Blue Mountain Coffee Festival teams up with Ja Food and Drink Festival

Coffee has never been just a drink, so it felt perfectly fitting that on Blue Mountain Coffee Day, Jamaica chose to reimagine one of its most seductive exports not simply as something to sip but as something to experience.

That reimagining took centre stage Friday morning at the New Kingston offices of the Tourism Enhancement Fund (TEF), where the Jamaica Blue Mountain Coffee Festival unveiled a new collaboration with the Jamaica Food and Drink Festival (JFDF), a pairing that promises to turn coffee into culture, and flavour into feeling.

Come Saturday, March 7, the Blue Mountain Coffee Festival experience will unfold inside JFDF’s beloved Meet Street at Hope Botanical Gardens, transforming the gardens into a playground of taste, texture, and tempo.

“This is gastronomy tourism you can feel.” That was how Minister of Tourism Edmund Bartlett framed the festival — and it is hard to imagine a more fitting description.

For Bartlett, the allure of the event lies in emotion as much as excellence. “The power of experiences like this is that they slow people down,” he said. “They invite you to engage with Jamaica through the senses, through flavour, story, music, and human connection. That’s where real tourism value is created.”

Here, Jamaica Blue Mountain Coffee is no longer confined to a cup. It shows up in unexpected ways: infused into dishes, layered into desserts, shaken into cocktails, woven into wellness rituals, and reinterpreted by chefs and baristas who understand that coffee, like music or fashion, is about expression. It is slow mornings and late afternoons. Hot pours and cold brews. Steam rising. Glass clinking. Bass lines drifting through the air.

For Carolyn McDonald Riley, director of the Tourism Linkages Network at the Tourism Enhancement Fund, the festival’s appeal lies in its intimacy, the way it brings people close to the makers. “Our people are at the heart of this,” she said. “Our artisans, our farmers, our chefs, they are the stars.”

One of the most anticipated moments of the festival will be a culinary showcase where chefs debut innovative, coffee-infused creations, pushing boundaries and surprising palates. Members of the public will be invited to vote for their favourites, with the winning chef walking away with the festival’s Innovation Award, to be presented by Bartlett.

“It’s interactive. It’s creative. It’s fun,” McDonald Riley said. “And it allows people to experience coffee in ways they may never have imagined.”

Farmers, she added, remain central to the experience, with dedicated Farmers’ Day activities and curated coffee trail journeys into the Blue Mountains, immersive excursions that connect visitors to the communities, landscapes and hands behind every bean.

Adding a delicious layer of indulgence to the launch was Jacqui Tyson, the celebrated food aficionado tasked with orchestrating the coffee libations and titillating the taste buds, and she did not disappoint.

A multi-award-winning culinary force, Tyson is known for transforming ingredients into experiences. Her approach to Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee was no different, coaxing its rich, complex notes into inspired pairings and inventive libations that teased, tempted, and lingered.

It was a reminder that coffee, when placed in the right hands, becomes an invitation to slow down, to savour, to indulge.

For Alicia Bogues, director of the Jamaica Food and Drink Festival, the collaboration is also deeply about place and pride.

“We are so much more than sun, sand, and sea,” she said. “This is about establishing Kingston as the cultural capital of the Caribbean and the destination for festivals.”

Meet Street & The Market, a fan favourite for its pay-as-you-go freedom and electric street-style energy, provides the perfect backdrop as baristas, mixologists, artisans, and favourite eateries flirt with flavour and invite visitors to explore at their own pace.

It is casual, curated, and undeniably cool.

The Jamaica Food and Drink Festival runs from March 5 to 8.