Profession: Barista
A routine that is anything but routine
If you think a barista's craft involves only making your coffee on an espresso machine — which supposedly does all the work itself — you are very much mistaken. A barista works with food and drinks in a place that usually welcomes dozens of customers an hour. What does that mean? Naturally, keeping the café so spotless that a visiting health inspector would feel embarrassed about the state of their own office.
That means cleaning, washing and more cleaning, both at the beginning and at the end of a day behind the counter. On top of that, a sleepy barista often has to check each morning that the machine makes espresso just as well as it did yesterday, and that the milk froths as beautifully as ever. We happen to think this is a definite perk of the job: at least it keeps your caffeine levels steady...
A flower for your cappuccino
Once the café opens, it is time to prepare coffee for one guest after another, and another: lattes with a dozen varieties of delicious 100% natural syrups, cappuccinos and quick espresso shots. Sometimes a morning filled with cup after cup seems never-ending. You can liven it up with the latte art that coffee lovers enjoy so much. After all, nothing brings a smile to a guest's face quite like a heart, flower or swan drawn in milk on their morning cappuccino. Of course, you first need to train your hand to create delicate patterns on a liquid surface. And if you think that sounds easy, try drawing two parallel lines on your latte at 7 a.m. without resorting to a few choice words at least twice...
But what matters most in a barista's work? People who have spent a good part of their lives juggling espressos say that a barista must like coffee, but must like people even more. Without a positive attitude towards every customer, even the grumpiest one on a Monday morning, a barista could lose faith in humanity by latte number fifteen.
From a young barista's diary...
What is life like behind the scenes? What hair-raising situations do your morning coffee masters face each day? It turns out there is not much that can seriously raise the blood pressure of someone making their two-hundredth espresso of the day. Unless you call it... you know. #EXPRESSO. According to the BLUEBERRY ROASTERS team's recollections, just a few years ago “expresso — that large (!) coffee from the machine” was the most frequently ordered drink in many cafés...
From apprentice to master
Only a decade ago, the barista profession was strongly associated with running between tables carrying a tray full of coffee. Many people therefore confused a coffee master's work with that of a waiter. Perhaps that explains why the idea persisted in Poland that being a barista offered, to put it mildly, little room for development. What could making funny milk pictures or brewing “that little, very strong coffee from the machine” possibly do for your future?
Yet some people chose to perfect latte art and the coffee industry's other guilty pleasures instead of filling in Excel spreadsheets. And do you know what? They achieved worldwide success. One of them is Agnieszka “Rojes” Rojewska, whose infectious passion for coffee in every form helped her win the 2018 World Barista Championship — the most prestigious competition in the coffee world!
So if coffee excites you, you dream of painting milky patterns on soy lattes, and your guilty pleasure is sniffing freshly ground Kenya Nyeri beans at night, do not feel guilty. Perhaps the barista world is just waiting for you to make it your life's work.