This comes ahead of my predictions for this year, which will be out in a couple of days.

I made five predictions last year, and if anything, I was just continuing proof that humans are bad predicting the future.

So let's let's dive into one by one.

What I thought would happen Production number one, was that high prices would drive down quality in green coffee.

Now, on the face of it, this looks just incredibly wrong because 2018 was a year where in the sea market, the commodity market price, that kind of global benchmark coffee's value well, that was incredibly disgustingly abhorrent.

Li Lo.

It was a bad year for for copies, price and value on dhe.

Therefore, it seems like I'm just horribly, horribly wrong here.

What I will do is try and grasp it a straw to salvage a point, which is that competition has driven down quality a little bit.

I think that we have certainly seen some roasted start to buy slightly lower qualities to remain competitive and try and retain some margin in their business as high levels of competition are driving down price.

But, well, I think we've seen a small drop in quality.

I don't think I necessarily predicted the correct lever that caused that to happen.

Prediction.

Number two predicted some problems would happen when Amazon and Whole Foods coming mushed together and and coffee got caught in the middle.

This waas flat out wrong.

It's been a weird year.

Families, and not a great year in many ways, I suppose a good year on others.

But on this point, I was just straight up, flat out wrong.

It kind of weird me out how little has been done, really to amalgamate whole Foods.

And I wasn't certainly from what I'm seeing eso just straight wrong.

Let's move on.

Prediction.

Number three was that people would start taking coffee that was grown in China more seriously.

Now I think I was right, but also maybe have a couple of biases here.

Firstly, I included China in the second edition of the World out of coffee that came out in 2018 on.

In addition, square mile roasted and sold its first coffee from China Now.

This also, however, gave me in a particularly interesting insight into consumer behavior.

This coffee sold incredibly well.

People were extremely interested to taste coffee from China.

People had expectations.

I've also seen several other quality focus roasters in the UK and around the world start offer some of the better coffees coming out of the Union province in China.

There's some people working pretty hard to export some good stuff there.

So on this one, I feel reasonably validated.

So, yeah, let's move on.

My fourth prediction was that some very quality focused businesses in the UK with great acclaim would disappear.

Now I'll be honest.

I thought it would be a slightly roughy here than it turned out to be.

There seems to be a great deal of hesitation in the market still, but yes, in some cases, sadly, I have been proven correct here.

What I'll do, rather than name individual names is linked to in the description below a map maintained by God.

Call Phil Wayne off the closed specialty businesses in London, and the bottom of the map is the most recent ones.

And if you have a little look through.

I think you'll see some businesses that many of us were surprised to see.

Go now.

This may be feels like cheating because there's a constant churn in business anyway.

You know, some businesses open some presents disclose every year.

There's nothing shocking about predicting some businesses will close.

So if you don't give this one to me, if you feel like that's really wasn't earned show, that's okay.

Maybe give me, like, 1/2 point.

And then my fifth prediction was that cost a would make its specialty move now remains protection because cost A really seemed to be struggling.

They're like, for likes work, we're down.

Their growth was really only through new stores, and they needed to do something.

I didn't predict that there would be bought by Coca Cola for nearly $5 billion.

That was kind of a surprise, but it's definitely cost of making its play to retain its relevancy on to find new avenues for growth so its sale takes it out from the holding company was under which is Whitbread, into being part of Coca Cola, who will turn it into, I suspect, a very widely distributed brand off bottled coffee products costed it Currently do any pre bottled ready to drink products?

I'm pretty sure Coca Cola is gonna slap that brand on bottles of cold brew bottles off ice latte is whatever it's gonna be on, put that into their distribution system, which is probably the best in the world or beverages.

So, yeah, I think Acosta is going to see some pretty good growth in the next couple of years.

They're probably not in its cafes.

And that was my predictions for 2018.

In summary, I'm gonna have my prediction for 2019 out in two days.

So if you'd like to subscribe, there's a little thing that you can push him.

That's nice.

Let me know your thoughts.

Let me know if you couldn't feedback on my predictions.

I feel like I did okay.

I mean, I got one just flat out horribly wrong, but I feel like I was definitely in the ballpark on some other stuff.

Predictions are hard, but it's kind of fun, You know what I mean?

Like, this is kind of fun.

So I look forward to sharing my 2019 productions with you soon.

I hope the year had started well for you as always.

Thank you so much for watching.

And I hope you have a great day.