Build a professional cafe

Professional barista communication, please pay attention to coffee workshop (Weixin Official Accounts cafe_style )

Either holding coffee in the best posture click a piece of "fashion petty bourgeoisie crowd", or a cup of coffee sitting for a long time "temporary office staff"... reporter investigation found that at present in Jinan coffee shop consumption, mostly for a cup of drink, few people pay attention to coffee itself, as well as the skills of technicians.

Most of the "barista" flows are upgraded by waiters

Gao Wei, a 26-year-old boy, owns a modest coffee aesthetics studio, but "small as a sparrow, it has everything", not only all kinds of coffee machines, but also roasters and teaching places.

"I make money mainly by teaching, selling coffee machines and roasting my own beans. They're just starting to earn some money now, but the students are scattered all over the world." When it comes to the status quo, Gao Wei has a sense of accomplishment. He said that since teaching began in May last year, there have been more than 50 students, mostly from Xinjiang, Harbin, Shenyang, Guangzhou, Yunnan and other provinces and cities. These people range from chain coffee brand baristas to cafe owners to office workers who want to work in the coffee industry, ranging in age from 20 to 60.

"Compared with the current situation of Jinan Coffee House, this is an improvement, because more and more young people who want to engage in coffee industry want to know about coffee and know how to make profits after learning coffee." Gao Wei said that in his opinion, most coffee shops in Jinan lack this professional attitude towards coffee.

"Making coffee isn't easy. On the contrary, it's hard to be a good barista." After graduating from college in 2011, Gao Wei, who studied hotel management, went to a local coffee shop to learn to be a barista, but after going to a few, he found that he couldn't learn anything. "Although the coffee shops in Qingdao are much better than Jinan in terms of environment, service and quantity, they still lack very professional baristas. Most of them are quick training and on duty, and they know little about coffee culture and skills."

Gao Wei said, generally into a better shop, will start from the waiter, do chores, within three months can not enter the bar. Three months later, finally entered the bar, but found that the original cafe barista is also "a bottle of dissatisfaction, half a bottle swing". "I went to many coffee shops and found that every one is similar."

A chance opportunity, Gao Wei met a professional big coffee, not only know coffee culture, but also have a lot of research on coffee skills. There, for more than half a year, Gao Wei systematically learned coffee knowledge and coffee skills, and then chose better-equipped, distinctive or large-scale chain cafes to apply for baristas, but generally stayed in one store for a month or two, learned to immediately jump to other stores. After many studies, I have accumulated a lot of experience and experience for returning to Jinan to open coffee aesthetics studio.

The shopkeeper treats the guests with tea and the barista is mostly "quick"

In the interview, the reporter found that many coffee suppliers in Jinan also serve as training work. Generally, whoever buys more than a certain number of products can obtain the qualification of free training. "I can open a shop in a few days at the earliest." A lot of coffee suppliers say. Although the rapid training of a "barista" has achieved many young people's dreams of owning coffee shops, more and more young people have entered the coffee business team, but the unprofessionalism of the barista is an invisible obstacle to the promotion of Jinan coffee culture.

"At present, Jinan has almost no professional coffee training institutions. You can become a barista if you can order fur." Gao Wei said that there are nearly 600 cafes in Jinan, but there are few truly professional ones. Almost no practitioners are willing to promote coffee culture, because it takes time, experience and money. They consider more benefits.

"Coffee culture promotion is difficult to do with coffee shop owners do not understand coffee. I went to visit the owner of the cafe and he offered me a cup of tea, which surprised me. The other party did not find it strange. Instead, he said that it was a habit for Shandong people to treat guests with tea." Zhou Pan, manager of the development department of Hengxinkov Coffee Shandong Co., Ltd., also believes that the promotion of coffee culture must start from coffee practitioners, which is also a help to the promotion of its business.

He said that a long-term coffee shop must first have someone willing to drink coffee and like to study coffee culture. "Most people who go to the store don't go for coffee, they take pictures first and then have a coffee-flavored drink." If you don't take pictures, you'll feel like you're losing money."

High-end coffee machines are rare and 90% are cheap "cabbage machines"

"Jinan's coffee market is at least 5-10 years worse than Qingdao's. More coffee shops focus only on profit and don't care much about quality." Gao Wei pointed to the Italian coffee machine in the studio and told reporters that this 90,000-yuan machine is full of streets in Qingdao, but it is rare in Jinan. 95% of the machines are under 30,000 yuan, which is a "cabbage machine" in the coffee industry.

Zhou Pan's company also sells coffee machines. He thinks Jinan's coffee culture level can be seen from the buyers of coffee machines. "Due to the large mobility of coffee practitioners, like this fully automatic coffee machine, the price is less than 10,000 yuan, which is very popular with Internet cafe owners. It's common to choose a low-priced coffee machine at the beginning of a store." Zhou Pan introduced that the store's Italian coffee machine prices range from nearly ten thousand yuan to hundreds of thousands of yuan, but also the most common coffee maker in cafes. It can not only make American, latte, mocha, but also make all kinds of fancy coffee, which is widely used. Coffee operators generally spend 20,000 - 40,000 yuan to choose machines with higher cost performance. "Everyone knows that coffee machines are like cars. There must be a reason for their high price."

The reporter learned that Jinan has few cafes that bake coffee beans themselves, all of which buy roasted cooked beans. But in Qingdao, millions of baking machines are common. "Roasting coffee beans requires not only skill, but experience. A good baker earns three or four hundred thousand yuan a year." Zhou Pan told reporters.

Gao Wei also said that although he spent more than 70,000 yuan to buy a baking machine and bake beans for sale, he is still burning money. Roasting coffee beans is a technical job that involves searching over and over again for the characteristics and best taste of each bean. "For example, the taste of beans is divided into acidic and bitter. If you bake a bean that is sour, it will be better. If it is bitter, the pot may be wasted. How can a shop owner teach someone how to taste coffee when he trains a barista quickly and buys cheap machines and beans?" Gao Wei thinks,"Jinan coffee shop wants to really 'foreign air' rise, still need to treat coffee as a kind of professional thing."

"We set up a professional coffee trading center, which not only provides coffee sales channels, but also hopes to cultivate Jinan's local coffee culture. At present, there are various grades of coffee machines on sale in the market, and almost every dealer has its own training team. In October this year, we jointly launched a coffee skill competition with the Human Resources and Social Security Department of Jinan City and trained a group of excellent baristas. I believe that driven by the professional market, Jinan's coffee market will become more and more 'foreign goods'." Jinan City Coffee Industry Association President Liu Lei said.