Coffee is more than just a drink. It is an expression of cultural values and a vehicle through which we experience many different facets of this rich life. No matter where you are from, it is easy to think only of the our own way of enjoying coffee and then to never really explore how deeply rooted and significant coffee is around the world in cultures different from our own.
Well today we are going to balance the scales a bit and broaden our worldview of coffee by talking with the author of a new book all about global coffee culture, Lani Kingston!
Lani Kingston is a food consultant, author, and founder of F&B agency, Four Seasons of Food. Her first book, How to Make Coffee: The Science Behind the Bean, was released to international acclaim in 2015 and has since been translated into several languages. Her third book on coffee, Spill The Beans: Global Coffee Culture was released by international publisher gestalten in February 2022. Lani has written extensively about food and drink for varied publications and developed F&B products and brands around the world. Armed with a Masters in Food Studies, a Masters in Education, pastry chef, and barista qualifications, she’s spent the last 15 years working the breadth of the industry: she helped set up and ran the European offshoot of MAST Chocolate; led a food-waste-powered cooking school in Australia; set up a coffee company in Singapore; and worked with renowned chef Dan Barber at his prestigious farm-to-table upstate New York restaurant Blue Hill at Stone Barns. You can follow her adventures in food and coffee on Instagram @lanikingston, read more about her work at lanikingston.com, or get help with your f&b business at fourseasonsoffood.com.
In our conversation with Lani we will explore how her experiences in writing, the culinary world, and coffee have influenced and shaped her pursuit of giving readers not just information about coffee, but an understanding of it through exploring its meaning and the story of its expressions globally.
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Links:
Lani on Instagram @lanikingston
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I am so excited for this month's Founder Friday! Today we are talking with someone who has not only taken a passion and turned it into a thriving business that serves her community and culture with excellence, but has done so in the face of cultural challenges that, as a woman in Saudi Arabia, forced her to be creative in this pursuit. We are talking with the founder of Hjeen Coffee, in Saudi Arabia, Sarah Alakeel!
Sarah has been trained in and worked as a manager and founder of tech and e-commerce businesses before she discovered coffee and started her blog www.hjeen.com in 2016. The passion that she developed for coffee mixed with her business savvy came together to created what Hjeen is now, a growing and bustling roastery and wholesale business as well as with two cafes.
Sarah has been making waves in coffee for a while now and in our conversation with Sarah we will get to hear her story and how she has grown this business and the lessons she has learned along the path.
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One of the most common complaints I hear from owners and managers is related to staff not following policies of the shop. In many cases it is not just a simple mistake but a habitual ignoring of directives. Obviously this kind of thing spreads to other staff and you wind up with a situation where now the culture is combative and try as you might to give chances and show understanding, nothing seems to change.
Today on Shift Break we will be talking about this very common, and very unnecessary problem, and why backing up your policies is a must if you want to have consistency and a healthy culture in shop.
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Working in a coffee bar means working in close quarters with your fellow baristas, managers, and owners. In this daily work we will eventually begin to feel the tension and start to wonder about how we can set boundaries for ourselves so we can continue to work and still take care of ourselves. The subject of boundaries may be ruminated on but we often do not have a framework to help us organize our values, collect our thoughts, and actually take the first step in communicating with others.
Today I am thrilled to welcome back to the show frequent guest, Tom Henschel, who will guide us through how to accomplish all this and more.
Tom Henschel is an expert in workplace communications and executive development. Over the past 25 years, he has helped hundreds of senior leaders achieve The Look & Sound of Leadership.TM
His expertise as a communications coach has taken him into executive offices at companies such as Amgen, CitiGroup, Cedars Sinai Medical Center, City of Hope, Dole, HP, Intuit, Mattel, Raytheon, Sony Pictures, Toyota and Warner Bros.
In addition to coaching executives, Tom facilitates team events and delivers highly interactive trainings in the areas of effective communications, presentation, and influence skills.
Tom’s popular podcast, The Look & Sound of Leadership, airing since 2008, is consistently cited as “What’s Hot” in the business podcasts on iTunes.
Tom is a delightful persona and deeply wise coach and his insight on boundaries here on KTTS will add a ton of value to you and your buisness.
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As we all experience increased costs in the coffee shop the cost of our drinks and products will also need to increase. The major worry that many of us have is how customers will respond to this.
