Keys To The Shop : Equipping Coffee Shop Leaders

We often talk about charitable assumption and being proactive to address the needs of our guests. But how often are we considering the way we approach the relationship between owners and managers? There are a lot of expectations going both ways but not always a lot of understanding.

Today on Shift Break we are going to talk about how if we can lean into communication and the spirit of mutuality then I am going to guess a lot of bad blood can be avoided.

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141 : The 27 Challenges Managers Face w/ Bruce Tulgan

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229 : 7 Tips for New Managers

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Custom branded mobile apps for your shop!

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Good intentions are nice and all, but how do you make sure that you can actually deliver on your ideals for quality, service, and beyond? The answer is systems. Unfortunately many shops are organizationally flying by the seat of their pants and delivering an inconsistent and frustrating experience. A well developed set of processes, lists, and procedures will give consistency to the standards we strive to offer our baristas and guests as well as aid us in developing a culture where people feel confident and cared for.

But how do we create, establish, and refine systems and processes so they serve our shops and people well? That is exactly what we are going to cover today in a pretty thorough examination of the steps needed to make and launch systems in your cafe.

We cover:

• Beginning mindsets and assumptions
• Leaders role
• Observation and feedback
• Rules for prioritization
• Writing for detail and for realism
• Training, coaching, and refinement
• Advice for both the new and existing shop

Related episodes you must listen too!

329 : How to Teach Company Values to Your Staff

123 : The 10 Essentials of a Barista Manual

080 : Changing things in the Cafe : A workflow for Refinement

057 : SOP's FTW! Success through Standard Operating Procedures

007 : The 4 Keys to an Effective Checklist

Feedback Culture : Making feedback a part of what you do not just something you sometimes do

The Impact of Absence

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When the customer first walks in the what do you think about them? Well chances are your immediate thoughts will be based on your assumptions formed in conversation with fellow baristas and the inside jokes we have at their expense. Yes, customers can say and do very similar things but why is our default to seek out ways to dismiss and make a caricature of them rather than trying to serve them with the benefit of the doubt as individual?

Today on Shift Break we are going to talk about the problem with our natural tendency to train our brain to react to and think about customers in ways that ends up creating an unfair and less than stellar coffee experience.

Related Episodes:

Gossip: How this toxic element destroys community in the coffee shop and what to do instead

019 : 10 Reasons to Love the Customer w/ Chris Deferio

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329 : How to Teach Company Values to Your Staff

Visit our Sponsors!!!

The best espresso machines in the world!

www.lamarzoccousa.com

Custom branded mobile apps for your shop!

www.espressly.co

It's pretty easy to write our a set of company values. But how do you teach them in such a way that your staff own them and live by them? Now THAT is not easy. If you want to teach your staff the company values so that you are confident that they know, understand, and act according to them, even if you are not there, then todays episode is for you. We will be talking with about the five tips and methods needed to teach values effectively to your baristas and create a culture the lives those values out every single day.

We cover:

• Creating meaningful values
• Your daily example
• The tools you use
• Cultural saturation
• Speaking the language
• Seeking connections to values
• Being open to change focus

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One of the questions I get asked a lot by consulting clients is when they should instal or think about hiring a manager. I see lots of coffee shops get into the mindset that they "should" have a manager but I don't often see people give competing reasons other than it is part of the coffee shop structure they see elsewhere.

Today on Shift Break we are going to chat about a couple reasons you should delay the installation of a manager and why doing so will help you make a better management decision when the time is right.

Visit our Sponsors!!!

Custom branded mobile apps for your shop!

www.espressly.co

The best espresso machines in the world!

www.lamarzoccousa.com

Navigating our way through the coffee industry can be a daunting task. Especially if you want to make a difference. As you go you are confronted with many challenges that threaten your stability and test both your resolve and faith in the reasons you began the journey in the first place. Through it all though, there is a kind of wisdom, strength, and perspective that you gain if you use your experiences, good or bad, as opportunities to refine yourself, what you do, and why you do it.

