Final month I discovered myself volunteering to work the espresso machine at my mates’ new cafe whereas a medical emergency performed out throughout the weekend — which fortunately resulted within the delivery of their beautiful first youngster. With just about zero discover, I jumped right into a working surroundings the place the timeframe meant that it was by no means going to be an possibility to vary issues behind the bar to my liking. This new place, which shall stay anonymous, is doing nice issues with small plates, wine, and occasional in a cool city on a restricted finances. The proud new mother and father have kindly given me their blessing to publish this listing of dos and don’ts for cafe start-ups from a barista’s perspective. We hope this might be helpful for anybody beginning up a brand new cafe idea in 2025.
I had the great sense to reach a full hour earlier than my first shift started. Having visited as a buyer a number of occasions, I already knew this cafe is a ‘single dosing grinder’-only kind of cafe, so I used to be going to ensure, if nothing else, that I had pre-portioned each single dose of espresso I used to be going to wish that day. So right here’s the primary do:
Left: a single dose grinder, proper: a collection of on-demand grinders
Do have an ‘on demand’ grinder alongside your ‘single doser’. In fact, there are many benefits to a single dosing grinder. You are able to do your visitor espresso, your decaf, your filters, bag grinding, plus your own home mix, all with the one grinder. You’ll be able to even rock a whole reserve espresso frozen menu with a single dosing grinder. It’s mainly 5 grinders in a single. The one drawback is, guide dosing is gradual and awkward, particularly for brand new baristas (and seemingly, for full-time barista trainers, too) such that it stops you leveraging the facility of getting two or three teams in your espresso machine. Whereas, with a contemporary espresso grinder with a full hopper containing 1 to 2 kg of espresso beans, you have got the power to latch in the portafilter and while the grinder spends 5 to 10 seconds portioning your next dose, you can busy yourself preparing the second portafilter for the next shot. As the perfect case in point, I happen to know they generally only use one of their two groups at this cafe because the gasket on the second group was — up until that weekend — utterly ineffectual. Rubber gaskets become brittle with use and usually stop sealing properly after about six months of regular use. So, here’s your second do:
Do replace the gaskets on your machine often enough that you don’t lose pressure during a shot and so that you can insert the portafilter without having to twist so hard that an entire two-group espresso machine starts to slide around on the bar top.
One of the arms on the second-hand dishwasher was broken across the days I was working. In fact, it wasn’t just the arm, it was the housing that holds the arm in place which, on this particular dishwasher, is a $600 part made of brittle moulded plastic. So we were pre-rinsing, and polishing every single item that left the dishwasher across the weekend…
At BH, you know we’re long term advocates of starting out with second-hand espresso machines. The rationale being, you can upgrade to your dream machine once the business model has proven itself. However, there is one essential cafe item that it’s really a mistake to purchase second-hand without at least a two-year warranty:
Don’t buy a second-hand dishwasher. When I started my cafe in London on a relative shoe string, we broke three second-hand dishwashers before we eventually got a dishwasher of quality. They’re obnoxiously expensive, but trust me, save money elsewhere. Don’t even paint the place — forget the fancy lights. If you open a cafe and all you have is a few cups, a second-hand espresso machine, two grinders, and a magnificent dishwasher then the confidence and relaxed vibes from you and your staff will do more for you and the happiness of your customers than the interior designers ever can.
Which leads me to my next do.
Do have enough tea towels. Why tea towels cost so much, I can’t tell you. You can buy a T-shirt for less than a tea towel, but even still, save money anywhere but on the tea towel budget. Nothing says ‘cafe of quality’ more than pure, transparent milk-streak and fingerprint-free glasses on top of a shiny espresso machine. No chance of getting that effect with the damp greasy cloths from yesterday.
On that note: Don’t put signs on your espresso machine. Second hand or no, it’s a work of industrial design that should stand alone in all its glory like a sculpture on a plinth. It’s not a cork board for pointing out that you’re going to whack on a 12-percent weekend service charge.
Don’t build your dish pit out of laminated plywood. Every restaurant, kebab shop, and ice creamery seems to know this. But somehow us coffee folk cannot resist the allure of wood. But listen, you know how detergent lowers the surface tension of water? Well, so does coffee. That’s why coffee is so good at creeping into crevices; even into fissures in the glaze of a ceramic cup. So when combining espresso and hot soapy water, don’t expect even marine ply to hold out for long. You need a full stainless steel covering in your dishpit.
