Discord in a new shop - your opinions appreciated!
Allow me to spin for you a tale of barista woe. Sort of. Well, that's why I am spinning it, to get your take on things. It is somewhat long, but should you be engaged enough to read it all, I would appreciate some sort of response - thank you in advance!
So in my area, a brand new shop opened up and hired on myself and a couple of barista friends of mine (approximately a month and a half ago), and we all love coffee enough to want to pursue the best of it that we are able. The partners opening the shop have zero experience working in coffee retail of any kind, though one of the owners has a little bit of experience in coffee as his family owns some plantations in Guatemala or some such. Bearing that in mind, we were hired on not only to work in the shop, but to lend them our experience and advice for all things coffee related. When hired, we did not know what coffee they would be serving or much else about the place other than the location, but as this was going to be a small privately owned business, we were optimistic that with our guidance, we could ensure that we would at least acquire some quality coffee to sell and serve (there are several third-wave roasters that are near enough to supply us).
It was apparent from the first day that our hopes for a shop aimed at supplying fresh, quality coffee to the public would not be satisfied. Our coffee is being supplied by an extremely generic semi-local roaster. It is certainly not the worst coffee we could be serving, but it is truly the height of second wave mediocrity. Additionally, we are serving all of the noisy whipped-cream topped things you can think of, smoothies and blended coffee drinks and all that. We started out serving 20-oz "cappuccinos", but quickly did the best we could to fix that, convincing them to get at LEAST 12-oz cups in. We also have the least useful grinder ever conceived; you can't adjust the grind without opening the thing with a screwdriver, and it can only grind in full giant batches, without even allowing one to manual stop it. The brewers likewise can not brew custom batch sizes without re-programming the whole thing; we can only brew drip coffee in enormous batches.
Last and likely worst, someone came in and set the grind on our regular and decaf espresso grinders, and we were essentially told not to tamper with the grind. That's right, we are not supposed to dial in our espresso. Wow.
Now on to the more personal bad things and the controversies. One of the other baristas they hired on is an older guy. He ran his own coffee "kiosk", that is, like a trailer in front of a Home Depot, for 14 years. His habits are absolutely terrible, and he denies, basically, that anything you can do actually has an impact on the coffee. For example, he pre-grinds the espresso and leaves it sitting in the dosing chamber for hours on end. He (for some reason I still can't figure out) refuses to refrigerate his milk pitchers, even after we have explained to him why this is a good idea. Besides the pre-ground espresso, the most hands-on of the owners (the one with a "background" in coffee, hereafter referred to as "Stan") and this guy, who I will refer to hereafter as "Al", have a monopoly on running things as cheaply as possible. This includes pre-grinding the espresso, using the same grind for our drip coffee and french presses, and NOT dumping out the giant urns of coffee even after they have sat for two hours.
One of my friends who works there, who I will refer to hereafter as "Linda", is as dis-satisfied with this lack of quality standards as myself and other friends, and one day, while working with Al, she blatantly dumps out all of his pre-ground espresso, sparking a war that is still raging. Al demands an explanation, and Linda and myself explain to him that the industry norm is really to not pre-grind espresso, and that it is commonly accepted that within 3 to 10 minutes after grinding, the espresso has basically been destroyed. Al disagrees.
I mull this over with a friend of mine (hereafter referred to as "Mac") who runs a third wave shop nearby (where I prefer to hang out and get my coffee, and additionally a good friend of mine works there). He basically says that, as a barista, I ought to take Stan aside and explain to him why quality standards are important, why not to pre-grind espresso, and that I personally am not willing to serve people drinks made of stale espresso and whatnot. This is not a conversation that I look forward to, as I am not a fan of confrontation, particularly with my boss.
Anyway, Mac was of course right. The next day at work, I bit the bullet and pulled Stan aside. I say I have been meaning to talk to him about the "pre-ground espresso thing", and tell him that there is no faster way to deteriorate the quality of a bar drink than to pre-grind the espresso. What followed was just about the worst response I could think to have gotten (besides being fired, of course). I'll spare you the totality of the thing, but here are some bullet points:
*The customers can not tell the difference
*Not even I, personally, could tell the difference between hour old pre-ground espresso and fresh ground espresso, because "you have to be born with that kind of a pallet, it can't be developed" and "very few people can taste such a minute difference" This was the only thing he said that I found to be personally insulting, as I can of course tell the difference between old and fesh-ground espresso, as pretty much ANYONE can.
