what is this profession? Training and duties in a cafe. What salary? How to work without experience?

Barista is a word that comes from the Ital­ian lan­guage, and it refers to a spe­cial­ist who pre­pares espres­so and cof­fee cock­tails based on it. That is, loved by mil­lions of lattes, amer­i­canos, cap­puc­ci­nos. In trans­la­tion, it will sound like “the man behind the counter”, but the term is still inter­pret­ed already. Tech­ni­cal­ly, the barista is only respon­si­ble for mak­ing cof­fee, work­ing with the cof­fee machine, oth­er func­tions are del­e­gat­ed to him by the man­age­ment (or not).

Barista is a rel­e­vant pro­fes­sion, quite in demand and hung with labels. Some­one believes that only stu­dents who do not claim spe­cial career growth can do it. Some­one is sure that you can learn this in one day, and all cours­es are a whim and extor­tion of mon­ey.

The pro­fes­sion of a barista is still quite young, because all these labels and stereo­types have a place. Yes, and more than 30 years ago, peo­ple in cof­fee shops, bars, cafes made cof­fee, but this was just one task from a pro­fes­sion­al list. But the emer­gence of a chain of cof­fee shops that spread all over the world, became pop­u­lar and more than rec­og­niz­able, led to the fact that the his­to­ry of the pro­fes­sion start­ed. Now often cus­tomers go not so much to a spe­cif­ic cafe as to a spe­cif­ic barista. Spe­cial­ists are gain­ing fame for them­selves, they are even being inter­viewed.

Pros of the pro­fes­sion:

• cre­ative com­po­nent;
• rel­a­tive­ly easy to get a job;
• work to pro­vide ser­vices — grat­i­tude for work is expressed not only in receiv­ing salaries, but also in kind words from cus­tomers;
• more or less sim­ple entry into the pro­fes­sion;
• new acquain­tances and the so-called guild sol­i­dar­i­ty;
• a great place for those who love cof­fee very much;
• avail­abil­i­ty of train­ing.

Dis­ad­van­tages of the pro­fes­sion:

• the ambi­gu­i­ty of pro­fes­sion­al prospects (both the oppor­tu­ni­ty to become a famous barista, and the inabil­i­ty to jump above this posi­tion);
• the whole shift on your feet;
• the salary is not the high­est;
• some­times irreg­u­lar sched­ule;
• it will not be easy for an intro­vert — there are many faces and con­tacts;
• accu­ra­cy, respon­sive­ness, switch­ing atten­tion — all this should be on the list of pro­fes­sion­al tools, but not every­one can boast of this.

Of course, the search for pros and cons does not real­ly mat­ter if a per­son is sin­cere­ly inter­est­ed in the pro­fes­sion and sees him­self clear­ly in it.

It is worth not­ing that until now, many spe­cial­ists, when apply­ing for a job, do not read the vacan­cy the way it should be done. But if there is no specifics there, if the duties are charged with what the barista should not do a pri­ori, this can cause con­flicts with the man­age­ment in the future.

The barista is engaged in both the prepa­ra­tion of nat­ur­al cof­fee from grains and the cre­ation of drinks based on it.

What does a spe­cial­ist do?

• ful­fill­ment of cus­tomer orders;
• advice on the choice of drinks;
• cal­cu­la­tion of rev­enue and its deliv­ery to the cashier after the shift;
• prepa­ra­tion of pur­chase req­ui­si­tions;
• selec­tion of cof­fee vari­eties.

And now a lit­tle more. A barista does not just make cof­fee, he must be well versed in it, dis­tin­guish Ara­bi­ca from Robus­ta, know the vari­eties and their char­ac­ter­is­tics. He must be able to han­dle the cof­fee machine, which is the main tool of the barista. It also works with cof­fee grinders, both man­u­al and auto­mat­ic. He mon­i­tors the con­di­tion of the equip­ment, keep­ing it clean.

Whip­ping milk, draw­ing on cof­fee, adding syrups, the barista must also be able to pro­fes­sion­al­ly. By the way, in most cas­es, he will have to make tea, and even cook some­thing ele­men­tary like a sand­wich. Well, of course, the barista must also under­stand the inven­to­ry and work with the cash reg­is­ter.

