"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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It's Founder Friday once again and I am thrilled to shine a light on someone who has built their business on a heart for people, relationships, and an offering of accessible quality coffees. Today we are talking with the founder of Drip Coffee NYC, Nigel Price!
Nigel left a career in finance to pursue opening his own coffee shop. Once he was immersed in the industry he realized there was much more to doing this successfully than just having a good business would prepare him for. He spent 10 years working in great coffee bars learning and growing his perspective, skills, and concept.
He launched Drip Coffee Makers NYC 3 years ago as a focused mobile multi-roaster cart popping up all over the city. From there he opened his first brick and mortar in 2020, thrived in the pandemic, and now has a fleet of 4 stores and a growing community of committed customers and fan across the city and the industry.
Nigel has a calm and clear passion for people and coffee that has been at the heart of Drip and it's success and today we are going to hear the story of how this all came to be along with some very important insights into entrepreneurship that you will be absolutely key to your own success and fulfillment in coffee.
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"We don't speak Starbucks" I cannot tell you how much damage phrases like this have done over the years. More than just creating hostility at the register with customers who don't speak the same "coffee language" as us, it also sets the stage for more hostility and misunderstanding with customers whose culture, language, or abilities are literally different from our own.
In today's shift break we will be discussing the importance of fostering a desire to serve through understanding and how we can overcome language barriers of all kinds with the right mindset and resourcing.
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The system works exactly the way it was designed to work...and it needs to be broken. This is the goal of a new model of coffee trade introduced by Andy and Nanelle Newbom through their company Torque Coffee.
Andy and Nanelle Newbom are life long coffee professionals who have been foundational in helping establish the standards for transparency and excellence we know today. With their iconic roastery and retail company Barefoot Coffee they helped pioneer Direct Trade, Andy was a founding member of the Barista Guild, and they both have been work in roasting / importing companies since then where they are consistently pursuing equity and systemic change for an industry who's distribution of value is drastically lopsided.
Recently they have launched a new model of trade based the idea of what they call "Proportional Pricing" with their company Torque Coffee.
In this model they seek to give to break the system and replace it with a framework that pays the farmer a set percentage of the coffee's retail value upfront. It really is a great idea and in today's conversation we will get the inside scoop on how this came about, how it works, and what you can do to adopt this model in your roastery.
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Welcome to part two of a live series of interviews conducted on the show floor of Coffee Fest Chicago in June of 2022! In these interviews I sit down with stellar presenters and lecturers to dig deep into a range of relevant and important topics that will help make you and your coffee business better.
Today we will be talking with Marissa Childers, co-founder (along with Ethan Darla) of Tanbrown Coffee, a roastery dedicated to re-writing the narrative about Asian coffee and Asians in coffee. In our chat today we dive into the topic of the current narrative regarding asian coffees and other marginalized origins, and how roasters and shops can help make a difference through highlighting the nuances and complexities those origins have to offer.
To learn more about Tanbrown visit:
Next we get to talk with Jess Gulino who wears many hats at La Terza Coffee. One of her focuses is in branding and helping shops create expressions that resonate with customers and the shops values. In this chat we discuss lots of relevant questions you might have when approaching branding and Jess helps us guide us to more clear understanding of what may be right for you.
Learn more about La Terza Coffee here:
Finally we get to have a conversation with the great Tony Dreyfuss who, along with his father, founded the iconic Metropolis Coffee in Chicago! In this discussion we cover what goes into an effective training program and Tony gives us insight into how they have honed their own program from nearly 20 years of experience.
Learn more about Metropolis Coffee here:
Be sure to tune in to listen to part 1 of this series if you have not already!
HEY THERE!
If you are looking for resourcing, clarity, inspiration, and just a really fun experience then I would suggest attending Coffee Fest Trades Shows!
You can get 50% off your registration by using the code KEYS when registering you and your team at www.coffeefest.com
Welcome to part on of a live series of interviews conducted on the show floor of Coffee Fest Chicago in June of 2022! In these interviews I sit down with stellar presenters and lecturers to dig deep into a range of relevant and important topics that will help make you and your coffee business better.
Today we will be talking with Luke Waite of The Lev Co and Pomelo Coffee Consulting all about how roasting operations can increase profitability and clarity around their mission.
