Keys To The Shop : Equipping Coffee Shop Leaders

Welcome to the new series produced in partnership with Roast Magazine, "Rate of Rise: Elevated conversations on Roasting"!  Every first Friday we will be interviewing roasting experts from around the world to discover wisdom and insights that will help you thrive  in your roasting business. In this inaugural episode we are going to be talking with the amazing Anne Cooper or Equilibrium Master Roas...

Last Shift Break of 2020! As this year wraps up and we set our sights on the next there are a few things I believe we would greatly benefit from focusing on in order to build resiliency and a thriving business. Today we will be discussing a few of these things and why focusing on them can transform your shop for the better!   Related Episodes: Systems as Care Bridging the Values-Action Gap 004: Le...

This year has been a mental and emotional test of endurance like no other. Add to the pandemic the already existing stresses and pressures in the cafe as customer face professionals and you get a perfect storm of both feeling the need for mental health wile simultaneously feeling helpless to actualize it. Even though mental health has been top of mind, it can be hard to move it from a "Should" to...

Connection with our audiences has never been more important. How do we go about truly delivering value and building a strong community that resonates with or message all while staying true to our core "why" ? Well, today we are going to be talking with and learning from someone who has cultivated all of those things and has created the largest online coffee following in the world as a result. Toda...

One of the most counterintuitive ways to make progress in the right direction just may be slowing down your decision making and response time. We are bombarded with pressure everyday from all sides to make decisions about a myriad of subjects both large and small. Often we will resort to making quick decisions in the moment that we might regret later. In today's Shift Break we will be   talking ab...

It's Founder Friday! Today we are visiting the wonderful city of Bangkok, Thailand as we have a very interesting and inspiring  conversation with Varat Vichit-Vadakan. On top of being the 2014 barista champion of Thailand, Vichit or "Tae" as his friends call him, is the founder of Roast Coffee & Eatery and Roots Coffee Roaster in Bangkok, Thailand. Over the years he has expanded to many other food...

Making decisions on the way things go on the bar can seem like a pretty easy thing to do once you are convinced as the leader or owner. The trouble is when you do not make your decisions with empathy and deference to the barista and how they will perceive it or how they are even able to accomplish it. This lack of regard and impatience produces a lot of stress and bad blood that can be avoided. To...

When we talk about equity we often we are just scratching the surface of what is going on deep in the structure of the coffee industry. Today's guest, Phyllis Johnson has dedicated much of her career to bringing to light the deeper generational inequities that hold people back. Her new book, "The Triumph: Black Brazilians in Coffee" profiles two families whose inspirational stories are rewriting t...

Oooh boy - This is a phrase frequently used often in coffee to determine whether or not an employee is exceptional or not. It is also a mentality that we use on ourselves to determine if what we are doing is worthy of praise or earning our keep. Going above and beyond may be a nice and generous thing to do, the problem though is when becomes a tool to unfairly judge employees and to unfairly judge...

This is an especially important time of the year for coffee shops. The holidays are where our hospitality skills are put to the ultimate test.  In the midst of COVID lockdowns and never before seen strains on small businesses, the holidays are a great opportunity for us to more deeply establish our commitment to each other and to the customers through how we show up in the cafe. In today's episode...

Sometimes, when we are convinced that something needs to change in how we do things, the biggest obstacle is the pain of the change process. In effect it is the discomfort of detoxing and introducing something new or better that prevents us from seeing any substantive change take root. Today we are talking about this problem and how pain in the process a necessary apart of helping us make positive...

Actions are the products of mindsets and not all mindsets are beneficial. In fact, there are a few very common and very dangerous mindsets that will actually sabotage your success without you even knowing it. We will call it fate, the universe, circumstance but in actuality it could just be a problem in our minds.  In today's episode we will going over what I believe are some of the more perniciou...

