Doubling the Size of our Coffee Catering Service in Helsinki

At EAN 2025 in Helsinki, Social Espresso doubled its presence with our largest international coffee catering service yet. Across 4 days, 12 baristas served drinks for 8 clients on their exhibition stands, ensuring smooth operations, premium coffee, and a memorable exhibition experience for thousands of guests.

Showcasing our coffee catering service at Europe’s leading neurology event

June 2025 marked Social Espresso’s largest international exhibition to date as we flew out to Helsinki, where the 11th Congress of the European Academy of Neurology (EAN) was held in the Messukeskus exhibition centre, Finland’s leading event venue. This year 8,366 participants from 113 countries congregated for over 300 specialised talks and sessions from leading neurologists (no pressure!).

Although it was our third time at EAN, this felt like a landmark moment for us, and also one of the biggest challenges to date. We had no less than 8 separate clients trust us to deliver our coffee catering service at their different stands, double the amount from last year! Our goal at EAN 2025 was to have the best service out of all the stands, essentially to upscale without compromising quality.

Scaling our coffee service across multiple stands

Along with the excitement of a trip abroad for 12 of our baristas came a long list of operational support tasks for our office team. Ella, Justin and Jack put in months of work to prepare and outsource the transportation of our machinery for the first time.

This summer, we saw a big increase in our mainland Europe coffee catering operations, making the logistics a lot more complicated. Before EAN, our kit was stored in Germany from a previous job, then taken and delivered to the exhibition centre in Helsinki, waiting for us when we arrived. Along with the kit, two massive pallets of milk were delivered to the venue to keep the stands stocked for the whole event. The amount of milk was something our founder Jack was very proud of!

Behind the scenes of a premium coffee catering service

Our team knows that an international event on this scale requires a consistent level of oversight to ensure every stand runs smoothly. So to help manage the workforce we sent out, we chose to have an extra set of hands in the form of one of our most experienced members: Monika.

There are many behind-the-scenes tasks, including supplying water, coffee beans and milk to the stands, bringing refreshments to the baristas, and helping with the stock count. Monika’s experience with exhibitions, management skills and relationships with our clients made her perfect for this role, and a core part of the team. The extra assistance meant that our baristas could stay on top of their on-stand tasks and maintain a high level of service. Importantly, this takes any pressure off clients, as we ensure the smooth running of their stand.

Coffee culture meets international catering service

Our baristas definitely made the most of being in Helsinki. After work, they went out to explore the sights of the city, the beach, and got a taste for the local cuisine (including deer!). A highlight for us when sending staff out to these jobs is seeing them enjoy the trip and watching the friendships develop.

The biggest challenge for our coffee catering team team adapting to Helsinki was the unique daylight hours; at this time of year, there are only two hours of darkness in the early morning. This takes some adjusting to when walking around at night and forgetting it’s actually 11pm and you need to be in bed ready for the next day’s work!

The whole event lasted four days, allowing the baristas to develop some great relationships with the clients at the stands and observe the different coffee drinking habits of the attendees. They found that Italians favoured our cappuccinos (although as we know, in Italy it’s a crime to order one after 11am), whilst our French customers preferred a single espresso or a macchiato, and our English visitors reliably stuck to the flat white. The one uniting factor? They kept coming back for more.

What we delivered

Across the four days, we served just over 8,700 drinks. Here’s some stats:

The most popular drinks ordered were:

• 3,650 Flat whites
• 2,080 Cappuccinos
• 1,700 Americanos

And we used:

• 456 kilos of artisan roasted coffee
• 1855 litres of milk (including almond and soya)

Delivering reliability at every stage of the coffee service

The atmosphere at EAN was quite serious, as is usually the case in medical exhibitions, and when walking around the centre you got a real sense that something important was taking place. Having spoken with some of the attendees, it’s clear that these events are high-stakes for our clients, as it’s one of the few opportunities they have each year to showcase their work to the wider neurology community.

The biggest challenges we faced this year came before the event even went live, during set-up:

• The first issue we had on arrival was that we found ourselves searching around the different exhibition stands to locate all our kit, which it turned out had been put in five different places.
• The second challenge was that the water company hadn’t delivered six of our water tanks (we like to have two for each stand so that there’s never a break in service to refill). This was solved by going to a local grocery shop and getting six there – one of the more time-consuming jobs of the day.
• The third issue caused the most panic – a fault in one of our brand new grinders. At the end of the second set-up day, we had our baristas come in and dial in their machines so that we eliminate any potential faults and the coffee will be ready to serve straight away the next morning. However, on one of our stands, the coffee wasn’t coming out of their grinder at all (not a great thing to happen). But with our experienced crew it didn’t take long, quite a few people got involved and eventually the machine was up and running – and we generally take spare machinery to exhibitions for situations like this too.

Key takeaways

• Scalable delivery – Serving 8 clients at EAN 2025 proved our ability to our coffee catering service at complex, large-scale events.
• Hassle-free logistics – We handle equipment, stock, and staffing so organisers can focus on their audience.
• Premium service – Expert baristas and high-quality coffee elevate brand presence and keep guests engaged.

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