Learn more about Luke's work here:
Next we chat with Kris Christian who is the founder of Chicago French Press. In our conversation we discuss her story of building a business to make coffee more accessible, black entrepreneurship, and the need for resourcing to continue to see that sector of small business thrive.
Learn more about Kris and Chicago French Press here:
Lastly we get to sit down with Mark Calhoun and Jim Starcev of Perfect Cube. Mark and Jim have been on the show before to talk about data and metrics and in this interview we focus on how and where businesses can get started on the right track to financial tracking and health.
Learn more about perfect cube here:
Be sure to tune in to part 2 of this series where we talk with another three wonderful coffee minds at Coffee Fest!
HEY!
If you are looking for resourcing, clarity, inspiration, and just a really fun experience then I would suggest attending Coffee Fest Trades Shows!
You can get 50% off your registration by using the code KEYS when registering you and your team at www.coffeefest.com
In coffee, we like to see ourselves making progress and we check our state against certain metrics and goals that we believe, once reached, will transform our business and as bring satisfaction.
Today on Shift Break we will be discussing vanity metrics and why some of the feedback and status we seek through them will more likely lead to stress and fear, than joy and fulfillment.
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Communicating, educating, and training boils down to how well you can connect with people to walk with them through information and transformation. If you want to be effective in these areas you need a whole lot of genuine passion and a desire to not just teach, but also to learn. Not many people in the industry embody this as much as today's guest, Michael Tan.
Michael is a 13 year industry veteran who rose up in the ranks from barista, manager, trainer, even opening his own coffee shop for a time. These days Michael is hosting events and educating scores of baristas in Malaysia as the wholesale trainer for JWC in Kuala Lumpur.
In our conversation today we get to trace Michael's journey in coffee with an emphasis on the lessons he has learned in communication, training, and customer education. We also discuss the importance of language, humility, context, and always learning.
Enjoy!
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It happens in cafe all over the world. Baristas are hired on a trial basis to see if they are a good fit for the business. On the surface, this practice seems logical and, no doubt, may yield some positive results. But...I believe the practice of trial basis hiring brings with it more negative results than positive.
On this Shift Break I will go over some of my thoughts on why trial basis hiring may be a bad idea and what you might want to practice instead.
Be sure to visit the links below to learn more about good hiring and training practices.
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Many shops make sense on paper but in practice there is something missing. There are lot's of unseen barriers to progress and success in your shop that get in the way of the best plans no matter how you rearrange the staff, equipment, hours, ingredients, etc.
Today you and I will be chatting about five barriers to progress that are present in a ton of cafes around the world and how once addressing and removing them will not only throw the doors to progress in your business but will bring you and your staff to the next level of fulfillment in your work.
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I have heard many times from owners that they need to be the best barista in the shop. The idea is that if they are not, then the staff will not respect them and it would compromise their leadership. As you might guess, this is a bit misguided.
In this shift break we get into the details of how to think about your skill level in the work you oversee vs the work that your role as a leader requires you to do and why knowing the difference will save you from putting all your effort into areas that do not produce the kind of return you want to see.
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What are some of the qualities that potential employers most value in a barista and why are they important? Today you and I will chat about the answers and how they make a significant difference in how you are perceived and how you find fulfillment in a job. These are not just qualities that let you stand out in a sea of applicants but they are traits that maximize your opportunities in your coffee career. Certainly we could talk about far more than six but these are truly foundational and led to you developing many other traits that create magic in the cafe.
Be sure to take time to listen to the related episodes below, follow @keystotheshop on Instagram and Subscribe!
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We all hate when a shift is slow. It can feel demoralizing, boring, and frustrate even the best barista. What if these times on the bar are not all bad though? What if instead of seeing these times as a waste, we saw them as an opportunity.
Today on Shift Break we will be talking about the slow bar shifts that we dread and how to use them to grow our knowledge, skill, and maturity as coffee professionals.
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study the rules
Laziness & the Most Important Decision
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Operations management is a distinct from cafe management. At a certain point in your coffee business’ growth it become necessary to have someone whose job it is to manage managers and oversee the operations of the retail shops. This is a critical role that is as much about leadership as it is about decisiveness and and systems. Today we will be learning all about what goes into being a successful operations manager with Ryan Fisher of Erewhon Market, L.A.
