Boss Barista

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 coffee pro behind GoFundBean. GoFundBean is a collection of virtual tip jars that serves as a nexus for people who want to help baristas who are out of work. That dollar that you’d usually tip for a coffee? You can go to GoFundBean and give it directly to one of the thousands of baristas who can’t work right now.

In this conversation, we talk a lot about GoFundBean and how necessary it is because so many service professionals make a huge chunk of their earnings in tips. But we also talk a lot about tipping in general. As Adam will talk about in this episode, GoFundBean isn't necessarily an effort one wants to be successful. It's one that has to be successful in order to keep people fed, help them pay their rent, but in an ideal world, tips—and the precarious nature of tipping in general—wouldn't be part of the service industry model. There's a lot of literature on the history of tipping, which we touch upon briefly in this episode, so you might want to give that a google search before you dive in, but if you're ready, I hope you leave this conversation with a framework to imagine a world without tipping—and what that could mean for the way we value and pay service workers. Here's Adam.

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’re going to break down what specialty is—and what makes a thing special—with Sahra Nguyen, founder of Nguyen Coffee Supply in Brooklyn, New York. Sahra was a filmmaker and owned a restaurant in New York, and often found herself in coffee shops that had some of the “signals” of specialty coffee. Coffees from a single origin, for example. She’d see coffees from Ethiopia, Honduras, Indonesia, and wonder, what about Vietnam? Sahra is Vietnamese and would see restaurants and cafes advertise Vietnamese Iced Coffee, but oftentimes found that people didn’t use coffee from Vietnam in their drinks.

As she questioned this—why would a coffee drink claiming to be from Vietnam not have coffee grown in Vietnam in it—she encountered some of the questions we have about specialty. Vietnam is the second-largest producer of coffee, and the first largest producer of robusta coffee, so why couldn’t she order a coffee from Vietnam in her local cafe?

Coffees from Vietnam don’t get talked about in the specialty market. You don’t see them winning barista competitions, and you likely can’t order them at most cafes. But if you’ve had instant coffee, Folgers, any sort of diner coffee—you’ve had Vietnamese coffee. So what is it? Why isn’t it talked about in the specialty world? In this episode, we explore what it means for a product to be considered specialty and ask, is specialty inherent, or is it created?

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 Instagram, buying coffee from our local cafes through their web stores.

Obviously, not everything has gone digital—a lot of things can’t—but it’s incredible to see the way that folks have been able to harness their online platforms to shift the way they do business or to interact with their colleagues and customers. And the way people communicate their shifting platforms and needs is through social media.

My guest today is Umeko Motoyoshi—Umeko has been on the show before, back in 2018. Umeko is a coffee writer, educator, and owns a webstore where they sell cupping spoons and other coffee tools, including a book called, The @wastingcoffee Guide To Not Waisting Coffee. And Umeko is great at social media—really great. They’ve built a brand and a voice that's authentic and accessible and communicates clearly what their platform is all about. Umeko is currently working with clients to help increase their social media presence during these changing times, and in this episode, we talk about how you can implement some quick and easy new systems to become more visible online—while still remaining true to yourself and using a voice that feels authentic and real. Here’s Umeko.

Cover photo by Noah Goodman. 

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 educational and fun and exciting is difficult, and it’s no surprise that the team at the Barista League thinks a lot about putting on a dynamic event that touches on both ends of the spectrum. The Barista League is a series of coffee competitions, usually a handful a year, that travel across the globe and provides enriching, community-driven events that are fun for everyone. If you go to a Barista League party, it can feel wonderfully chaotic and loose, which can hide just how much work goes into an event feeling effortlessly fun.

My guest today is Angela Ferrara, one of the folks who puts together Barista League events. Although these are coffee-specific events, the ideas that Angela touches on are universal to any industry looking to create tools for their community. In this episode, Angela talks about how she got involved in the Barista League - she was a competitor herself - and how that transformed into a role putting on some of the most interesting events in coffee.

It’s also strangely serendipitous that we recorded during the current global pandemic because the Barista League puts on events - which necessitate people gathering in places. But just last week, The Barista League announced that they would move to a digital competition—Angela has more details on this but it shows the power of their organization—and their ability to adapt and respond to the needs of a community in real-time. Here’s Angela:

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 take the population of Kansas City, around 400,000, and then extrapolate the number of baristas who are out of work in KC and apply it to the U.S. population, which is about 327 million, we get almost 100,000 baristas. Once more, this is unscientific, and something I did basically just by cross-multiplying.

As more and more people are laid off, who can baristas turn to for support? Some employers have been great at advocating for their furloughed staff, but other baristas are left in the dark. The Kansas City barista community decided to step in.

Today we’re chatting with Kate Blackman, a fixture in the barista community in Kansas City. She, along with her colleagues Ben White and Jerry Ponzer, organized a community tip pool, dedicated to giving aid to any and all baristas who have been affected by COVID-19. Every week, they do a tip split, and last week, they raised over $5,000 dollars and gave every barista who asked - which turned out to be 172 baristas - $32 dollars. And they’re working to get more folks to give more money.

