Boss Barista

This episode is full of laughter and joy, and shared moments of growth and reflection. On The Go Jo is a coffee company based in Chicago, Illinois. Founded by three friends—Crystal Graham, Toni Dale, and Quiana DeBerry—the business started out as a mobile coffee cart and has since expanded to a bustling e-commerce site whose reach extends well beyond Chicago city limits. In this episode, I chat wi...

What makes a great coffee? When we talk about food, drinks, and other agricultural products, our metric of goodness is typically based on visceral experience. We can taste it, smell it, and otherwise perceive markers of quality through our five senses. In coffee, quality is also equated with the experimental and the rare—a coffee processed in a new way, or a highly-sought-after varietal, is imbued...

Ask anyone here: If you come to Chicago, you have to go to Loba Pastry + Coffee . For the coffee, but also for the food: Loba goes well beyond the typical muffin or croissant options that you would expect to find at most coffee shops. Instead, it boasts a pastry menu that is both highly creative and technically ambitious. Valeria Taylor is the owner and baker behind Loba. “Loba” is Spanish for “fe...

Life is especially hard right now. We’re in the ninth month of a global pandemic, the days are getting shorter and colder and darker, and the dread of the current moment can sometimes feel paralyzing. Against that backdrop, how do you take a step forward in any direction—and how do you know if that step is right? The short answer is that, even though you can’t know the results before you start mov...

It’s hard not to picture it, once you hear the name: little waves lapping on the sand. Water rushing in between your toes. The warmth of the sun on your shoulders. An abiding feeling of calm. Areli Barrera de Grodski came up with the name Little Waves in a text message. She’s the co-owner and founder of the roastery and its accompanying retail locations, Cocoa Cinnamon, in Durham, North Carolina....

‘Sonder’ is one of those words you don’t hear often. It’s a noun, and it means, “The realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries, and inherited craziness.” And it feels sort of right that this word would be used to describe the experience of going to a coffee shop. Coffee shops are universal...

Hi friends, this is part two of a conversation with Rachel Northrop, freelance writer and PhD student about coffee markets. If you haven’t listened to part one, I highly suggest you do since a lot of this won’t make sense.  But just a quick recap—in part one, we talked about how coffee is traded, how contracts for trading coffee work, and what a coffee futures market looks like. Most of what...

I’ve been in the coffee industry for almost ten years. For most of that time, very pompously, I had this idea that I had seen it all—I’ve been a barista, I’ve been a manager, I’ve trained people how to make coffee, I’ve written about coffee. But there’s a part of the industry that I really, really don’t know much about— how coffee is bought and sold.  Coffee is in crisis. It’s been in crisis...

Coffee workers—or really anyone who has ever worked in service or earned tips as part of their wages—has likely been told a number of conflicting things about taxes. Declare your cash tips. Don’t declare your cash tips. Your tips cannot be taxed. You owe a tax liability at the end of the year. The varying narratives we’ve been told about taxes can be confusing at best, and financially harmful at w...

In this episode, I’m talking to Korie Pickett. Korie is a creative in the coffee world and finds ways to uplift and support other creatives. She’s the founder of Queen Spirit Magazine , which is described as for creatives, by creatives, and she’s also the guest editor of Issue Ten of Coffee People Zine . Coffee People Zine has always been a place for coffee folks to express their creativity. It wa...

If there’s ever been a wild wild west of podcast interviews on this show, this might be the one. I’m recording with my friend, Ian Williams. He’s the owner of Deadstock Coffee in Portland, Oregon, which is a coffee and sneaker-theme shop. There’s no other feeling like walking into Deadstock—you’re always greeted by the baristas, customers and staff clearly know each other well, and the space invit...

In her new book, COFFEEMILKBOOK , Vava Angwenyi tells the stories of coffee producers. Stories about coffee are often told by importers, roasters, and consumers—the narrative is about "the foreigner looking in." Vava is going to change that.  COFFEEMILKBLOOD uses Vava's own personal history and the stories of others living in coffee-producing countries. Brilliantly told alongside stunning pho...

