Boss Barista

Take a minute to think, “what does specialty coffee mean to you?” If you work in coffee, it might mean one thing, if you don’t work in coffee, it might mean another. The word “specialty” implies something unique, different, something that makes it different than just regular coffee, right? For something to be a specialty item, something else that’s decidedly NOT specialty has to exist. Today, we’r...

Just a note, this episode does talk coronavirus or COVID-19, so if you don’t want to hear about that, you should skip this episode. So much of our lives have moved to the internet. Because many of us are at home to prevent the spread of coronavirus—and many of the businesses that we love have been shut down—we’re interacting online more. We’re creating virtual coffee shops, hosting happy hours on...

One of the best times I’ve ever had in my coffee career was at an event where I played a coffee-version of Family Feud. I was on a team with former guests Alicia Adams and Erica Escalante, and we played this silly game on stage with folks cheering us on and having a good time. Thinking about community events for an industry is an interesting challenge. Balancing the tone between useful and educati...

Just a note, this episode is about coronavirus or COVID-19, so if you don’t want to hear about that, you should skip this episode. A few days ago, someone told me that 144 baristas in Kansas City lost their jobs. This is self-reported data, so it’s wholly unscientific, but it led me down a pathway to try to figure out how many baristas have lost their jobs. Again, this is unscientific, but if you...

Just a note, this episode is about coronavirus, or COVID-19, so if you don’t want to hear about that, you should skip this episode. News about the current global pandemic is changing quickly—every day, there’s a new story, a new piece of information. In that same span of time, the service industry has morphed drastically. With orders across the globe to shelter in place, or to avoid crowds, small...

I’ve seen a variety of different responses to COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, in the service industry. Because of how contagious the virus is—and how long it takes for symptoms to show up while a person is contagious, the service industry, in a matter of days, has changed completely. I wanted to understand the variety of responses I’ve seen from businesses. I’ve seen some ad...

Sometimes you have an idea. And it sparks another idea. And another. And another, and soon you've created something greater than perhaps you could have ever imagined. It ends up touching more people and doing more good than you could have ever hoped for.  That's what happened to Arielle Rebekah Gordon when she started her blog, Trans and Caffeinated . After writing beautiful Instagram caption...

This was not the episode I intended to share.  My guest today is James Hoffmann, the 2007 World Barista Champion, co-founder of Square Mile Coffee in London, author of the book The World Atlas of Coffee , YouTuber , and overall one of coffee's most recognizable superstars. James has been on other shows. He's been interviewed a hundred times and honestly, I wasn't super interested in having th...

Here's a quick timeline of events for the Tartine Union. On Thursday, February 6, the employees of Tartine presented their managers with a letter of intent to unionize. It was signed by roughly 141 people or about 2/3 of all of their Bay Area-based employees. Essentially, they were asking for a seat at the table—a chance to negotiate their wages, have a say in decision making, and know more about...

Before we start this episode, a quick warning - this episode will be dealing with the bush fires in Australia, as I mentioned at the top of the episode. We’ll be talking a lot about trauma associated with natural disasters and loss, so if that’s a topic that you don’t want to listen to for whatever reason, feel free to skip this episode. The bushfires in Australia started in June of 2019. Fires ar...

Some of you might know I belong to a group called the Matchbook Coffee Project. Every month, we work with a roaster to release a once-in-a-lifetime coffee, and then we give them total control over how the coffee will be presented. Instead of roasting for the companies they work for or a specific audience, this is their chance to do something fun and weird and find touch points to connect the coffe...

A few weeks ago, I asked listeners to send me voice memos—and you did. Lots of them. Some were happy, some were sad, some were about a specific topic - at the time, I really wanted to learn about tips and how they affect your life as service workers. And one of the voice memos I got was from a barista in Memphis named Laurel Moreland. She joins us, along with Courtney Paige Harrough, to share thei...

