How to Hire Great Baristas for Your Coffee Shop

How to Hire The Best Baristas for Your Coffee Shop

Elevate, Cultivate, and Network Your Heart Out

How To Hire Great Baristas

One of the biggest challenges that new (and even veteran coffee shop owners) face is the ability to hire great employees. Excellent baristas are hard to find, but that doesn’t mean they are not out there. In fact, many are – and they don’t know it yet.

Your job is to find and hire them. As a coffee shop owner, your job is to look for that one-of-a-kind potential in people and then train them to be excellent baristas.

It's up to you to help them develop and maintain a passion for coffee and helping customers. Extra care and time need to be given when it comes to your hiring decisions. After all, you're essentially giving the keys to your life's work to a stranger – exposing your entire operation and investment.  

This article will discuss how to think about your baristas and hire the best for your coffee shop business.

How To Hire Great Baristas for Your Coffee Shop

Elevate Your Barista Positions

How we look at the positions we fill and the titles we bestow on these positions matter. Instead of referring to your open job positions as “jobs,” you can refer to them as “barista/coffee educator” positions.

Allow your new hires to grow into that title.

Unfortunately, too many coffee shop owners refer to their employees merely as “workers” and part-time “help.”

Perhaps because, as a collective, baristas have a high turnover rate, many owners seem to limit any real investment in their barista training and coffee education.

It is true that many baristas come and go because many are in a transition phase in their lives, often going to school or university or studying for another career position. But honest, reliable baristas can make all the difference even in their limited time with your coffee business.

Know Your Coffee Business

Like other elements of starting your coffee business, you will first understand what your coffee business is all about before you hire your first employee.

Spend a moment to develop your coffee shop's concept, vision, and culture – and build your team around those things.

We recommend cultivating potential employees from the very beginning. Some coffee businesses might use the “word out” through their social media accounts. While many good business owners use popular sites like Craigslist to post ads, there are other ways to cultivate great baristas.

Ultimately, one of your duties as a coffee shop owner is to learn how to hire great baristas and terminate others who are not performing their jobs well. Improving your knowledge, knowing your vision, and understanding what to look for will help you get the most out of your barista search.

How to Hire The Best Baristas for Your Coffee Shop

Know What You Need in a Barista

Your baristas will play a specific role in your business. You want to choose a barista based on your specific needs. Of course, you want to hire a barista who is reliable, honest, and good with people. However, choose a barista that will fit your business culture and have the general barista skills you want.

As a coffee shop business owner, you want:

• Reliability
• Honesty
• People Skills
• Loyalty
• Personality
• Passion for serving people
• A team player

In addition to the above elements, you may further want a top-tier level of barista skills that may include:

• Superior pouring skills
• Latte art aficionado
• Coffee tasting aficionado
• Excellent coffee educator
• Conflict resolver
• Leader
• Up-seller
• Conscientious of inventory management

Of course, you will have your own traits that you will add to this list. Feel free to add them here mentally. Knowing how to hire great baristas means knowing where to look and knowing who will fit into your coffee shop culture.

Barista Responsibilities

Common Requirements for Barista Positions: 

Below is a list of common requirements that are often needed to hold a barista position. Of course, some accommodation may be necessary. As an interviewer, you will want to check with your local, state, and federal accommodations that allow people to perform job duties.

• Successfully utilize and maintain an espresso machine and other brewing methods for each customer.
• Preparing a variety of coffee drinks, beverages, and snacks for each customer.
• Maintain a safe work environment for yourself, co-workers, and customers.
• Have the ability, wise judgment, and willingness to make decisions.
• Demonstrate the ability to maintain a positive work environment (this can be through your attitude, leadership, and motivation.)
• Make sure the established policies and operating procedures are being followed.
• You may be asked to mentor, coach, or train other employees.
• You are to successfully ensure each transaction is correct and monitor sales, labor, and unnecessary waste.
• Perform all “opening” or “closing” duties.
• Maintain a certain dress code that is established by the business.
• Complete other tasks and projects that have been assigned by a supervisor
• Attend mandatory meetings.
• Positively and effectively engage with each customer, each co-worker, supervisor, manager, and owner.
• Harassment of any kind will not be tolerated.

What Should You Look For In a Barista?

How to Hire Baristas for a Coffee Shop

Hire Baristas for Personality

Whether they have barista experience or not, being a barista is 25% training and 75% attitude and personality.