*He was actually planning on getting a cheaper espresso, because of course nobody can tell the difference, and save the "good" espresso for our more 'coffee-savvy' customers
*The coffee we are serving is of such a HIGH quality that it can sit pre-ground for several hours without deteriorating in quality, and similarly our drip coffee can sit for over two hours without deteriorating in quality (which is complete and utter bullshit - this isn't even subjective, it's just chemistry)
*People who think they know anything about coffee know less than the common person. Essentially, he was asserting that because we wanted to implement quality standards, we were belying our ignorance of things and being pretentious prigs.
*There are no "absolutes" in coffee, and no specific right way to do things (again, I wasn't even talking about an opinion, what I was talking about is simply a matter of chemistry, it wouldn't matter if you started out with Starbucks or Stumptown, nothing is going to be nearly what it was after it sits for that long)
*In light of all of these facts, I was welcome to grind-to order, but I am not allowed to dump two-hour old coffee or hour-old ground espresso should some be in the dosing chamber
Whether or not Stan actually believes these things or is just justifying the penny-pinching he wants to do by repeating them over and over I will never know, but what I do know is that nothing he said during that diatribe (which was about 8 minutes long) had a spec of truth to it. What he successfully did, however, was disarm any attempts I could make in the future to get him to change his quality standards. After all, even if I were to prove to him the FACT that the espresso looks, smells, and tastes even worse than usual after just 10 minutes of being ground (which I did later that day in several tests, both blind and not), he could just stick with his statement that the customers can not tell the difference.
It has since gotten worse day by day. While myself and my loyal coffee-loving co-workers have continued to grind our espresso to order (a habit that we have passed on to all of the less experienced employees we have trained, but not Stan or Al who refuse), the fact of the matter is that we are still serving sub-par drinks to people. Possibly the worst thing is that, since Al has so much "experience", they value his opinions and habits over ours (conveniently, his methods are cheaper, because not having any standards is always cheaper). I again went and shared all of this with third-wave Mac. He put this question to me, then:
"Is there anything about what you're doing there that you enjoy at this point?"
The fact of the matter is that I am glad to be back in the industry (I had taken a 10 month hiatus prior to getting into this shop, with a few brief stand-in exceptions), and I enjoy making drinks for people. However, I know what we are doing wrong, have tried to fix it, and have been shot down. I feel that I have maintained my integrity as a barista, but am I really happy there? I feel as though the bad is overwhelming the good fairly rapidly.
So I put it to you, the barista public: what do you make of the situation? Should I stay, or leave on principle?
So in my area, a brand new shop opened up and hired on myself and a couple of barista friends of mine (approximately a month and a half ago), and we all love coffee enough to want to pursue the best of it that we are able. The partners opening the shop have zero experience working in coffee retail of any kind, though one of the owners has a little bit of experience in coffee as his family owns some plantations in Guatemala or some such. Bearing that in mind, we were hired on not only to work in the shop, but to lend them our experience and advice for all things coffee related. When hired, we did not know what coffee they would be serving or much else about the place other than the location, but as this was going to be a small privately owned business, we were optimistic that with our guidance, we could ensure that we would at least acquire some quality coffee to sell and serve (there are several third-wave roasters that are near enough to supply us).
It was apparent from the first day that our hopes for a shop aimed at supplying fresh, quality coffee to the public would not be satisfied. Our coffee is being supplied by an extremely generic semi-local roaster. It is certainly not the worst coffee we could be serving, but it is truly the height of second wave mediocrity. Additionally, we are serving all of the noisy whipped-cream topped things you can think of, smoothies and blended coffee drinks and all that. We started out serving 20-oz "cappuccinos", but quickly did the best we could to fix that, convincing them to get at LEAST 12-oz cups in. We also have the least useful grinder ever conceived; you can't adjust the grind without opening the thing with a screwdriver, and it can only grind in full giant batches, without even allowing one to manual stop it. The brewers likewise can not brew custom batch sizes without re-programming the whole thing; we can only brew drip coffee in enormous batches.
Last and likely worst, someone came in and set the grind on our regular and decaf espresso grinders, and we were essentially told not to tamper with the grind. That's right, we are not supposed to dial in our espresso. Wow.
Now on to the more personal bad things and the controversies. One of the other baristas they hired on is an older guy. He ran his own coffee "kiosk", that is, like a trailer in front of a Home Depot, for 14 years. His habits are absolutely terrible, and he denies, basically, that anything you can do actually has an impact on the coffee. For example, he pre-grinds the espresso and leaves it sitting in the dosing chamber for hours on end. He (for some reason I still can't figure out) refuses to refrigerate his milk pitchers, even after we have explained to him why this is a good idea. Besides the pre-ground espresso, the most hands-on of the owners (the one with a "background" in coffee, hereafter referred to as "Stan") and this guy, who I will refer to hereafter as "Al", have a monopoly on running things as cheaply as possible. This includes pre-grinding the espresso, using the same grind for our drip coffee and french presses, and NOT dumping out the giant urns of coffee even after they have sat for two hours.