Today we are going to be talking with the co-founder of Metric Coffee in Chicago. Xavier is someone who has had all these experiences and more working in the heart of the specialty coffee world since the early 2000's as a barista, roaster and roasting manager, and now for the last 8 years founding and running his own roastery and cafe space along with business partner, Darko Arandjelovic.

Metric Coffee was born from a common desire of both founders to create a better way for themselves and for those producers they represent as roasters. A Good Food Award winning company, Metric definitely roasts and sources excellent coffees, but the relationships and commitment they develop along the way with producers is a hallmark of what makes Metric truly special.

In today's conversation we are going to hear Xavier detail his own beginnings in coffee, growing in skill but also restlessness, developing resiliency through personal and professional trials, and of course the values, mission, and motivations behind starting Metric Coffee.

This conversation gets deep and hopefully speaks to your heart and mind and gets you to see the world around you and your business in a clearer light.

We cover:

• Developing values early in life
• Learning as a roaster
• The catalyst fo beginning Metric
• Revelations via relationships
• Using your position to build solutions
• Developing resiliency through hardships
• Personal responsibility and not blaming others
• Why it's not a race
• Iterating the mission
• Long term relationships
• Intuition and who to work with
• Inspiration to pay it forward through business
• Having a serving heart
• Representing the coffee well in a cafe
• Resourcing staff
• Defining success

Related Episodes:

Sustainability Series #2 : Importing & Roasting

060 : Serving the Coffee Plant w/ Hanna Neuschwander, World Coffee Research

265 : Gaining Clarity on Transparency w/ Jonas Lorenz of The Pledge

020 Joe Marrocco : Transparency, Origin Knowledge,and Your Shop : How to approach and apply coffee origin information to enhance, not detract, from the cafe experience

288 : The Truth behind Cheap Coffee w/ Karl Weinhold

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Today we get to talk with a pillar and foundational member of the specialty coffee community, Phuong Tran of Lava Java

For 20 years now Phuong Tran has been the owner/operator of the famed coffee shop, Lava Java in Ridgefield Washington. There she discovered a passion for coffee that led her to not only craft the shop into a beacon of hight standards in the beginning of the 3rd wave of coffee, but she also became inspired to begin competing to in barista competitions as a way to improve. She won the U.S. title in 2005 and amidst the notoriety of the win simply continued to run a great cafe and teach coffee to her staff and through the SCA.

I am lucky to consider Phuong a friend who I have known since back in 2006 or so. I have been inspired by her consistency, focus, values, and the simplicity with which she runs her shop and crafts her life.

Today we get to explore her story from buying a business, discovering specialty coffee, and taking on new challenges - to competition, teaching, and advice to other owners from her extensive experience.

I hope you really enjoy this one!

We cover:

• Beginning coffee as an owner
• Buying an existing shop
• Learning the industry and taking on challenges
• Changing and refining things at the shop
• Establishing standards and finding specialty coffee
• Motivation for Competition
• Winning the U.S. Title
• Scaling to a 2nd location
• Choosing simplicity
• Self care and balance

Links:

www.lava-java.com

Recommended Episodes:

305 : Founder Friday! w/ Andrew Sinclair of MadLab Coffee, Los Angeles, CA

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252 : Founder Friday w/ Klaus Thompson of the Coffee Collective, Denmark

232 : Founder Friday w/ Blew Kind of Fanny Lou's Porch

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As we set out in our coffee journeys as either entrepreneurs or professionals within a company, we tend to seek out and cultivate groups of people around us who offer affirmation almost exclusively. Not matter what we are doing, the mindset we have and therefore the mindset we want other to have is to only offer positive and encouraging words. Trouble is that sometimes those words can cover up real needs that should be explored which makes some encouragement irresponsible.

In today's Shift Break we are going to talk about this personal echo chamber and the need to pursue reality in the face of our own and others misguided desires to keep us far from it.

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Visit our Sponsors!!!

Custom branded mobile apps for your shop!

www.espressly.co

The best espresso machines in the world!

www.lamarzoccousa.com

The smell of coffee is one of the great joys in this life. As professionals we take this important sensory aspect of coffee and build tools and protocols around it so we can fully and accurately assess a coffee's quality and ultimately serve something consistently wonderful to our customers. In order to do this we need to bring balance, calibration, and objectivity to the personal tastes and experiences we all bring to the cupping table.

