Amid the thrum of the bean grinder, the hiss of the steam wand and the drip of espresso at Kafiex Lab in Vancouver, Seidy Selivanow began yet another rehearsal of a coffee-creating performance she has been perfecting for months. “Today, I’ll be sharing with you not only my story but a story about connection and transformation,” she said while wiping the espresso machine’s portafilter with a cloth. “Coffee has that power.” Selivanow won first place in a March qualifying competition in Denver, making her the top-ranked barista on the West Coast. She’s aiming to beat 35 other competitors at the U.S. Coffee Championships in Portland on April 22 and 23. A win for Selivanow would earn her a spot to represent the United States in the worldwide competition. She’d be the least-experienced barista in the U.S. to achieve that honor. This is only her second year of competing, but already she’s making a splash in the coffee industry. The performance “compares to a Michelin-star restaurant where the chef is creating something fantastic to serve,” she said. Selivanow buys her coffee from Finca Santa Cruz in Chiapas, Mexico, her home country. The milk for the coffee is freeze-distilled multiple times to enhance creaminess and flavor. The cups for serving match the Mexican theme, along with the music and even the outfit that Selivanow will wear during the competition.

All of the elements integrate into the story she will tell while she creates three coffee drinks at the competition: an espresso, a cappuccino and a drink-of-choice mixed coffee that Selivanow hasn’t named yet. “Through our drink, I make a connection with the whole entire coffee chain,” she said. “It’s a transformation of flavors of coffee, what would be like turning red wine into white wine, kind of like a little bit of magic.” Two types of judges will be observing her and the other contestants — one to rate their barista technique and the other to assess the coffee drinks they produce. A former judge of the competition has been training Selivanow. Selivanow was born in Mexico City, where she studied and worked in culinary arts. She moved to Portland in 2010 for a job as an au pair. A few years later, she met her husband, Matthew Selivanow, whose parents owned a coffee shop in Orchards. Seidy Selivanow began helping out around the cafe, and it sparked her love for coffee. The duo began roasting beans in their garage and selling them at local farmers markets. They opened Kafiex near Esther Short Park in 2018, and their second location at The Waterfront Vancouver in 2021. Matthew Selivanow is also participating in the competition as a roaster. He and the other competitors will be roasting coffee beans on the same brand of roaster on-site, but they won’t know what kind of coffee until the first day of the competition.

After the competitors test roast the coffee, they will create a roast plan with flavor notes. The roaster who most closely matches the predicted flavor notes to the final product gets the highest score. Matthew Selivanow has been practicing on the competition roaster, a brand called a Stronghold, in Portland for months. It’s the only one in the Northwest that he knows about. “There is another guy in Texas I’m nervous about,” he said. “He owns his own (Stronghold) machine, and he got first in preliminaries and qualifiers.” Matthew Selivanow placed third in the preliminaries and fourth in the qualifying competition for roasting. “Both Seidy and I are new to this,” he said. “But Seidy would be shattering so many records being in her second season if she won in the second year. There’s more pressure on her.”