One of my friends who works there, who I will refer to hereafter as "Linda", is as dis-satisfied with this lack of quality standards as myself and other friends, and one day, while working with Al, she blatantly dumps out all of his pre-ground espresso, sparking a war that is still raging. Al demands an explanation, and Linda and myself explain to him that the industry norm is really to not pre-grind espresso, and that it is commonly accepted that within 3 to 10 minutes after grinding, the espresso has basically been destroyed. Al disagrees.
I mull this over with a friend of mine (hereafter referred to as "Mac") who runs a third wave shop nearby (where I prefer to hang out and get my coffee, and additionally a good friend of mine works there). He basically says that, as a barista, I ought to take Stan aside and explain to him why quality standards are important, why not to pre-grind espresso, and that I personally am not willing to serve people drinks made of stale espresso and whatnot. This is not a conversation that I look forward to, as I am not a fan of confrontation, particularly with my boss.
Anyway, Mac was of course right. The next day at work, I bit the bullet and pulled Stan aside. I say I have been meaning to talk to him about the "pre-ground espresso thing", and tell him that there is no faster way to deteriorate the quality of a bar drink than to pre-grind the espresso. What followed was just about the worst response I could think to have gotten (besides being fired, of course). I'll spare you the totality of the thing, but here are some bullet points:
*The customers can not tell the difference
*Not even I, personally, could tell the difference between hour old pre-ground espresso and fresh ground espresso, because "you have to be born with that kind of a pallet, it can't be developed" and "very few people can taste such a minute difference" This was the only thing he said that I found to be personally insulting, as I can of course tell the difference between old and fesh-ground espresso, as pretty much ANYONE can.
*He was actually planning on getting a cheaper espresso, because of course nobody can tell the difference, and save the "good" espresso for our more 'coffee-savvy' customers
*The coffee we are serving is of such a HIGH quality that it can sit pre-ground for several hours without deteriorating in quality, and similarly our drip coffee can sit for over two hours without deteriorating in quality (which is complete and utter bullshit - this isn't even subjective, it's just chemistry)
*People who think they know anything about coffee know less than the common person. Essentially, he was asserting that because we wanted to implement quality standards, we were belying our ignorance of things and being pretentious prigs.
*There are no "absolutes" in coffee, and no specific right way to do things (again, I wasn't even talking about an opinion, what I was talking about is simply a matter of chemistry, it wouldn't matter if you started out with Starbucks or Stumptown, nothing is going to be nearly what it was after it sits for that long)
*In light of all of these facts, I was welcome to grind-to order, but I am not allowed to dump two-hour old coffee or hour-old ground espresso should some be in the dosing chamber
Whether or not Stan actually believes these things or is just justifying the penny-pinching he wants to do by repeating them over and over I will never know, but what I do know is that nothing he said during that diatribe (which was about 8 minutes long) had a spec of truth to it. What he successfully did, however, was disarm any attempts I could make in the future to get him to change his quality standards. After all, even if I were to prove to him the FACT that the espresso looks, smells, and tastes even worse than usual after just 10 minutes of being ground (which I did later that day in several tests, both blind and not), he could just stick with his statement that the customers can not tell the difference.
It has since gotten worse day by day. While myself and my loyal coffee-loving co-workers have continued to grind our espresso to order (a habit that we have passed on to all of the less experienced employees we have trained, but not Stan or Al who refuse), the fact of the matter is that we are still serving sub-par drinks to people. Possibly the worst thing is that, since Al has so much "experience", they value his opinions and habits over ours (conveniently, his methods are cheaper, because not having any standards is always cheaper). I again went and shared all of this with third-wave Mac. He put this question to me, then:
"Is there anything about what you're doing there that you enjoy at this point?"
The fact of the matter is that I am glad to be back in the industry (I had taken a 10 month hiatus prior to getting into this shop, with a few brief stand-in exceptions), and I enjoy making drinks for people. However, I know what we are doing wrong, have tried to fix it, and have been shot down. I feel that I have maintained my integrity as a barista, but am I really happy there? I feel as though the bad is overwhelming the good fairly rapidly.
So I put it to you, the barista public: what do you make of the situation? Should I stay, or leave on principle?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Bryan Wray on
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"Forgetting who the boss is" and doing things your own way is horrible advice in almost any circumstance... Ridiculous.
Get out man. Look for a job now, nail the interview and put in your 2 weeks.