On today's Shift Break we will talk about how customer experience has replaced coffee quality as the main deciding factor for whether a guest will accept higher cost and how we can facilitate this increase to our experiential value.
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How you run things in the beginning of your cafe business cannot remain the same as you get busier and grow over the years. Many shops rely on what they have always done when confronting new challenges brought on by growth and the business of success. In the end, if you don't iterate and evolve your approach you will add needless stress, drop the ball, and miss out on the joy a growing business properly managed brings.
Today you and I get to talk about some keys to successfully handling the changes a new and growing business goes through so that you can enjoy the ride instead of being taken for one.
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How our coffee gets to us after purchase can sometimes be a confusing thing. These days, with global supply chain issues abounding, the need to understand, track, and finesse all aspects of logistics is at an all time high. One of the main areas to be aware of is LTL freight as well and planning for any issues that may come up as your coffee moves from farm to forklift.
This episode of RoR from Roast Magazine is designed to help us wrap our heads around LTL freight and the other issues of shipping that impact our roasteries as we talk with Evan Gilman of Royal Coffee.
Evan Gilman is an avid generalist and coffee lover. His 20 years in the coffee industry have taken him from barista, to trainer, to Q Arabica Grader, Q Assistant Instructor, and SCA-Licensed AST. Evan spent time in Southeast Asia getting to know the specialty coffee supply chain, from Sumatra, Bali, Flores, and Sulawesi in Indonesia, to Northern Luzon in the Philippines. His passions range from Balinese gamelan to heavy metal, from photography to communications design, and from baking to brewing. As Creative Director at The Crown: Royal Coffee Lab & Tasting Room, he manages community events and outreach, and curates the Gallery at The Crown. He is also the chief editor of the blog at royalcoffee.com, and curator of the Gallery at The Crown.
In our conversation we cover:
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This week on KTTS was basically "Logistics Week". When we talk about logistics and systems we naturally think about forming rules for how work is done that others can rely on for a predictable outcome. Trouble is, change is always needed to keep systems relevant, and being flexible or even training your team to be flexible is not an easy task.
On today's Shift Break we will discuss how to build in flexibility alongside our systems so we can respond to challenges quicker with more grace and not worry about change as a threat but embrace it as a natural part of the process.
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From the perspective of the cafe, the world of the roastery seems to be shrouded in mystery. Indeed, as we have said on the show before, roasting is practically its own business with its own ecosystem of relationships and systems. Todays guest is someone who began in the cafe and then dove in to that world and has since been creating intuitive solutions for both systems and the people they serve in the roastery. We are siting down to talk with Corey Turner
Corey (They/She) has done it all in 8 years of working in coffee. Barista, trainer, roaster, technician just to name a few. After moving to San Francisco from rural Virginia to pursue an MFA in poetry, Corey began work in coffee and has not stopped since!
Currently working for Andytown Coffee Roasters in San Francisco, California as director of coffee production & logistics, Corey works with an amazing team where they help scale the coffee menu, production, and wholesale.
In our interview today we cover a lot of different topics related to perspectives of managing relationships, building systems, and keeping on top of the inputs that drive the daily work.
This was a lovely conversation and I hope you enjoy!
Links:
Corey's Instagram @cor_tado
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"I just want to make coffee!" That thought has crossed all our minds at some point in our barista careers. In fact I remember clearly being reprimanded for my hyper-focus on the espresso machine at the expense of pretty much everything else. In reality, there are tasks and areas of the shop that require excellence just as much as the coffee we serve
Today on Shift Break we will be talking about how we can foster a mindset of excellence toward the things we hate so the whole cafe is cared for and we get to keep doing what we love.
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In the shop we serve people the product of our own training and understanding. We also sell them ideas of what coffee can be and our customers will frequently be frustrated at the gap of quality between the shop and their kitchen. This is where consumer coffee classes come in. Before the pandemic we were already seeing a rise in consumer education, but now it has truly gone from novel pursuit to an absolute necessity. I believe every shop should have some form of coffee class for their customers to help equip them to brew your roasted coffee well and also to deepen their appreciation for what you do every day.
In this encore episode from January of 2018 (the infancy of this show) we dive into this topic and I give you 7 tips for how to set up and conduct great coffee classes.
Please listen to the related episodes below for more on the importance of consumer education!
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