The best baristas (those who truly love their job, make the most tips, and continue to excel at sharing their knowledge and expertise) are “people persons.”

Developing a connection with your customers and offering a great beverage every time is essential, but having the personality to serve customers all day is essential.

Being a barista means diving into the “service” profession. Essentially, your baristas are the face of your coffee shop business. Because of that, they often determine the success of the cafe and your income.

As the coffee shop owner, make sure that they are capable of creating a wonderful and consistent coffee drink before being left alone – but that they are also able to work well with customers.

By providing each customer with a customized and genuine experience, you will begin to develop a strong customer-base of eager people who want to come back.

Great Baristas Are Trainable

Many coffee shop owners and managers in charge of hiring and firing baristas are looking for someone they can train. During the interview, do you get the impression that they can be trained or retrained? Baristas don't need a lot of coffee experience in order to be a great addition to your coffee shop team. However, they should possess a willingness and ability to learn.

Certainly, you want important traits that we listed above: honesty, reliability, and being a team player with a good attitude. Your baristas need to be trainable and fit into your coffee program.

It is really easy to find experienced baristas who will serve and extract coffee in their own way. They can easily disrupt your preferred method of serving coffee. While this might not seem like a big deal, it can really impact your service and consistency in your product.

What skills do highly skilled baristas have?

How to Hire The Best Baristas for Your Coffee Shop

At Your Barista Interview 

If you put out an advertisement, blog post, or social media post about an open barista position, you’ll likely get several inquiries. If you get more than five, you should consider having “rounds of interviews” throughout a single day. Don’t hire anyone on the spot, but take notes and invite them back to demonstrate their ability to work behind the coffee bar.

For the interviews, you should expect your barista candidates to bring a few things with them.  

Barista's Food Handler’s Card

The chances are that your state or county will require a food handler’s card. This card means that you passed a fundamental exam displaying your knowledge of the proper way to handle food. But what if your baristas don’t handle any food at your coffee shop business? You should still expect it – and ask for it during the interview process. Why? Because the chances are that your café or coffee shop will serve baked goods, sandwiches, yogurt, cookies, biscotti, and much more.

Still, even if your café doesn’t serve any food, knowing and possessing a food handler’s card will make your coffee shop or a coffee drive-thru stand safer, more professional, and better prepared for anything you might serve.

As I mentioned, many areas require you and your employees to know basic food preparation and storage knowledge. You’ll be glad that those serving you your lunch the next time you go out know that those servers have passed the test.

Here’s the thing – look around for “state” or “county” programs and food handling preparation certificates or cards. Usually, the test and exam cost only $10 to $20.

Barista Personal Cleanliness

You should expect your barista candidates to dress appropriately for an interview, which may have a wide spectrum of appropriateness. But remember, all of your candidates should dress clean and be well-groomed. Clean and trim your fingernails. Men should trim their beards. Being a barista means being clean, neat, and put together nicely can go a long way.

A Positive Barista Attitude

Your baristas need to make a great first impression. Generally, they need to have a winning attitude. Look at sincerity, respectfulness, and those who are genuine. Your baristas' attitudes can work to slowly build a positive reputation with customers and the community over a period of time, leading to greater sales, profits, and goodwill. In contrast, a poor attitude can quickly lead to a bad reputation. 

A Passion For Coffee

The barista candidate might not have traditional barista training. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes, a barista might have been trained inappropriately, and it could be even harder to “un-train” them. Instead, you would hope to expect your baristas to have a passion for coffee. Even if they don't have barista experience or barista training, they can still attend cuppings at a local coffee roaster or coffee shop (many coffee houses and roasters have regular “cuppings” or coffee tastings.)

Hire Great Baristas

Interviewing Potential Baristas

When you interview your top barista candidates, you want to assess their skills, but you always want to figure out just what kind of person they are. Ultimately, you want to determine whether they will fit into your coffee shop culture. Whether they will affirm your vision with their presence – or not. But first, you want to know some general questions:

Here are some sample interview questions:

#1: Are you willing to get up early? 

Baristas often start their morning early, sometimes getting up as early as 4:00 a.m. Starting your day at 5:00 or 6:00 in the morning is tough for some people. For the morning rush hour, you will undoubtedly need to be on your game – every day. 

#2: Are you willing to learn a variety of coffee drinks?