Long-time coffee professional with experience and knowledge throughout the entire coffee supply chain. Creative and passionate with an extensive network built through a decade of competing, serving, and judging competitions globally including the Cup of Excellence, US Barista Competition, and Cherry Roast.
He has been at the helm of several shops as a manager as well as the Operations Manager for the famed goodboybob Coffee Roasters. Currently he is the Coffee Program Director for Erewhon markets in L.A.
In our conversation today we go through Ryan’s evolution as a leader in the cafe and then as an operations manager and all that he has learned along the way. I guarantee you will walk away from this conversation with some awesome insights for your own management journey!
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It's time to go back to an amazing episode of Founder Friday that teaches us about the power of taking risks and listening to what your heart is saying about your business. Back on episode 43 we interviewed Kathy Turiano of the multiple Good Food Award winning and roastery in Rochester, NY, Joe Bean Roasters. Joe Bean was founded in 2005 and has gone through several transformations but has always served the community through coffee and stayed true to their values in the process.
In this episode you will hear all about their origins and their first transformation and I hop you will be encouraged by Kathy's example, wisdom, and insights so you too can find the courage to make a move in the right, but maybe scary, direction for your own coffee shop.
Please do also listen to episode 207 where Kathy comes back to talk about hope is difficult times around the pandemic and what their latest and current iteration is.
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How long does it take to see a change take root in you coffee shop? Well, turns out it all depends on how long you have been operating and how large the company is. When we don't take the dimensions of our business, trying to make a shift or just keeping things on the right path can be very daunting.
On today's Shift Break we will be talking all about the turning radius of your cafe and how to prepare for and navigate it effectively for its size.
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As long as it has been around, coffee has always attracted creative and artistic people. Whether it is the coffee shop serving as community gathering spots or just the coffee itself inspiring expression, coffee fuels art, music, culture, and human connection. Today we are going to be talking with an artist whose music career has been focused on covering the truth of these subjects and whose own discovery of specialty coffee has helped shape his work, mindset, and mission. We are having a conversation with hip hop artist, Propaganda!
Propaganda grew up in a working class black family and lived in a predominant Latino neighborhood of LAThere was a sense of multiculturalism from the very beginning and Prop saw how one personʼs problem could very similar to that of another person.
For Prop, music is way to create conversations about substantial entities that impact us on a daily basis and to see how faith can help guide us along the way.
After he graduated college with degrees in illustration and intercultural studies, he taught high school for six years and had a hand in founding two charter schools in LA, one of which had a focus on the arts.
2007 he resigned from teaching to pursue music full-time and began touring as a solo artist. He joined the Humble Beast family and unveiled a series of four albums that put his music on the map.
Prop fell in love with coffee while on tour and has since been a coffee entrepreneur, enthusiast, and advocate even producing 2 Sprudgie award winning coffee focused songs, "If Coffee was a Man, and "Calibrate"
This is a wonderful and deep conversation about music, cultural authenticity, courage, and the cup of coffee that brings us together.
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How do I motivate and inspire my baristas? I get asked this question a lot by owners and managers desperate to see excitement and vibrancy in their cafe culture vs aone of slow, uninterested, and minimal participation and engagement.
Today on Shift Break we will explore 4 steps you need to walk through in order to inspire your staff and make the dream of that vibrant engaged culture a reality.
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In order to have a profitable and consistent coffee shop you need to track and keep your data in order. Whether is labor, expenses, or COGs- spreadsheets are an essential tools to help you build a stable business.
On today's episode we sit down with frequent guest of the KTTS podcast, Maxwell Mooney of Narrative Coffee to talk about his top pieces of advice for using making and using spreadsheets.
Maxwell has been in coffee for well over a decade as a barista, manager, and competitor who then turned entrepreneur with the launch of Narrative Coffee. First he had a cart, then a wonderful brick and mortar, and now a second location. In these five years of operating, growing, and refining Narrative, Maxwell has been guided by his values for quality, hospitality, and community, all supported by systems.
In this conversation we cover:
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It feels like we need to constantly be growing and producing something new or else we risk looking like a failure, or that we lack ambition. The idea that we always need to be expanding and taking on new things is a flawed one that often submarines our chance at finding fulfill ent fro what we do.