In this special episode, T. Ben Grimm and I walk through the Glitter Cat application process! IF YOU LOVE COFFEE AND WANT TO LEARN MORE, YOU SHOULD APPLY ! Glitter Cat is a non-profit organization that provides free resources to baristas who want to compete in coffee competitions—every year, baristas from around the United States come together to show off their coffee skills in a number of differe...

Smayah Uwajeneza has a story like many of us do. She wanted to save money for school, so she began working in a cafe, and then found her passion for coffee through connecting coffee drinkers in Rwanda, where she’s from and is currently based, with the women who grow their coffee. Along with being the Head Barista at Question Coffee in Kigali, Smayah leads tours of co-ops and helps folks make conne...

On July 4th, Augie’s Coffee, which is a branch of five coffee shops in the Inland Empire region of California, announced that they would be closing their retail locations. They made this announcement on social media and cited concerns because of COVID-19 as the reason they were closing their doors. And because of the stores closing, they were also laying off 54 members of their retail staff. Howev...

This entire conversation started with a tweet. I was working on a story about coffeeshops and their historical place in society—as gathering places, communal spaces to share ideas or areas to come together and engage in community action. I asked a question about this, and Sarina Prabasi tweeted back at me: “I wrote a book exactly on this topic.” Sarina Prabasi is the co-owner of Buunni Coffee in N...

I’m honored to have two guests on the show today—Bartholomew Jones and Renata Henderson of Cxffeeblack. To say that Cxffeeblack is a coffee roasting company is an understatement. Cxffeeblack is a brand, an educational platform, a music outlet, an informative podcast, connecting the ancestral history of coffee to the modern day. Renata and Bartholomew, who are married and raising two children in Me...

This is part two of my interview with Ciera Young, owner of Mama’s Brew in Houston, Texas. Part one was originally recorded for the Matchbook Coffee Project podcast, so in part two, we dig deeper into the meaning of specialty coffee and why Ciera rejects that label for her own coffee roasting business. I’d strongly suggest listening to part one before you listen to this episode—we talk about Ciera...

As some of you know, I work with a group of people called The Matchbook Coffee Project. Every month, we team up with a roaster and give them complete creative control over a coffee—they choose how they want to roast their coffee, what the bag label looks like, and a unique piece of swag meant to represent something about them. This episode is sort of a hybrid between Matchbook and Boss Barista. Ci...

There is a lot of work that goes into learning how to make coffee. Learning how a machine works or making a great pour over or how to steam milk—there’s a lot to take in. And sometimes, learning how to make coffee can be sort of daunting. Usually, when you become a barista, skills are transferred through big establishments. First, you usually have to work in a coffee shop, and then you get trained...

There are a lot of reasons I continue to do Boss Barista, especially as the show has evolved and changed. One of the reasons is to connect with people I wouldn't have met otherwise. There are at least a handful of folks I know and consider my friends because of the show—people I've become closer to through interviews, through sitting down and having a really focused conversation. Doing this show h...

On May 12, 2020, Amethyst Coffee in Denver announced they would no longer be accepting tips. They increased prices 50%, and posted about their new policy on Instagram—the post got over 200 comments. The comments ranged in tone—from excited to inquisitive to downright aggressive—and almost every single comment or question was answered by one of the two owners of Amethyst: Elle Taylor and Breezy San...

Andrea Allen won the 2020 United States Barista Championship in February of 2020. Two weeks later, thousands of coffee shops and restaurants across the U.S. were closed because of COVID-19.  Andrea is the co-owner of Onyx Coffee Lab in Northern Arkansas, and has been navigating what it means to be a responsible business owner during coronavirus—the answer isn't always clear, and it's certainl...

I met Geetu Vailoor, owner of Union Coffee in Seattle, just a few weeks before the coronavirus would change all of our lives.  We talked a lot about employment - things employers do to support others, things they do to hurt their staff, and we were incredibly in alignment with a lot of ideas. Like, if this person were to be my boss, I feel like they’d...get it. I left that conversation feelin...

On the day I'm writing this—it's April 20, 2020, coffee shops and restaurants across the nation have been closed or altered their operations in some way. Millions of people have been laid off, and many of the folks who have lost their jobs are service workers—baristas, waitstaff, bartenders—many of whom rely on tips as a source of their income. In this episode, I'm talking to Adam JacksonBey, the...