Every customer is different. Every customer will have their favorite drink – and it may be one that you aren’t familiar with. Getting their drinks right will be vital for you and your customer’s ultimate experience. Their experience will determine if they decide to come back again or recommend you to a friend, family member, or co-worker.

Much of being a barista is experimentation. While coffee snobs might tell you exactly how coffee should be prepared, you need to be prepared to make the drinks that matter to your customers. Sometimes that means bending your idea of a good coffee drink to what your customers value. By putting your customers first, you almost guarantee that your customers will be back.

#3: Are you a “people’s person?”

Yes, we've heard this question before. It might be cliche, but you need to determine whether or not your hire can get along with customers and other employees.

While you don't need to ask this question directly, you need to be able to tell if the barista candidate can interact well with a diverse group of people.

Consider asking other similar questions to get this answer. For example: Do you feel you are an outgoing, chatty, and personable person with customers?

Being a barista – at least in many coffee bars – will mean that you will need to use your social skills every day. If your baristas are not the “social” type, then their job will be extremely challenging to do well.

Customers come to coffee shops and cafes expecting to chit-chat with their baristas. If your baristas are generally outgoing, chatty, friendly, and likable – their personality will go a long way to making a positive impression on your coffee business.

#4: Do you have a flexible schedule?

Being a barista provides you with a flexible schedule – so daily schedules built around, say, school or another job may be conducive to being a barista – but you will also need to work a variety of shifts. Working with your boss, owner, or manager to find the schedule that works for everyone will be important.

#5: Are you able to handle fast-paced environments?

As a barista, you will encounter some hectic times. Sometimes, the line behind the counter can quickly add up with customers wanting various drinks that can take more time than others. Also, each customer may want to order several drinks, so that line can be even “longer” when it comes to actual orders. Staying “cool” and confident under stressful times is necessary.

#6: Are you willing to handle the extra necessary stuff?

Working in coffee retail will also require the lifting of boxes of supplies. It may also require custodial duties such as cleaning restrooms, taking out the trash, sweeping, wiping down tables, lifting bags of coffee, and doing several other essential tasks. Baristas might need to clean windows, tables, restrooms and run out to get supplies. Some baristas might help to roast coffee!

How to Hire The Best Baristas for Your Coffee Shop

How to Hire The Best Baristas for Your Coffee Shop

What Other Attributes Stand Out?

When meeting potential baristas or other employees to work at your coffee shop, you want to learn about their interests and passions. Keep in mind that not all great baristas will be focused on coffee only. Many great baristas have diverse skill sets and levels of interest that go beyond our bubble of comfort.

Their diversity in interest may also allow them to speak with your diverse group of customers as well. Still, you might also look at different interests that they have revolving around coffee.

These may include:

Attending Coffee Meetups

There are lots of coffee clubs and meetups in every part of the world. Members of these groups often visit coffee shops, sample espresso, go to coffee cuppings or tastings, and sample various espresso drinks.

They Have Home Brewing Passion

Some baristas also love to sample local coffee roasts. They may brew coffee using various methods at home. 

They Have Traveled to Origin Countries

Your potential new barista hire may enjoy traveling. However, what makes them different is that they specifically travel to origin countries where coffee is grown. 

Blogging or Social Media Interest

Your barista hire may also have a social media account dedicated to coffee. They may also even take things a step further with a coffee scene blog detailing their reviews of local coffee shops.

The fact is that there are tons of ways to show interest in coffee. As a coffee shop owner, your job is to see whether or not potential barista hires have interests that better align with your business.

How to Hire Great Baristas for Your Coffee Shop

The Basics of The Barista Interview:

What Is Their Availability?

Hiring someone who can be available during the hours you need is important. This rings true for every industry and every job. However, you should be able to tell your interview the exact days and times you need them – and whether they are available.

Do They Have Three Personal or Professional References?

Your candidates should provide a typed piece of paper with the names, titles, emails, and phone numbers of three references. They should include a reason why and how they became your reference. Also, they should always have their name and phone number on the piece of paper.

Having references is important for managers and owners of cafes and coffee shops. This is critical because many managers will determine whether you have demonstrated excellent work in the past. Also, don’t forget to ask for permission for your references. You might also want to contact them and tell them to expect a phone call/email from your prospective employer.

How to Hire Great Baristas

Honoring The Practice of Selecting Your Baristas

Most coffee entrepreneurs invest a significant amount of money in their coffee shop businesses – including tons of time and effort, as well as the opportunity costs of doing something else. Often they will do everything right in nearly every aspect of their new coffee shop startup. That is, except hire the right people.