Today we on the Rate of Rise series from Roast Magazine we will be diving into this subject of scent and calibration with the author of the Jan/Feb 2022 Roast Magazine article "Exploring Scent", Sandra Elisa Loofbourow!

Sandra is the Director of Coffee Content for The Crown, a certified Q Grader and Assistant Instructor, and a Q Processing Generalist. She brings with her a depth of experience as a roaster, green buyer, and barista. Sandra is co-host of the bilingual podcast Cafetera Intelectual and chair of the Good Food Awards Coffee Committee.

In this conversation we cover:

• Journey of honing her own sensory skills
• The role of scent
• Passion guiding sensory pursuits
• Emotions and scent
• Why this sense is underdeveloped
• Consensus and price discovery
• Bringing objectivity to personal experience
• How big does your circle of calibration need to be
• How we are always calibrating
• Le Nez Du Cafe
• Having clear goals
• First steps and resources to improve your sense of smell

Links:

https://royalcoffee.com/the-crown/

https://www.cafeteraintelectual.com

Subscribe to Roast Magazine! Use code "ROR" to get $5 off

Related Episodes:

RoR #1: A Conversation w/ Anne Cooper of Equilibrium Master Roasters

RoR #2: Exploring Quality Control w/ Spencer Turer of Coffee Enterprises

RoR #3: Making Contingency Planning a Reality w/ Andi Trindle Mersch of Philz Coffee

RoR #4: Practical Thermal Dynamics w/ Candice Madison of Royal Coffee / The Crown Oak

RoR #5: Time and Color in Roasting w/ Morten Munchow of Coffee Mind"

RoR #6: Buying Less and Doing More w/ Ever Meister

RoR #7 Illustrative Sample Roasting w/ Mike Ebert of Firedancer Coffee Consultants

ROR #8 How Post-Harvest Processing Impacts Flavor w/ Siva Subramanian and Byron Holcomb of Olam Food Ingredients

RoR #9 Inside the Roaster's Tool Kit w/ Kat Melheim of Black and White Coffee and The Coffee People Zine

RoR #10 : What Your Broker Wishes You Knew w/ Scott Merle of La Minita Coffee

Everyone's favorite coffee culture commentator and meme lord, Alan Jarrar is in the house! If you are like me and follow the account "50%Arabica" on Instagram, you know full well that there is more to the funny content than what you see on the surface. There is a world of professional coffee experience and philosophy that fuels not just the great memes at 50%Arabica but now the great coffee being roasted by Alan and his partner Kalliope at Jokes Aside Coffee.

Alan has been in coffee for the last ten years honing his craft as a coffee professional at various coffee bars and roasters in the Czech Republic where he has lead the bar, trained, managed, and roasted at a high level.

He is a past competitor and is currently running Jokes Aside Coffee Roasters with his Partner, Kalliope who also owns Faine Coffee in Brno.

After a successful first year, Alan and Kalli are in the midst of planning to open a new espresso bar in their home of Brno along with a production facility.

In our conversation today we will get to hear how Alan found coffee, developed as a barista, then roaster, competitor, and eventually business owner and an influential voice in the industry. Many different subjects and ideas are covered here as we get under the surface of what it means to have a thriving career in coffee and to have a sense of humor along the way.

We cover:

• History of coffee in Brno
• Alan's entry in to coffee
• Early impressions of coffee
• Becoming a professional
• Learning to roast
• Experience in competition vs real cafe work
• Change of perception of the industry
• Starting 50%arabica
• Memes exposing the truth
• Humor as a tool for openness and self care
• Customer sophistication
• Memes overcome our barriers to feedback
• Starting Jokes Aside Coffee
• Lessons in being a business owner
• Plans for the future
• Advice for a great coffee career

Links:

www.jokesasidecoffee.eu

@50%Arabica on Instagram

@JokesAsideCoffee on Instagram

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Founder Friday! w/ Adam Obrátil of Industra Coffee, Brno, Czech Republic

031 : Essential Advice for New Baristas : Tips to help you successfully navigate and thrive in your new coffee career

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www.coffeefest.com