There has definitely been an explosion of coffee events in France over the past few years. In Paris, where the specialty coffee culture is growing very fast, many professionals feel that there are now too many events for the size of the community.” It’s a crowded calendar. Attendance this year felt lower than in previous editions. Not a reflection of quality, which was high, but possibly of a market stretched thin across too many dates, and of businesses tightening their belts in what Laure describes as “a difficult moment for consumption—many people would simply call it a crisis.”

That economic pressure was the show’s unofficial through-line. Panel discussions and stand conversations alike kept returning to the same questions: how do you grow customer volume without sacrificing quality? How do you diversify your offer without losing focus or reputation? It was a show shaped by constraint, and was all the more interesting for it.

The differentiator is service

For a long time, specialty coffee in France competed product: origin, roast, quality, innovation. What came through clearly at this year’s show is that the industry has moved on. The differentiator now is service, and the businesses taking that seriously are investing accordingly. 

At Rakwe Coffee, founded by Elias Sfeir and now operating more than five coffee shops and a roastery across Lyon and Marseille after a strategic push during and after COVID, the focus is on training baristas to sustain quality at scale. “Every shop has to be financially sustainable,” Sfeir said, a discipline that has shaped how Rakwe grows.

Forêt Forêt has taken a different approach, developing what Xavier Remiot described as a destination experience: For customers paying €30 for a grand cru coffee, that means dedicated barista attention, considered lighting, premium cups, the best seat in the house. “Lieu de destination, pas lieu de passage,” he says—a destination, not a thoroughfare.

At Motors Coffee, Thomas Philips has oriented everything around bar workflow efficiency: four grinders to prevent overheating, clearly defined roles per barista across each shift, a system precise enough that a group of five or six arriving for a coffee flight (a full menu tasting) doesn’t break the service. “People on their lunch break make the effort to come to us after their meal elsewhere when they could have had their coffee there,” he says. “We have to reward them with speed and quality.”

Hospitality, in other words, has caught up with specialty coffee. This idea was expressed repeatedly on the conference floor. For Paz Levinson, sommelier, hospitality means “exceeding the customer’s expectations,” but also “stopping the robot speech”: connecting with customers and sharing emotions. Pierre de Chanterac, World Coffee Events All-Star barista, put it differently: “Hospitality is connecting with another person with intention.” Laure sees technology as part of what’s driving this shift: “If the machine can take care of more of the technical precision, the barista can focus more on the customer, understanding their expectations, guiding them, explaining the coffee and creating a real experience.”

One thing that stands out as distinctly French in this landscape is the growing convergence between coffee and wine culture, both in language and aspiration. The sommelier model has migrated into specialty coffee here: terroir, millésime, accord mets-café (the art of food and coffee pairing, taken from the art of food and wine pairing). It’s a framing that would feel affected elsewhere but feels natural in France, where the cultural infrastructure for talking seriously about taste already exists.

A pro show, unambiguously

One thing that set Paris apart from most international coffee events was that this was unambiguously a trade show. The crowd was made up predominantly of Millennials and Gen X—with Gen Z conspicuously absent—dressed for business and there to work. Women were present but underrepresented, and almost entirely absent at ownership level—an observation that is not unique to France. And while France is a racially diverse country, its specialty-coffee sector, at least as represented here, remains a largely white space. This is changing, but these new actors aren’t necessarily attending trade shows, but building their businesses through different channels.

Conference attendance was unusually strong, helped by a smart design choice: A semi-enclosed conference island integrated into the main show floor, protected enough to follow a panel floor and open enough that it felt anchored in the wider event. Other trade shows should take note.

The competitions added further energy across the three days – though audiences were sparse, bar a few exceptions. It’s a global phenomenon: coffee competitions simply aren’t what they once were in terms of attendance, energy and hype. Daniela Capuano, Meilleur Ouvrier de France (Best Craftsman of France) roaster, offered the sharpest read on what competitions are actually for: “A competition is a dialogue with the market. We listen, we speak.” The headline result—the Meilleur Coffee Shop de France 2026, announced live on 14 September—went to Moko Coffee Shop in Bordeaux, a result that felt significant. The public favorite prize (Coup de Coeur) went to 57 Grains in Paris, with Tactile (Paris) and Goûtu (Bordeaux) also picking up distinctions across the categories. That Bordeaux took the grand prize is not incidental. 

Specialty coffee in France is no longer a Parisian story. It is decentralizing, with serious operators building strong, sustainable businesses in cities across the country. The sheer number of regional events mirrors that shift. As Laure sees it, the next move is not more events but more connections: “Coffee does not necessarily need more events. It may need more connections.” With gastronomy, other industries, and with the communities that have so far been largely absent from the room.

France’s coffee show calendar may need rationalizing, but the Coffee Show remains its anchor: professional, purposeful, and the place where you will most clearly pick up industry shifts, and what’s next for France in coffee. If not in the headlines themselves, then in the conversations happening on the floor.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sarah Charles (she/her) is a senior editor and writer who makes sense of the world’s messiest systems—climate, trade, culture, food—through sharp storytelling, fresh angles, and analysis. She translates global politics and economics into stories that show how they shape our daily lives, and vice versa. You can reach her at sarahcharlz@gmail.com.

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