Do Baristas at Specialty Coffee Shops Earn High Salaries? Is It Hard to Be a Barista at Chain Coffee Shops?

The Reality of Being a Barista: Beyond the Romanticized Ideal

Ever since becoming a barista (yes, a writer who moonlights as a barista), I've often heard friends and customers exclaim: "Wow, you're a barista! I'm so envious! Your life is my dream! Your job must be so comfortable, right? Or maybe baristas earn really high wages!" Stop, stop, stop! When exactly did being a barista start appearing so effortless to everyone, with supposedly high salaries?

Perhaps movies and social circles have overly romanticized café life. In many people's eyes, baristas spend their days in warm, sunlit shops, listening to pleasant jazz music, brewing aromatic pour-over coffee, creating beautifully patterned lattes, their determined eyes revealing confidence and brightness, watching customers come and go, passing the day in comfort and tranquility...

I can't keep making this up!!! Wake up! A barista's job is no different from being an all-purpose helper, really! And the pay is minimal... Many peers who have pursued the barista profession would say: "Being a barista can only be a lifestyle choice, but behind the scenes, you're just broke! You must have a side hustle." This is no exaggeration~ First, let's look at what work skills baristas need! (Since it's too long, I've written it in my memo app and taken a screenshot)

Did you see the bolded sections in the image, especially the last two parts? "Salary doesn't matter, as long as I can survive without money"... If you can accept this, welcome to the barista profession; if not, please reconsider carefully... Of course! More work yields more pay. If a barista does more than just making coffee, cleaning, and serving customers—that is, the things mentioned after "preparing for new stores, bar design..." in the image—then congratulations, you're a super-powered barista with no rest time. To achieve this, you're either the business owner or someone for whom making coffee is just a part-time job.

The Myth vs. Reality

All the beautiful fantasies are built from the customer's perspective~ Behind the glamorous appearance of baristas lies a world of hardship... You might imagine customers as gentle and considerate, coming in quietly, reading books, drinking coffee, and enjoying their coffee time.

The reality of customers (some of them): Talking loudly, "Waiter, I want to order," leaving coffee aside while taking endless photos, "I want warm hand-drip coffee," "Latte without milk," "What kind of coffee shop doesn't serve tea," "Do you have toothpicks here"... And the customers you imagine are as rare as hidden editions in blind boxes.

The Demanding Nature of Café Work

Is working in a coffee shop leisurely? Not at all! Coffee shops come in thousands of varieties—some sell cakes, light meals... and there are hybrid coffee shops combined with bookstores, clothing stores, etc. Often, the busiest aspects of these establishments aren't the coffee production but various things unrelated to coffee. Officially, you're a barista, but in reality, you're just a server who knows how to make coffee.

"No! I've really seen very leisurely coffee shops! The staff/owners are all sitting and looking at their phones/computers." There are two possibilities here: one is that the coffee shop is for offline experience while the real business is e-commerce; the other is that you should cherish this moment while you can, as the owner might be thinking about how much longer the funds can keep the café running.

The Reality of Customers

Coffee shop customers aren't all artistic youths. They can be roughly divided into 3 categories: ordinary consumers who quietly drink coffee after ordering—they're angels; picky coffee enthusiasts who criticize based on their half-baked knowledge, but as long as you have solid coffee knowledge to engage in dialogue, you can become their "expert"; and people with strong personal cultures who think they're superior—you can only feel helpless.

The Continuous Learning Required

Besides having excellent customer service skills, baristas need to continuously improve their coffee knowledge—from agricultural cultivation to coffee knowledge, coffee roasting, brewing, industry news, to industry development... You need to have a deep understanding of everything related to coffee to convey the correct coffee culture to coffee novices, rather than just staying at "I want to make a good cup of coffee."

Secondly, many people want to become baristas because they can make unlimited coffee and drink unlimited coffee every day. There's a saying that "too much of anything loses its value." When you're facing coffee all day long, and you're not genuinely interested in understanding coffee deeply, you'll quickly grow tired of this job, and finally sigh with emotion: it's better to just remain an enthusiast.

Many peers in conversation mention that after making coffee/opening coffee shops, their tempers have become increasingly irritable, and stress has grown. Because it's completely different from what they initially imagined, and the work is extremely strenuous. Yes, if you initially just yearned for a life of making coffee and latte art, reality will give you a heavy blow... Why? Because the best-selling item in coffee shops is lemon tea... (This is both a joke and many coffee shops' compromise to society).

Final Thoughts

Although this article is long and advises everyone not to have overly idealistic expectations about opening coffee shops/becoming baristas. Being a barista is not without prospects, but everyone's thinking stays at "I like making and drinking coffee." Opening a coffee shop can be profitable, but you can't rely solely on ideals and sentiments to do business—at least in today's society, this is not feasible. Persisting in your ideals is a good thing, but reality is ultimately reality.

I'm not discouraging everyone from becoming baristas or opening coffee shops, but rather hoping that before doing this, you think clearly about what you want. In the few years of exposure to this industry, the writer clearly knows that baristas in both chain and independent coffee shops work very hard... The former are relentless coffee machines, but you can learn some useful management knowledge for your future work and develop excellent customer service patience; the latter means you might be busiest not because of making coffee, but as long as you keep improving and constantly learn humbly/self-study, you'll see that the coffee industry has more to offer than just making and drinking coffee—there are even more interesting things. Only when you become stronger can you see further.

If you're choosing this profession just because you think being a barista is easy, please think twice. All stagnation won't bring you any progress, and you'll waste a lot of precious time.

All jobs have their unspeakable difficulties; no job is truly comfortable. A sentence from a book once left a deep impression on the writer: "Your so-called stability and comfort are merely wasting life." Don't waste your precious "capital" on things that temporarily feel comfortable.

Image source: Internet

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