Shavi placed 33rd in Europe's 100 Best Coffee Shops

In its first edition, the Europe's 100 Best Coffee Shops ranking placed Shavi 33rd.

How it was judged

More than 5,300 coffee shops were assessed by more than 250 expert judges.

The panel looked at:

• the quality of the coffee
• barista skill
• atmosphere
• willingness to try new things
• involvement in the local community

Expert scoring made up 70% of the final result and public voting the other 30%. So it is neither purely a professional verdict nor a popularity contest.

Worth noticing: only one of those five criteria is about coffee. The rest are about people, the room, and how you feel while you are in it. We think that is the right order.

What happened in Brussels

Three of the team went to World of Coffee: Levan, our country manager, Nika, our roaster ambassador, and Ruslan, our head roaster in Georgia.

Ruslan won the Stronghold Roasting Competition while he was there. He entered to get his hands on the technology rather than to win: the Stronghold roasts with radiant heat from halogen lamps, which behaves quite differently from a conventional drum. He came home with a colourimeter for roast analysis as the prize.

And one happy coincidence

At the show we ran a pop-up on Rocket Coffee Milano's stand. The queue there formed for our Churchkhela Blend.

The pairing was not accidental: we know Rocket at the level of daily work rather than as two brands sharing a booth - in Uzbekistan we are their official distributor and service centre.

Back in Tashkent

The ranking is about Europe, but the same coffee and the same standards run on our bars at Buyuk Turon and Shota Rustaveli. Come in and score it yourself.