Every­thing is sim­ple here: a barista has the same rights as any work­er accord­ing to the coun­try’s Labor Code. He has the right to know his sched­ule in advance, not to work over­time with­out per­son­al con­sent and ade­quate pay. He has the right to a social pack­age, and also must know in advance what is includ­ed in it. The barista is not required to clean the premis­es of the cof­fee shop, unless, of course, addi­tion­al actions are pre­scribed in the instruc­tions and are not paid accord­ing­ly.

It fol­lows from the list of respon­si­bil­i­ties. What is charged to a spe­cial­ist, he must per­form in full. Issues of track­ing equip­ment, cash desk — also on it.

Some impor­tant infor­ma­tion:

• 12 hour shift for a spe­cial­ist - the norm, but this should not be scary, because the barista does not serve cus­tomers with­out a break, he has time for a break;
• two days of work two days off - the most com­mon sched­ule, although “three in three” is also not uncom­mon;
• accord­ing to san­i­tary stan­dards, the employ­ee must have med­ical bookand the employ­er usu­al­ly gives time for its acqui­si­tion;
• will­ing­ness to be super­vised by man­age­ment — con­stant, some­times this is done through video cam­eras installed in the cof­fee shop;
• fines for vio­la­tions is a com­mon prac­tice, and they can be for vio­lat­ing the recipe, as well as flirt­ing with a client, for exam­ple.

The main thing is to main­tain ade­qua­cy and pro­fes­sion­al atti­tude, not to be fas­ci­nat­ed ahead of time and clear­ly under­stand the require­ments that the employ­er puts for­ward.

The work of a barista involves not just con­tact with peo­ple, but also com­mu­ni­ca­tion. The pros say you have to be ready for peo­ple to expect a show from you. That is, being a show­man is part­ly a pro­fes­sion­al require­ment.

What else do you need for a suc­cess­ful career.

• Polite­ness, tact — with­out this, in the ser­vice sec­tor, in prin­ci­ple, it is dif­fi­cult, and even where you have to not only give peo­ple a tasty prod­uct, but also cre­ate a mood, atmos­phere, such skills are a pri­or­i­ty.
• Will­ing­ness to hide your mood. No mat­ter how the barista is doing, whether he got enough sleep and so on, his appear­ance should not betray per­son­al prob­lems. Peo­ple want to be served by a smil­ing, pleas­ant and well-man­nered employ­ee.
• Exper­tise. This is not entire­ly a per­son­al qual­i­ty, but it is asso­ci­at­ed with the abil­i­ty to immerse your­self in the pro­fes­sion, not to stop there, to learn, learn, lis­ten to the mas­ters and see new hori­zons. In a word, to be, not to seem.
• Atten­tive­ness - where with­out it. The mood of the client, the appear­ance of the cof­fee machine, and the order at the check­out should not be left with­out atten­tion. If a barista wants to be a per­son who does­n’t have that kind of focus, and mul­ti­task­ing is the most annoy­ing thing for him, he will obvi­ous­ly have prob­lems.

Socia­ble, friend­ly, pleas­ant — this is how clients see a spe­cial­ist, and meet­ing this expec­ta­tion is prob­a­bly real­ly the key to suc­cess for a barista in many ways. In addi­tion, a spe­cial­ist must pos­sess such impor­tant qual­i­ties as neat­ness, punc­tu­al­i­ty, dis­ci­pline.

There are sev­er­al options here. You can take cours­es where you have to pay from 500 to 1000 rubles per hour of train­ing. There­fore, for a full course, a per­son can give up to 20,000 rubles. Of course, dur­ing this time you can not only learn how to work with cof­fee, but also under­stand whether this is your pro­fes­sion or not. Although real, full-fledged impres­sions are formed only direct­ly at the work­place.

Anoth­er option is to study on the job. And it’s real. Man­age­ment can arrange this as an intern­ship and allo­cate an aver­age of 5 hours a day to train a new employ­ee. How many days such an intern­ship will take is decid­ed indi­vid­u­al­ly in each case.

