Barista Job Responsibilities: Is It Hard to Be a Barista at Specialty Coffee Shops vs. Chain Coffee Shops?

The Reality of Being a Barista: Beyond the Romanticized Dream

Since becoming a barista, this writer - who, yes, wears several hats and barista is one of them - often hears 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? And baristas must earn high wages, right?" Stop right there. When exactly did being a barista start looking so effortless, and supposedly so well paid?

Perhaps films or social circles have overly romanticized cafe life. In many people's eyes, baristas spend their days in warm, sunlit shops, listening to smooth jazz, brewing aromatic pour-over, drawing beautiful patterns in lattes, eyes bright with confidence, watching customers come and go, and passing their days in comfort and calm.

I really cannot keep this up. Wake up! A barista's work is no different from any other hands-on job, and the wages are low. Many people in the trade will tell you: being a barista can only be a lifestyle attitude, and behind the scenes you are simply broke, so you need side hustles. That is no exaggeration. First, let us look at what skills baristas actually need. The list was too long, so I wrote it in my notes and took screenshots.

The Truth About Barista Work

Did you catch the last two bolded lines in the image? "Salary doesn't matter, as long as I can survive with no money." If you can accept that, welcome to the profession; if you cannot, please think carefully. Of course, more work means more pay. If a barista does things beyond making coffee, cleaning and serving customers - the items listed after "preparing for new stores, bar counter design" - then congratulations, you are a super barista with no rest time. To reach that point, you are either the boss or a barista for whom making coffee is merely a part-time job.

All those beautiful imaginings are built from the customer's point of view. Behind a barista's polished appearance lies a great deal of hardship. You imagine customers as gentle and thoughtful, quietly settling in to read a book, sip coffee and enjoy their coffee time.

Actual customers, at least some of them: chatting loudly, calling out "Waiter, I want to order," leaving the coffee untouched while taking countless photos, asking for "warm pour-over," ordering a "latte with no milk," wondering "if there's no tea to drink, why open a coffee shop," and asking, "Do you have toothpicks here?" Meeting the customers you imagined is about as likely as finding the hidden figure in a blind box.

The Reality of Coffee Shop Operations

Is working in a coffee shop leisurely? Not at all. Coffee shops come in thousands of forms: some sell cakes and light meals, and some are hybrids combined with bookstores, clothing stores and more. Often the busiest parts of these shops are not coffee production at all but everything else around it. You may be nominally a barista but really just a server who can make coffee.

"No! I really have seen very leisurely coffee shops, with the staff and owners just sitting and looking at their phones or computers." Then there are two possibilities. One is that the shop is there for offline experience while the real business is e-commerce. The other is that you should enjoy it while you can, because the owner may be calculating how much longer the funding can keep the cafe running.

Coffee shop customers are really not all artistic young people. They fall roughly into three groups: ordinary consumers who quietly drink their coffee after ordering, who are angels; picky enthusiasts who criticize things they only half understand, but whom you can win over as "experts" if your coffee knowledge is solid enough to hold the conversation; and special groups with strong personal cultures who are so self-centered that they leave you helpless.

The Skills and Challenges of Being a Barista

Beyond excellent customer service, baristas need to keep building their coffee knowledge - from agricultural cultivation to coffee science, roasting, brewing, and industry news and trends. You need a deep understanding of all things coffee so you can pass on accurate ideas about coffee culture to beginners, rather than stopping at "I want to make a good cup of coffee."

Second, many people want to become baristas because they imagine unlimited coffee and unlimited drinking every day. There is a saying that too much of anything loses its value. When you face coffee all day long and are not genuinely interested in understanding it deeply, you will quickly tire of the job and eventually sigh that it would be better to remain an enthusiast.

Many peers mention in conversation that after making coffee or opening a shop, their tempers have grown shorter and their stress has increased, because the reality is nothing like what they imagined and the work is very strenuous. If you originally yearned only for a life of making coffee and latte art, reality will hit hard. Why? Because the best-selling item in many coffee shops is lemon tea - a joke, and also many shops' compromise with the market.

Finding Success in the Coffee Industry

This article is long, and its point is to warn against overly idealized expectations about opening a coffee shop or becoming a barista. Being a barista is not without prospects, but many people stop thinking at "I like making and drinking coffee." A coffee shop can make money, but you cannot run a business on ideals and sentiment alone - at least not in today's society. Holding on to your ideals is good, but reality is still reality.

It is not that I discourage anyone from becoming a barista or opening a shop. I simply hope you think clearly about what you want before you start. In my few years in the industry, I have seen clearly that baristas work very hard in both chain and independent coffee shops. The former are unfeeling coffee robots, but you can learn management skills useful for your future and cultivate the patience to serve customers. In the latter, your busiest moments may have nothing to do with making coffee, but as long as you keep improving - learning humbly or studying on your own - you will find that the coffee industry holds far more interesting things than just making and drinking coffee. Only by making yourself stronger can you see further.

If you are choosing this profession only because being a barista looks easy, please think twice. Standing still brings no progress and wastes a great deal of precious time.

Final Thoughts

Every job has its unspeakable difficulties; no job is truly comfortable. A line from a book once left a deep impression on this writer: "Your so-called stability and comfort are nothing but wasting life." Do not waste your precious capital on something that only feels comfortable for the moment.

Image source: Internet

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Ask any barista and they will tell you that the beans behind the bar matter as much as the hands pulling the shots. For a pour-over that is easy to love and easy to serve, FrontStreet Ethiopia Huakui is hard to beat: its tropical fruit aromatics, bright strawberry and passion fruit notes and very low bitterness make it a crowd-pleaser for customers who think they dislike coffee.

For a more classic, structured cup, FrontStreet Kenya Small Tomato comes from the Nyeri-region style of bright, juicy washed Kenya coffee, with a vivid tomato and dark cherry acidity and a clean finish. It is a good bean to practice on and a good one to talk about, which is exactly the kind of coffee knowledge a working barista needs to stand behind.