Keys To The Shop : Equipping Coffee Shop Leaders

Workflow on the coffee bar is one of the most important things to design when considering how we will deliver excellent service and quality to our customers. Not only is it important to design your menu first and make the café design prioritize the production of that menu but you must also create clarity of responsibility within each station of that bar. On today's episode of Shift Break, we will...

Small things make a big difference in the coffee shop. Trouble is, that we tend to procrastinate addressing the natural falling away of doing small things well as we get busier, and those little actions and habits that create excellence end up atrophying causing big problems that are almost untraceable back to their small source.  On today's episode I am going to be giving you 1 small things to ch...

We all work hard and face challenges in the cafe. The way we interpret the effort put in to the work of running a coffee shop will determine both the quality of the shop and our own ability to sustain our energy and effort. The truth is consistent effort is a normal and necessary investment that keeps life flowing through the business.  On today's addition of shift break we are going to follow up...

The first place you're going to see burn out in the coffee bar is in the position of management. These lucky people are not only given the task to lead the team and serve them with their role, but they are also accountable to their bosses, creating a feeling of being caught between two different groups that they have to please in their work. Almost without fail I am asked by managers over email or...

Welcome to Part 2 of this special Coffee Fest live on the show floor episode! Interviews from Los Angeles 2024! Los Angeles was so amazing and we got to sit down with 4 amazing coffee professionals who were presenting at this show.  Today we will be focusing on improving your coffee and training skills with two experts! Anna Gutierrez and Sandra Elisa Loofbourow! Anna Gutierrez Beginning her coffe...

Welcome to Part 1 of this special Coffee Fest live on the show floor episode! Interviews from Los Angeles 2024! Los Angeles was so amazing and we got to sit down with 4 amazing coffee professionals who were presenting at this show.  Today we will be focusing on what amounts to a couple of mini-Founder Fridays with 2 cafe owners in the LA area providing ground breaking spaces and service! Shanita N...

We have to overcome many challenges in the day-to-day operations of the coffee shop. Some of these challenges are inevitable, and our ability to grow from our experiences with them is a mark of maturity that we can celebrate, but many challenges are unnecessary, and in celebrating our abilities to overcome them we unintentionally might be normalizing the dysfunction. On today's addition of shift b...

Much of what gets written regarding the reasons behind declining standards in the coffee shop focuses on the leadership and what they can do to facilitate success. Here at KTTS there are dozens of interviews and solo episodes dedicated to this very thing. But what does not get so much air time is the reality that if we are to see a rise in standards of leadership, we must also call for a rise in p...

The things we learn in community with others can have a profound impact on both us and our businesses. Certainly learning by yourself is a good thing, but there's just something about having a group of people who have your back and have been where you are and are your peers that creates a different dynamic where you can have accountability encouragement insights and be challenged on your assumptio...

Marketing is designed to get you to buy. It is something we all do in our businesses. In fact, to not market is to do the customer a disservice in that they will not be aware of the possibilities your product may have for their business. That said, sometimes marketing goes too far and without a well exercised discernment muscle we can fall prey to claims that do not, or can not, come to fruition. ...

To me, there is something special about the closing shift. Yes there is a lot of work, but there is an honor in tending to the place that just that day made such impact on so many. For most though (including me) the closing shift is at first just hard work that feels far from the world of coffee that drew us to work in the shop or open the shop in the first place. But in this mundanity is an oppor...

There are many great coffee shops and roasters in this world. What makes a great cafe in my mind is intentionality, a focus on kindness, consistency, hospitality, and quality as a pursuit in service of those things. Living in Louisville, KY I am fortunate to be only 2 hours away from one of my favorite places that I feel has consistently exemplified those virtues. Crema Coffee Roasters! Today on F...

Designing your coffee shop can be one of the most exciting parts of the opening or scaling process. Exciting, that is, until we come up against resistance to our great ideas in the form of space limitations, quirks, historic preservations, zoning, etc.  On today's Shift Break we will be talking about how we can  embrace the limitations and constraints of our spaces in a way that moves us from frus...

What is the "Best" coffee shop? As long as coffee and coffee shops have been around, us humans have been rather preoccupied with what the best coffee of coffee shop is. We have our own personal scale of judgment, then there are local popularity contests put on by city papers. Most famously over the past decade or two we have developed barista, brewing, coffee shop, and cupping competitions to dete...

Getting into coffee and then pursuing it as a career takes your through a few different phases of maturation. One of the first phases is where you focus only on one very specific thing to the detriment of many others. For me, the world could be on fire, but as long as I was behind the espresso machine and dialed in, all was good. Or so I thought.  On today's Shift Break we will be talking about wh...

When you start a business, pretty much all your attention goes to getting it up and running and then to keeping it going and growing it over the hopefully many years of its life. What we often do not plan on or put energy into how we will exit the business. Whether it is passing it on to or selling it outright, many are ill prepared to make this transition and when they do want to sell or exit, ar...

 When we talk about our employees it is common to talk about "setting up staff for success", but what does that really look like. Talking about it can sometimes wrongly convince us that we are actually doing it.   On today's Shift Break we will be talking about what it looks like to set your staff up for success in very practical terms that, if applied, will transform the relationship to one of tr...

Welcome to our special episode from Coffee Fest live on the show floor interviews from New Orleans, 2024! To start us off we will be talking with Turgay Yildizli of Specialty Turkish Coffee, followed by Doron Petersan of Sticky Fingers Sweets and eats, then a great conversation with Jonathan Riethmaier of Mammoth Coffee in New Orleans. Turgay Yildizli Istanbul native Turgay Yildizli, who now lives...

A shop is maintained by the attention and repeated actions we put into it. We need to make sure our systems and tools are crafted well in order to make sure these intentional actions and our best attention is circulated through the whole of the organization. Today we will be talking about 7 things that I believe should be standard in the work we do throughout the day. When we apply these tools and...

Growing the business is probably the number one concern in the cafe industry. In general we tend to look at growth as either scaling the size of the business physically, or the revenue and profitability. What if I told you there was another way you can look at growth? On today's Shift Break we will be talking about ways to look at growth that don't rely only on the usual defaults of revenue and sc...

Ever since 2020, we as a coffee industry have been looking for ways to create more resiliency in our businesses. The cafe in particular is vulnerable to a lack of resiliency. Not only is the coffee shop a relatively low margin and high effort entity with an ROI that can take years, it also relies on the public consistently investing in its products and services. In times of economic trouble, coffe...

Coffee is from Africa, yet the way we think of and enjoy coffee today is largely separated from the roots that produced that original fruit. The disparity we see in the value stream today, where those growing coffee do not receive the fruit of their labor, is the consequence.  Today we get to talk with someone who has been laboring hard to honor coffee's root in an effort to create a better future...

It is assumed that we should constantly be growing our businesses and looking to expand, scale, and add-to what we have now. Trouble is that, in today's abundantly resourced and optimized environment, we may actually be able to do so at rates that out pace our ability to become the kind of people we need to be to properly handle that growth. On today's Shift Break we will be talking about why your...

Every day in the cafe we are called on to communicate "in the moment". Whether we are baristas, trainers, managers, or owners ; how effective we are in those moments determines the culture and effectiveness of our business. Wouldn't it be great if there were tools and methods formed specifically to help you not freak out under the pressure of impromptu speaking but to be clear and confident instea...

Seeing results form your efforts is what motivates most all of us. In the coffee shop you are engaged with a dynamic intersesion of moving and living communities that take your efforts and reward you with sometimes obvious and sometimes not-so-obvious feedback. It's when we don't see the results happening the way we imagined that we can be tempted to simply abandon the effort and sometimes the bus...