A 28 m² stand at World of Coffee, MiCo Milano Congressi, 23–25 June 2022, built for the Ethiopian Coffee Exporters Association — with a dedicated cupping room at the centre of the plan. It was delivered by the team that now designs and fabricates under the Echo Expo name.
The project
28 m², 7 m × 4 m, on the floor of Europe’s largest specialty coffee event. The build scope was a wooden MDF structure produced to the approved design, an elevated platform floor finished in parquet, a storage room with a lockable door, full printed visuals, and a cupping room for the coffee ritual.
The show changed country three months before it opened
World of Coffee 2022 was scheduled for Warsaw. It moved to Milan after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, when the Polish venue became a refuge for people displaced by the war. The Specialty Coffee Association relocated the whole event to MiCo Milano Congressi and kept the June dates.
For an exhibitor that means a new country, a new venue, a new set of hall regulations and a new freight route — without a new deadline. Designs approved for one venue have to be re-checked against another venue’s rules on rigging, height, flooring and fire performance. A stand builder with production capacity in the destination country is worth a great deal in that situation, because the drive from the workshop to the hall replaces an international shipment.
A cupping room is not a meeting room
Cupping is the coffee industry’s formal tasting protocol, and it is how buying decisions actually get made at origin-country stands. Building a room for it is a different brief from building a room for conversation:
- Acoustic separation — assessors need to concentrate, on an open hall floor that is anything but quiet
- Controlled, colour-accurate light — roast colour is judged by eye, and a warm or coloured lamp changes the verdict
- Work surfaces at tasting height, with room to move around the table rather than along one side
- Service access for water, hot water and continuous waste — a cupping session generates a great deal of both
- A clean, wipeable finish throughout, because the room runs all day for three days
That is why the plan gives a quarter of a small stand to one enclosed function. On a 28 m² footprint, every square metre spent on the cupping room is a square metre not available for open display — and it is the right trade, because the tasting is the reason buyers come to the stand at all.
Parquet, on a coffee stand, on purpose
The elevated platform was finished in parquet rather than carpet. On a stand where water is carried, poured and spilled all day, a hard floor can be wiped between sessions and still looks like a finished room at five o’clock on day three. Carpet in the same position would have been marked by the first session.
Why it matters
This project puts specialty coffee into our record, at the sector’s principal European event, in a year when that event was staged in Milan — the city where our Italian workshop is based. It also adds MiCo Milano Congressi to the venues we have built in, alongside Fiera Milano.
The Ethiopian Coffee Exporters Association is a national industry body, and Ethiopia is the origin country of arabica coffee — so the stand carried a country’s reputation rather than one company’s. Origin-country exhibitors at food and beverage shows share a common brief: a small footprint, a strong national identity, product that has to be tasted rather than described, and a need to host serious buyers properly. That is a specific kind of stand, and it is one we have built.
Services delivered
- Production of the stand in accordance with the approved design
- Wooden MDF structure
- Elevated platform floor with parquet finish
- Enclosed cupping room for the coffee ritual
- Storage room with lockable door
- Printed visuals and graphics as per design
- Installation and dismantling
Frequently asked questions
Can you build a cupping room or tasting room into a small stand?
Yes. This one was built into 28 m² alongside a lockable store and an open display area. The constraint is usually services and acoustics rather than floor area, so it is worth raising at design stage rather than after the layout is fixed.
Do you build at MiCo Milano Congressi?
Yes. MiCo is a congress and exhibition centre in central Milan, and our Italian workshop is in the Milan area, so stands are driven to the hall rather than shipped.
What if our show changes venue or country after we have approved a design?
The design is re-checked against the new venue’s technical regulations — rigging, maximum height, floor loadings, fire performance of materials — and the elements that fail are changed before production. Tell us as soon as you know.
Exhibiting at a coffee or food show in Europe?
Tell us the venue, the dates and the stand size, and we will come back with a design and a build plan. Talk to us about your stand, or see our team’s experience and the SIAL Paris food stand.