Today on Shift Break we will be talking about how sometimes we need to sacrifice productivity for the sake of our health and why appropriate growth is better than constant growth.
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Brewing a great cup of coffee is what we all strive to do daily. Over the years, our own understanding of how to do this well has grown as the body of literature and content regarding brewing science has increased. Most recently one such resource has been published from someone who has applied their expertise and scientific rigor to the subject of brewing coffee, thus creating one of the most thorough treatments on the subject to date.
On today's show e are talking with the author of the new book, "The Physics of Filter Coffee", Jonathan Gagné !
Jonathan Gagné is a scientific advisor at the Rio Tinto Alcan Planetarium in Montreal, and adjunct professor at Université de Montréal. He completed his Ph.D. in astrophysics in 2015 and moved to the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C. for a 3-year postdoc as a Sagan Fellow. He came back to Montreal to start a second postdoc at the Institute for Research on Exoplanets before he was hired by the Planetarium. Jonathan's expertise is focused on brown dwarfs, young stars, exoplanets, and stellar associations. He uses various telescopes throughout the world to carry his research, from the Observatoire du Mont-Mégantic in Québec, the Infrared Telescope Facilities in Hawaii and Gemini-South in Chile.
In his free time, Jonathan is also passionate about coffee brewing and has dived deeply into all many aspects of how physics affect coffee preparation for pour overs and more recently espresso. He maintains a blog of his findings and understanding of coffee physics at coffeeadastra.com, and he is the author of the book The Physics of Filter Coffee.
This is a wide-ranging conversation that addresses many of the key elements that impact our brewing and how we can apply practical solutions to create wonderful coffee both at home and at at scale in the shop
We cover:
Links:
Jonathan's Blog : www.coffeeadastra.com
Jonathan on IG: @jgagneastrocoffee
Buy the book! The Physics of Filter Coffee
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How do we get customers to buy coffees they will like? This is more or less the question I was asked by a client recently in regards to bean purchases and I feel it also speaks to other decisions the coffee shop customer will make in beverage, food, etc.
Today on Shift Break I will give you the answer I gave my client on how to help customers find beans they will like. From there we will talk about my philosophy and approach on up-selling as an important feature of hospitality vs an opportunistic grab for revenue.
Related episodes:
227 : Connecting with Hearts and Minds
092 : Tony “Tonx” Konecny of Yes Plz : Consumer Accessibility, roasting, 3rd wave, subscription
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How specialty coffee has evolved, understood, and enjoyed has changed greatly over the past 50 years. Today get to talk someone whose career has not developed in parallel with the coffee industry but has been instrumental in advancing some of the best aspects of it. I'm thrilled to have bene able to sit down with the great Kenneth Davids!
Kenneth has been involved with coffee since the early 1970s and has published three books on coffee, including the influential Home Roasting: Romance and Revival, now in its second edition, and Coffee: A Guide to Buying, Brewing and Enjoying, which has sold nearly 250,000 copies in five editions. His latest book, 21st Century Coffee: A Guide, is an unprecedentedly thorough survey of specialty coffee in all of its aspects, authoritative yet engaging.
Ken’s workshops and seminars on coffee sourcing, evaluation and communication have been featured at professional coffee meetings on six continents.
He is Professor Emeritus of Critical Studies at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco. In 1996 he was awarded a Special Achievement Award for Outstanding Contributions to Coffee Literature by the Specialty Coffee Association of America.
One of our industries most influential people. Kenneth’s work has shaped multiple generations of coffee enthusiasts and professionals and in this sense an hour conversation is woefully insufficient to give you even idea of the breadth and Kenneth’s journey and work but here we are and I can honestly say it was true honor to speak with him and to feature his wisdom and perspectives on this show.
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https://www.kennethdavidscoffee.com
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Management absolutely means you have the opportunity to affect change in the coffee shop. It also mean you have a responsibility to make sure the current operation is running smoothly and that the basics are taken care of. Often we favor the change over the stewardship and that is where we can get in trouble.
Today on shift break we are going to be chasing about the difference between what you want, what is needed, and how doing things in the proper order can and often does allow for both.
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226 : The Art of being Indispensable at Work w/Bruce Tulgan
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