Coffee shops in the island city continue to heat up. Baristas are in short supply.

Qingdao still lacks high-quality talents

With more and more coffee shops in Qingdao, walking on the road, we often see job advertisements for baristas on the small blackboard erected at the entrance of the coffee shop. This is not an accident in the industry, but a problem faced by the whole industry.

"Professional baristas currently have a big market gap in Qingdao." A three-year barista told reporters, and a number of industry insiders agree with this view.

How do you define professional baristas? Cui, founder of a coffee training school in the island city, said that professional baristas must undergo a complete set of barista courses to have professional knowledge and operational skills.

WBC World Barista Competition is a global authoritative event in coffee industry, similar to the football World Cup known to ordinary people in Cui's words. It is reported that in such a competition, Qingdao will select 5-6 players to participate in the national competition every year, but there are no world-class players. Moreover, among the 5-6 people in Qingdao competition area, many competition events are "taken over" by one player for many years. In other words, truly powerful baristas are rare in Qingdao, which is in sharp contrast to some cities with more developed coffee industry.

According to industry statistics, Qingdao's current coffee shops, excluding international chain stores, the number of about 1300. This quantity level is undoubtedly the "boss" in Shandong Province and also in the forefront from a national perspective. However, the number and quality of Island City baristas are far from such a coffee atmosphere.

Practitioner's Income "Dilemma"

Citizen Xiao Jia has worked in a coffee shop near Zhongshan Road for more than two years. Not long ago, he just quit his job as a barista.

On the one hand, barista recruitment advertisements constantly appear in people's field of vision, on the other hand, experienced baristas choose to leave, why do these two seemingly contradictory phenomena appear?

Xiao Jia told reporters that one of the reasons for his resignation was that he felt that his income was low. It is understood that at present in Qingdao market, the monthly income of ordinary baristas is about 3,000 to 4,000 yuan. In online posts discussing the barista industry, some people said the salary was too low to make a living.

However, in the eyes of some industry insiders, this is not the case. "Three or four thousand is a relatively objective salary level in Qingdao, and its work intensity is not particularly large."

A large part of the problem lies at one end of the equation, not the other. The contrast between the high training fees of professional schools and the more ordinary salary levels has created a psychological gap that many people are unable to bridge.

Xiao Liu, a practitioner who once received training at a senior coffee training school in the island city, said he attended a five-day full-time course at a price of 8800 yuan. "Many people come to Qingdao for training in order to find a job or go out to make a living. They don't have a lot of savings. Some people still get tuition fees from their parents." Therefore, it is reasonable to have the idea that "input and output are not proportional".

Training market structure to be optimized

What is the barista training market in Qingdao? Reporters in baidu to "qingdao barista training" as a keyword search, will see such a few of the most relevant names: red leaf valley, celebrities, fashion, love still, anlin, ou ka, li xiang.

The reporter interviewed and found that these companies can basically cover the barista training market in Qingdao. Among them, it can be divided into two categories: one is vocational training school, barista is one of the courses, others may have pastry chef, chef, etc.; the other is specialized training barista school, the owner of these schools generally also has coffee shop.

"The number of such training schools is actually enough for Qingdao's coffee market." Cui explained, but this quantity of "excess" does not mean that Qingdao trained barista talent has been surplus.

Qualified talent is still in short supply, and the key one is that the training market structure is unreasonable.

"Vocational training schools, trained a lot of baristas can not adapt to coffee shop work, concept is older, lack of practical ability, often to shop to learn from scratch; and professional barista training schools, prices are expensive, and the curriculum is tight." Some insiders have made such a summary of the current island city training market.

Reporters in the network search found, Professional training school Anlin coffee culture college, Junior high baking class 6 courses for 6800 yuan, Junior high sensory cup test 6 courses for 5800 yuan; Another Li Xiang coffee school, Taiwan famous teacher baking class 3 days price for 5800 yuan, Cup test class 3 days price for 6000 yuan. Generally speaking, a person with zero foundation needs to take several courses to become a barista.

Xiao Liu, who once enrolled in the course, recalled his experience of studying, saying that the course was very close and a lot of content could not be digested. "Baristas need to practice. If they can't digest it in class, it's hard to practice at home. Very few people will spend tens of thousands of dollars to buy a machine to practice."