-bry
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Permalink Reply by christopher myers on
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Jay is right about the staying power of mediocrity. The train wreck that I used to work for is still limping along with sad employees who are too afraid to quit and customers who still come out of habit or convenience. And no, they will never listen to you, no matter how bad business gets, whether it's out of some sense of pride or sheer stupidity or stubbornness, when sales slip a notch lower I'd bet my last dollar that rather than try to improve, they will snip hours from your timesheet and find even cheaper product. Guaranteed.
However, I don't think you're wrong to at least attempt to point out that quality could be better, especially if it's clear that the owner doesn't pretend to know anything and has hired people for their experience, presumably to have people with experience help raise the standard of the cafe? I'm not clear on why having the money to invest in a cafe should give you some kind of special badge of respect. A crappy employer is going to have unhappy employees who aren't going to feel inclined to give them the respect they think they've earned. If the employer wishes to continue to suck at his job, he might be better served hiring people who are too desperate for a meager paycheck to give him any lip. I suppose either way, for your own sanity and self respect, you should bail.
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Permalink Reply by Jared Rutledge on
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i think starbucks and this business are wholly incomparable. perhaps they'll chug along utilizing a customer base that truly doesn't know any better. but i bet if they're slack on all aspects of coffee, slack on personnel management, and completely inflexible, they're probably also not great businessmen. you need a little bit of skill in a couple of those things to survive long term at a mediocre level.
for instance, a friend of mine bought a shop a while back and i worked there a bit, helping him get the coffee up to par. it didn't totally stick (although some of the employees do things decently), but the guy is pretty savvy with budgets, he works a lot of hours, he hires good people, and is great with the customers. so even though i might not want to drink a 24 oz. ice cream chocolate espresso thingy from his shop, he's doing ok. i think you have to be good at a few things to survive.
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Permalink Reply by Shadow on
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And opinions vary! I was hired some time ago at a small espresso bar and simply had to laugh at most of the things they were doing. Idiotic things such as grinding Turkish fine for drip so they could use less grounds per batch and claiming "it's still the best thing they will get around here"... to pre-grinding 1 week's worth of decaf espresso in advance... to using Cusinart home drip machines and trying to make them work on a commercial level...
Even though I was self-taught on a home level I just knew they could do much better there. I slowly but surely took over the thing as acting manager, made the switch to another roaster, got everything dialed in and it just took off. Started getting lots more traffic, more regulars, etc. Did well enough one of the owners asked if my wife and I would like to take over the bar with possible future ownership. I ran it like it was mine and it paid off for them. They praised me for all the positive changes made... Onto much better things now though!
Bryan Wray said:"Forgetting who the boss is" and doing things your own way is horrible advice in almost any circumstance... Ridiculous.
Get out man. Look for a job now, nail the interview and put in your 2 weeks.
-bry
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Permalink Reply by Dave West on
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Good news, everyone!
Well, first of all, the story got even crazier and even worse. The other owners of the shop busted Stan down (he was more or less the manager) to working 4 hours a day, basically opening and hanging out until Al comes around, and then they promoted Al to manager of the shop, which means that since then I have had to "serve" under him.
On top of that, they forced Linda to quit and have slashed quality standards even more, telling us to keep drip coffee on hand for three hours before brewing a new batch.
But listen, for this tale has a happy ending! I have been retained by Third Wave Mac and have put my two weeks in at my shop, of which only three more shifts remain! I am nearly free! Thank you all for your fine input. in truth I feel that the place is doomed to failure, now more than ever, but I won't have to go down with the ship!
Thanks again,
Dave
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congrats! Now you can really appreciate...being appreciated. And you'll have better coffee to drink at work. Double win.
Dave West said:Good news, everyone!
Well, first of all, the story got even crazier and even worse. The other owners of the shop busted Stan down (he was more or less the manager) to working 4 hours a day, basically opening and hanging out until Al comes around, and then they promoted Al to manager of the shop, which means that since then I have had to "serve" under him.
On top of that, they forced Linda to quit and have slashed quality standards even more, telling us to keep drip coffee on hand for three hours before brewing a new batch.
But listen, for this tale has a happy ending! I have been retained by Third Wave Mac and have put my two weeks in at my shop, of which only three more shifts remain! I am nearly free! Thank you all for your fine input. in truth I feel that the place is doomed to failure, now more than ever, but I won't have to go down with the ship!
Thanks again,
Dave
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Permalink Reply by Marek on
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You could well have been talking about a Starbucks... and their stock has tripled in the last few months. So quality has nothing to do with financial success ... clearly...
You are not the captain of the ship, either row with the rest of them or your ass is overboard...
If the owners are in the shop and totally hands on then they should listen to and respect your opinions and you should feel free to offer them...
Enjoyed the story and all the comments and replies.
Marek
Cayman Islands
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Permalink Reply by Mike McGinness on
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Congrats for hanging in there and landing on solid (not pre:) ground.
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