You can start a community-grown support movement in your city. Kate lays out some of the tools they’ve used to mobilize customers and garner attention in the neighborhoods. Here’s Kate with more:

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 businesses are forced to shut their doors or find ways to limit interaction with employees and guests.

For the businesses still open, their mode of operation is fast changing, with a focus on ways to keep open while paying their staff and keeping people safe. One way the community has responded is by engaging with customers directly, making virtual tip jars and funds so service workers have a direct line to the cash they’re missing from not working or getting tips. A lot of these solutions are key, so how do we tie them together and make them fit a long term context?

My guest today is Kandace Brigleb of Needmore Designs, a branding studio that works with a number of roasting companies—they also have a podcast called Unpacking Coffee that you should absolutely check out. Kandace released a tutorial about how to integrate a tipping option to buying coffee online. She took inspiration from the non-profit websites, where there are multiple points of contact that urge folks to donate money, and in this episode, we talk about the ways to use design and technology to encourage not just regular tipping from our customers, but how to use technology to ensure you can keep—and pay—your staff.

One thing that I really love about this episode is that, for being a response to a swiftly changing global pandemic, some of the conclusions and ideas posed by Kandace are evergreen, and address a number of possible outcomes. The bottom line remains the same, however. We have to preserve as many jobs as we can, and that’s going to require us to get creative. Here’s Kandace.

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 address the virus as a passing hiccup, while others have already fired some of their staff anticipating slowing sales. So I called my friend, Trevor Gruehn, who is the owner of Bradbury’s Coffee in Madison, Wisconsin. As of today, March 17th, Bradbury’s is closed, but Trevor and his staff decided to shutter before there was a statewide mandate. I wanted to talk to Trevor because he was being proactive: he’s set up a virtual tip jar to offset the lack of tips his staff would receive, and he’s promised to pay his staff for the next two weeks, hoping that government relief comes sooner rather than later.

One of the other reasons I wanted to talk to Trevor is that he is my friend, and I wanted to push him. I wanted to ask him uncomfortable questions and figure out how other business owners can start to be more proactive with their response to coronavirus—and I wanted to push him on his responsibility. And personally, I also needed to talk to my friend, and assure him that I would support him the best way I knew how: by amplifying his voice, and potentially showing other business owners that there is a responsible way to act in this moment of uncertainty. 

BRADBURY'S TIP JAR: Venmo @bradburyscoffee ! 

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 captions, on her mother's urging, Arielle started a blog and shared her experiences working in the hospitality industry and being openly transgender. Since starting her blog, her work has morphed into speaking engagements and her website will soon host a marketplace for queer and trans artists to display and sell their work. 

Arielle works for Starbucks and she talks about the importance of signaling that a workplace is a safe space for queer and trans folks to exist. She also advocates for healthcare, and in general, is just very transparent with her life. I wanted to know about her work and about how coffee shops can be better advocates for trans workers. But I also wanted to know what it's like living in public—what it's like to be a person who shares their life on media platforms but still works to retain a piece of themselves as they walk through their journey in public. Arielle is easily one of the most talented writers out there, and you will learn something and be inspired by this episode. Here's Arielle.

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 the same conversation with him as I've heard on other platforms. 

I almost didn't have him on the show, but when I started talking to James—we had emailed a few times before we recorded—something strange kind of happened. James talked to me like no other guest ever has. He kept asking for my opinions and I gave them to him. I sort of realized as folks making media in the coffee industry we have a lot in common—and share a lot of the same struggles. 

This episode is an interesting dialogue exploring how you build on something like a particular moment. Maybe you make it into a career, maybe not. But there's also this tension with what you do with something that was so pivotal to your life—like winning the World Barista Championship—after over a decade of trying new things and finding what works and what doesn't. The struggle is never over, and we talk about ideas of perception versus reality, especially when you live a public life and folks have ideas already formed about you. We also talk like, a lot, about money and in general just kind of touch upon what it's like being human. So I'm going to keep it as is, without interruption. I hope you enjoy. 

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 where money was going. Tartine has grown A TON in the last few years, and with so much aggressive growth, it can be hard to understand why your wages haven't gone up, or how shops across the globe keep opening, but your wages stay the same.

In response, that following Monday, so that's February 10th, Tartine declined to recognize the union. They call the way the union presented their letter as a "threat," they question the motives of the union, and they cite that there has been "bullying on the internet," tarnishing the reputation of Tartine. 

We talked to two members of the Tartine Union the day after Tartine released their statement. Now the issue of unionizing goes to a vote—everyone who works at Tartine will vote via secret ballot, and as that happens, Tartine management can do things like hire "union experts," and the workers of Tartine can continue to rally—which has been happening and local politicians have joined their organizing efforts.

The reason I lay this all out is because there's a lot happening—and we're in the middle of it. There's a lot of push and pull in terms of who controls the narrative and what's actually happening. And as you listen to the folks I interview—Emily and Mason—I want you to think about the goals of a union, and why the leaders of Tartine might not want a union—and how that dictates their responses and the way they paint the narrative.