One time, in the midst of a sorrow-filled rant about my bosses and work, one of my friends told me I was unemployable. So I asked him—Brandon Epting—to come on the show and explain the weirdest compliment I’ve ever received.

We're working on some big episodes dropping around the holidays, but in the meantime, here's one of my all-time favorite episodes. 

Right now, as of December 2019, coffee is being traded at $1.05 per pound. And yet, when you go into a coffee shop, it can feel like prices are way higher —and sometimes vary wildly depending on the coffee shop you go to or the bag you pick up. How does coffee's journey from farm to retail shelf affect the cost it incurs along the way? We decided to dive deep into the world of coffee prices. Featu...

How do you tell a customer about what's really going in your life? Today we talk to Camila Coddou of Barista Behind the Bar about what it means to have a meaningful conversation with patrons—the folks who keep the service industry alive, but often don't know much about the issues affecting workers. Learn more about her project, in partnership with Coffee at Large , about patron engagement and enco...

Hey friends, we're taking a break this week BUT we have a special treat for you! I've been lucky enough to know Lucia Solis for a few years. She consults coffee farmers all around the globe, helping them improve their processing methods and think critically about fermentation. All coffee goes through some sort of fermentation, and not in the way you think. Lucia is a fountain of knowledge, so she...

In the U.S., the federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. 29 states have set a higher minimum wage than that, HOWEVER all by 6 states have a tipped minimum, or an amount that’s lower than minimum wage that you can pay your staff if they also receive tips. Rules vary on how little an employer can pay state by state, but in general, when we think of minimum wage, we think of lowly paying jobs, and for...

Welcome to the first episode of the Boss Barista Roundup!  On this show, I ask experts, writers, and you—yes, our listeners—to send me messages, voice memos about a topic, and together, we’ll take a hard look at a big question. And I wanted the very first episode to be about a topic I never stop thinking about: tipping.  I am obsessed with tipping. It’s something I’ve written about, commented on f...

Everyone has had a bad boss. Everyone has probably had multiple bad bosses. I had one boss tell me I was inauthentic and that he hated me, I had one tell me he couldn’t give me more money after he promoted me, I had two, a married couple, get a divorce in the middle of the cafe and put all the employees right in the center. And I too, have been that bad boss. I’ve been too overbearing, too nitpick...

If you work in the coffee industry, you might have heard of the coffee price crisis . To put it simply, we are not paying farmers enough money to grow coffee. And it’s not a little bit of money—we’re not even paying enough for farmers to cover their costs to produce coffee. It’s not just that farmers aren’t making money, but actively losing it by continuing to grow and produce coffee. This is a pr...

Speaking in generalizations or platitudes is annoying. Really annoying. But sometimes easy or necessary. Think of phrases like, “go with the flow,” or “everything happens for a reason.” These statements mean NOTHING—they can even go so far as to be insulting in the wrong context. When folks ask what this podcast is, I end up relying on some—even though I want to tell them how complex and fascinati...

Sometimes I wonder what you folks think about interviews. What you think about the guests, what you think about the questions, what you internalize and take with you as you put your headphones away and think about what you’ve just heard. This interview with Sasha Wheeler is one of the most nuanced interviews I’ve ever aired. Sasha is a trans woman based in New Orleans—she built her first roaster w...

Do you know that feeling when one memory sparks another? I was in Austin, Texas, recently, at a brewery called Austin Beerworks. I went to the bathroom and there, in a small basket, were tampons, pads, and hand sanitizer. Then, I went to another brewery—I was there for my day job as a producer of podcasts for a beer website—and there was the same set up. Tampons, pads, hand sanitizer. Seeing these...

This summer, Rancilio set out to host the Ramp Up Tour , which featured sessions on espresso tech, espresso theory, and a community panel about careers for baristas at every date. The tour kicked off in Chicago, and Rancilio reached out to have me host a Boss Barista session, so obviously I said yes. This event let me put together a short presentation about how baristas can become their own advoca...