At this particular cafe, they have a wondrously big bar, big enough to seat 10 people, cook behind, and fit an espresso machine, too. So, given all the nice crockery, wine glasses and the like that are sat at the bar, it’s safe to say, don’t get a knock box that sits on your bar top, if you intend to also seat people at said bar. Every time you knock out a puck, you’re going to spill someone’s blood orange juice.
Don’t underestimate your customer’s love of ‘souveniring’ things. In particular, tea spoons — you need to order many more than you think you’ll need. We even had the art-deco coat hook unscrewed from the toilet of my London cafe once. And I’m acquainted with several people who bring their own containers to squeeze the Aesop hand soap dispensers dry. So when it comes to storage in small premises, do at least put the expensive stuff in a hard to reach location.
Don’t use soy milk with lightly roasted arabica coffee, or if you absolutely can’t avoid it, have a strategy to prevent it curdling. Good luck with that, unless you know the ‘steam them both together’ trick.
Half way through my first morning shift, I realised that I’d forgotten an old trick we used to use for preventing soy milk from curdling. Of course, most of the coffee drinking world has converted to oat milk because they’re fed up with drinking what looks like scrambled eggs in a cup of tamari. Due to its low pH, light roasted and strong espresso is a particular culprit for curdling soy milk — and many of the ‘barista’ soy milks have so many buffering agents in them, they taste like Rennie tablets. But here’s the additive-free approach I was using that weekend which was working beautifully with Bonsoy: Portion the soy milk into your pitcher. Add an espresso directly into the cold soy milk. Steam them both together up to temperature. It never fails — there’s no ability to produce latte art, but you can’t do latte art with curdled milk either so you break even there.
If you use non homogenised milk, which is a definite do, then another do is that you need a way to shake it. If you don’t shake the bottle, or if you get it from a Pergal (milk box), then the cream floats to the top, and if left undisturbed, effectively the milk from the bottom tastes like semi skimmed and the milk from the top tastes like gold top. So, unless you can agitate the milk in some way across the shift, there’s a consistency problem.
Just a few last observations from my brief dalliance behind the bar about the way you’re dealing with the recipes of your drinks and what you’re doing with your dosing, especially in light of arabica coffee having hit a 40-year high price last month.
Don’t do weird things with the concentration of your beverages. For instance, if you make lattes with a single shot to drink-in, don’t make all the take-outs doubleshots! I see this a lot, but seriously, why would you halve the efficiency of your shot-making for the folks that want coffee to-go? They’re the ones who are in a hurry. Just try to source take away cups that match the volumes of your drink-in cups.
Do save your spare espresso shots to make iced lattes — at least for a few minutes. Here’s why it’s okay, if not arguably better than using fresh shots:
There’s something I observe which is unique to first-time cafe operators and it’s quite laudable but really not necessary. It relates to the idea that espresso will somehow die if it sits around for a few minutes. But after you work in the industry for a while, you start to notice a lot of experienced players doing all sorts of dark arts, particularly when it comes to iced beverages. Namely, any spare espresso shot should not be discarded the second it finishes pouring. From a hygiene point of view, coffee beans have been taken to somewhere between ~210°C to 230°C during the roasting process, and then, they’ve been contained in a hermetically sealed bag ever since then. What’s more, espresso is then pasteurised during extraction. I once organised a blind tasting with a group of baristas where I prepared flat whites with 1-hour old espresso next to flat whites that were made with freshly poured espresso. I was careful to make the serving temp of the freshly poured and the 1-hour old coffees exactly the same. The coffees with the hour-old shots were preferred by literally every panelist. So new cafe owners, it is okay, if not better to use espresso that may be a few minutes old in an iced latte. If you really want to up the ante, you could flash chill the spare shot to help retain some more of its aromatic qualities for longer.
Save your spare espresso shots
I hope I haven’t given you the impression that I had a bad time that weekend. I actually loved every second of it and promised myself to spend more time behind the bar in 2025. So here’s the last ‘do’ that came to mind after this entertaining weekend: If you’re a barista trainer, a BH Coach, or a cafe manager who hasn’t spent much time on bar for a while, do get your ass on to the shop floor, or down to your mate’s cafe every now and then to help out. I’ve never known a new cafe owner that didn’t welcome some suggestions on how to refine their coffee program; and it’ll give you lots more fodder for things to rant about in your next practical certification event, too.
If you want to find a BH Coach to hear more Dos and Don’ts when it comes to cafe start ups, then just head here … to the boundaries of coffee.