I’ve spoken to many coffee shop owners who eventually fail, and the subject of hiring is nearly always at the top of their thoughts as they ponder exactly what happened. Sure, there may have been problems with their planning, and having enough cash flow was always a challenge. But hiring the wrong baristas is often one of the things that stick to their memory.

When starting, a coffee business owner may not give enough thought to hiring their employees right away – especially their baristas.  So, first thing's first – they reason – get the coffee shop business up and running, and then we'll focus on hiring.

While we agree with this premise, hiring baristas should start much earlier than it does.

• Take your time.
• Work to cultivate potential hires.
• Network your heart out.

Hire Great Baristas

Where to Find Amazing Baristas

Most business owners do a couple of things when they are looking to hire. They place a physical sign-up or put up an advertisement on social media, Craigslist, or another online job board. There is nothing necessarily wrong with this picture, as many good baristas are found this way.

However, if you would like the opportunity to meet baristas, consider visiting events that you would find great baristas.

Events in your areas, such as barista latte art throw-downs.  These are events where baristas compete on a friendly level by pulling great shots and coming up with the best and most creative espresso-based drinks.

Many of these events are informal and take place after hours at a café or coffee shop – but they are often open to the public. To find out about any events in your area (especially if you live in a big urban area like Seattle, Portland, San Diego, etc.), go to any indie café in your area and ask your local baristas.

Often, you don’t even have to ask your baristas. You can search for local groups via Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. They often post pictures and updates of upcoming gatherings.

Cultivating Great Baristas

Why Train Your Baristas?

Your coffee business should be distinct from other coffee shops. It naturally will be if you have a role in planning it. Your baristas should be trained in that distinction. Barista training matters especially if you hire young employees and have never really held a job before. How you serve your coffee and the experience you want your customers to have are all impacted by your hiring practices. 

It is no secret that many coffee shop business owners balk at the idea of training their employees because training your baristas can be expensive. You might have to hire a coffee educator and train your old and new employees alike. This might take time away from actually serving customers, etc.

#1: Training Empowers Your Baristas

With well-trained and well-educated employees and baristas, you empower them to take appropriate action when you aren’t around.

The more empowered employees feel, the better they work and the more productive they are. An empowered employee performs better because he or she feels valued and respected. Encourage your baristas and help them to overcome the challenges they face every day.

#2: Training Improves Customer Service

Training your baristas impacts customer service at nearly every touchpoint with the customer. coffee knowledge, together with great barista skills and outstanding customer service, is a sure success.

Customers can tell the difference between an untrained employee and a trained and educated employee. And they prefer a coffee shop with more welcoming and knowledgeable baristas. Stress the importance of customer service during your barista training sessions.

#3: Training Reduces Turnover (Saving You Time & Money)

Training reduces your employees who pick up and leave because they don’t feel satisfied, empowered, valued, or challenged in their current position. Training does all of these things and provides a sense of ownership to their position.

Low or zero turnovers will save you time, money, and emotional investment. To decrease turnover, make your baristas feel appreciated, empowered, and happy – and the only way to do so is through constant barista training. 

#4: Training Baristas Can Boost Your Sales

It's no secret that friendly, well-liked, efficient, and trained baristas can boost your coffee shop sales. When factored over time, a small investment in training can deliver high returns on your investment. A cheerful, polite, and happy barista will surely have more returning customers. Train your baristas to communicate with any customer and handle grumpy clients the right way.

#5: Training Baristas Can Reinforce Your Branding

Baristas who are trained and acclimated to your cafe's culture can help reinforce your branding and marketing efforts. Your baristas are conductors of your coffee shop values, goals, and overall vision. It's important to maintain consistency in your coffee shop – from the beverages, you make to the messages you transmit to your community.

Moreover, your baristas should communicate the new menu options, coffee blends, seasonal drinks, etc., to reinforce your branding and marketing.

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Based in Seattle, Washington, USA, Coffee Shop Startups is dedicated to providing you with the most relevant information on how to start a coffee shop business successfully. Over the last 11 years, we've helped thousands of aspiring coffee business owners worldwide. We harness the experience, wisdom, and knowledge of many successful coffee shop owners to help you increase your chances of success and profits. We support business owners who want to start a coffee business by providing them with valuable information on starting their coffee business successfully.