"What Else Can I Do?" The Confusion of a Barista

The profession of a barista is often met with mixed feelings... Many people become baristas driven by their dreams, yet many others leave the profession due to reality.

Because wages cannot sustain their ideal lifestyle and because baristas lack advancement opportunities, many consider this job a short-term career with limited development prospects. Is this really the case? Of course not. Baristas can have many development opportunities, but the prerequisite is to convince oneself to step out of the comfort zone.

Before becoming baristas, many people fantasize about this job being as relaxed and artistic as depicted in movies. They don't understand the amount of passion, time, patience, commitment, and skills that a true barista must invest in their work. Many of the successful baristas we see in the coffee industry today have put in tremendous effort behind the scenes—not just creating latte art or brewing coffee to become industry figures as it might appear on the surface.

Most people choose the barista profession because the process of brewing coffee is truly enchanting and healing, leading them to express themselves enthusiastically behind the bar. The bar counter is like the boundary of a comfort zone—stepping beyond it means facing many things one might dislike. If one truly loves the coffee industry and wishes to advance within it while seeking higher-paying positions, taking that step beyond the bar counter becomes crucially important.

Many baristas might feel that the pinnacle of their career is winning a world-class barista competition. Yes, such a title can make one's name prominent in the coffee world, but this is not encouraged as a goal for ordinary baristas, as the effort required behind the scenes is beyond what an average person can achieve. On the surface, competitions might seem like technical contests between baristas, but in reality, they are battles of teamwork, financial resources, and personal capabilities.

A successful barista champion not only possesses sufficient effort and understanding of coffee but, more importantly, has the collaboration and support of their team behind them. Rather than saying competitions are technical contests, it's better to describe them as project investments, where the barista standing on stage not only understands coffee knowledge and technical applications but, more importantly, understands project management. This includes team communication, task allocation, time and financial management, emotional management, adaptability, and so much more.

These baristas aren't seeking to demonstrate how much they know about coffee or their insights into brewing techniques to the public. Instead, they pursue comprehensive research on the coffee industry through competitions, measuring and analyzing gaps between actual industry conditions and expectations, determining whether predictions and judgments are correct and analyzing the reasons, thereby summarizing experiences and lessons to create conditions for future decision-making, investment, and management in coffee-related projects, and providing practical countermeasures and measures to improve project investment returns and operational processes.

This is a realm truly difficult for ordinary people to reach, even with sufficient financial resources, as personal capabilities are extremely important. This isn't to say that ordinary baristas cannot achieve this level, but one shouldn't set such high goals immediately. Because when you set goals that are difficult to achieve, the entire process becomes tormenting, eventually leading to a gradual loss of passion for coffee-related matters and falling into confusion.

Whatever profession you enter, set goals for yourself after starting and create reasonable plans. Being a barista isn't just about making coffee—it's about sharing interesting coffee culture, correct coffee knowledge, and brewing principles with more people, encouraging them to recognize and understand coffee.

Career Paths Beyond the Bar

When you understand coffee knowledge and techniques, can research them, and can lead others to learn their principles and explore their mysteries, you might consider the profession of a coffee trainer. Compared to standing behind a bar making coffee, a trainer not only helps more people gain basic or deeper understanding of coffee but also enhances one's own communication and management abilities.

"Can I become a roaster?" Of course! As long as you have a deep understanding of coffee beans themselves, understand how factors like altitude, soil, and climate of coffee origins affect the structure and flavor expression of coffee beans, comprehend how every temperature point, every time segment, and every roasting machine affects coffee bean performance during the roasting process, and are willing to patiently listen to baristas' (brewers') feedback and solve problems together, you can become an excellent roaster.

Is roasting coffee beans difficult? Not really—it's similar to cooking. Roasters are like chefs who always go through a transition period and must start with the basics. Cooking a dish thoroughly is easy; making a dish delicious requires sufficient understanding of ingredients, seasonings, and techniques to achieve excellence at the right temperature and time.

The Path to Ownership

What about opening a shop? This might seem like a natural progression in a barista's career, but it has left many baristas in endless dilemma. One challenge is funding, and another is that besides making coffee, they often don't actually know how to manage a coffee shop.

If you want to open a coffee shop, then after starting your barista work, you must continuously improve your professionalism, learn and understand more service techniques, study product development, learn to calculate and manage expenses and costs, master event planning, brand promotion, and business negotiation.

Don't find this troublesome—believe that most people who open coffee shops hope to make money, or at least break even. Many coffee shops fail because their owners didn't plan every step carefully during the early stages and didn't set clear goals for themselves, leading to an imbalance between expenses and income.

Whatever you do, first establish professionalism and plan your future before starting this work, rather than taking things one step at a time. Being a barista is not a dead-end career, and baristas can indeed make money. If you can initially remove the "beautiful" filter surrounding the barista profession and practically understand the entire industry's development, believe that everyone can find their suitable position.

A barista can be a technician, an educator, or a businessperson.

Image source: Internet

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