A diplo­ma or course cer­tifi­cate is not of the same val­ue as a col­lege diplo­ma. Not all cof­fee hous­es even ask to show it, it is enough to men­tion that the per­son has com­plet­ed his stud­ies and is aware of the require­ments for his spe­cial­ty. But the pas­sage of var­i­ous advanced train­ing cours­es already in the course of a career is per­haps more rel­e­vant than the ini­tial pas­sage of cours­es. So you can become not just a good barista, but one of the best on the mar­ket, one that makes a name for your cof­fee shop.

You can search for a job direct­ly on sites where employ­ers post job ads. Today, these sites are often infe­ri­or to the­mat­ic sites in social net­works. And this is a good option: mon­i­tor them, look for those cafes and cof­fee shops where they are ready to take a per­son with no expe­ri­ence, a begin­ner. Also on such sites it is eas­i­er to track the con­di­tions of employ­ment, the lev­el of wages, and so on. That is, the ulti­mate goal is not just to get where they take, but to find the most accept­able job for them­selves.

What to ask your employ­er:

• what is the work­ing sched­ule;
• How long will the shift be?
• will the barista work alone or with oth­er employ­ees;
• what is the salary sched­ule?
• what is the paten­cy of the trad­ing place;
• whether an intern­ship is nec­es­sary and whether the intern­ship will be paid.

In some, espe­cial­ly per­son­al­ly attrac­tive cof­fee shops, you can just go in and ask if they are look­ing for an employ­ee. In a num­ber of places where such a vacan­cy is not rel­e­vant at the moment, they nev­er­the­less allow you to fill out a ques­tion­naire, and in the future every­thing may turn out.

Work in this area is nev­er called a spe­cial­ty that will help you get rich or make a career leap. Growth with­in the pro­fes­sion is cer­tain­ly pos­si­ble, but it still has its ceil­ing. Very often, a per­son who has worked as a barista sim­ply begins to seri­ous­ly look at this busi­ness and plans to even­tu­al­ly open his own cof­fee van, work for him­self. This is a more real­is­tic goal than becom­ing the coolest barista in Moscow, for exam­ple.

The salary is affect­ed by the num­ber of shifts worked, the length of the shift itself and the flow of vis­i­tors. In small cof­fee shops, inter­est­ing­ly, the aver­age salary is high­er than in net­work ones. Usu­al­ly, a shift salary at 12 hours ranges from 1500–2000 rubles. Earn­ings do not depend much on the for­mat of the cof­fee house, but how much depends on the cross-coun­try abil­i­ty. The barista receives a per­cent­age of sales (not always, but in the vast major­i­ty of cas­es) — the more cof­fee shop rev­enue, the more his salary. There­fore, it turns out that a small island in a large shop­ping cen­ter may well be a bet­ter place to work in terms of salary than a styl­ish cof­fee shop.

As for tips, the most hon­est cal­cu­la­tion is 200–500 rubles per shift. The barista puts box­es and jars for tips him­self, you can accom­pa­ny them with a roman­tic or moti­va­tion­al sig­na­ture, for exam­ple, “I am sav­ing up for a wed­ding” or “I am col­lect­ing for Elbrus.” Such charm­ing marks increase vis­i­tor loy­al­ty.

Man­age­ment can pay either as stan­dard, twice a month, or every day. Usu­al­ly this can be nego­ti­at­ed. There are few­er risks for the employ­ee in the case of shift pay, the risk that they will be under­paid, deduct­ed for some­thing, is min­i­mized.

Devot­ing a life­time to serv­ing cus­tomers, prepar­ing cof­fee for them, prob­a­bly few peo­ple dream of. But the pro­fes­sion is inter­est­ing, allow­ing you to know your­self, earn mon­ey (for a young man with­out a fam­i­ly, the word “earn” def­i­nite­ly sounds with­out exag­ger­a­tion). More­over, it is not par­tic­u­lar­ly dif­fi­cult to start in it.