I am thrilled to present this amazing conversation w/ Klaus Thompson to you all today! The Coffee Collective is at the top of a very short list of the world's best and most influential roasters.  Today's guest, Klaus Thompson, is not only a Danish barista champion but is also the 2006 World Barista Champion. In 2007 Klaus, along with his co-founders Peter N. Dupont and Casper Engel Rasmussen, foun...

It is very easy for us to slip into a place where we start to seek approval from employees through trying to just be "one of the gang". Put another way, we want to be likes and as a result we become ineffectual bosses creating relational messes in the cafe.  In today's episode we will talk about how you are NOT just one of the gang, why that is a good thing, and how to pull yourself out of that st...

How coffee is processed after the harvest is integral to whether or not it reaches its full flavor potential. Farmers depend on their crop's quality and consistency but all too often what happens during processing produces inconsistency and a less than full realization of that coffee's potential. Enter today's amazing guest, Lucia Solis! Lucia, specializes in "microbial demucilagination", or the u...

We all have a collection of little things the annoy us, and the customers in our shops. What we don't talk about very much is the result of all of the little problems accumulating over time and what it would be like if they were not there. Today we will be discussing how your shop can benefit from the impact of absence. Related Episodes: Working clean Fix the small stuff "It's not my Job" & Self-S...

These days community and connection are needed more than ever. There can be many hurdles to creating opportunities for having events whether in-person or online, but how we go about planning and execution those events does not have to be one of them!  For 6 years The Barista League has been at the forefront of what it means to produce a community driven and community connecting event in specialty...

There comes a time in every service encounter where we need to decide to take the high road. Re-making a drink when there is a mess-up is one example of many that highlight an attitude we need to have toward service that will produce the best possible experience. Unfortunately, we (myself included) can sometimes default to pettiness rather than advocacy and generosity.  On today's shift break we w...

When we think about cooperative ownership related to the coffee shop we tend be fairly unsure what to think of it.  Even though we tend to fear it as an unknown, it is actually a viable option to help secure your business and also to generate stability for your employees.  In today's episode we are going to explore this operating model by talking with Christopher Feran and Shane Hinde of Phoenix C...

As the saying goes, "The grass is always greener on the other side." We all know this to be true in one or more areas of our lives. In the coffee bar we can tend toward always comparing our selves against what others have or have accomplished with their careers or their shops. In today's Shift Break we are going to dive into this idea further as I give you some thoughts I had while pondering profe...

The main job of leadership is to give people the resources they need to do the work. Generally speaking, I have simply stated that staff need the tools to do the job. Today I want to go a little deeper and cover 5 elements of resourcing that must be in place for your cafe to work well. If any one of these thing is out of whack it will show up big time in the final product and experience.  We will...

Part of the work we do entails some pretty gross things. In today's episode I will be reading 8 selected stories submitted by listeners about the grossest things they have experienced while working to bring great coffee to the people.  Story order: Dropping the Load Backed Up Bar Clean up in Everywhere Isle Elbow Room French Roach  "Take Out?" Coffee Rabid Fire When Urine Trouble    Links to relat...

The best Kenyan coffee tends to be exported to other countries. Spring Valley Coffee flips this on its head by sourcing, roasting, and serving the best for themselves and the local Kenyan community. Today we are going to be exploring this wonderful company's history, evolution, and impact as we talk with Ritesh Doshi! Ritesh is the CEO of Spring Valley Coffee, Kenya's oldest premium coffee roaster...

Stay in coffee long enough and it will happen to you. The assumptions and dogmas we make when we first get into coffee are challenged or destroyed, and we are sent into a dark place of wondering who we are, and what we really even know about coffee. Today we are talking about how this moment every professional goes through is critical to maturity and should be more common for the health of the ind...

Your business is built on partnerships. One of the most critical is the relationship between you and the coffee roaster you select. Entering into this relationship needs tp be done pretty methodically and the decision should be based on more than on just branding and your personal taste.  Today we are going to go over 10 things to consider when deciding on a wholesale coffee provider that will hel...