Keys To The Shop : Equipping Coffee Shop Leaders

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329 : How to Teach Company Values to Your Staff

336: Cafe Leadership Masterclass w/ Selina Viguera of Blue Bottle Coffee Mar 22, 2022

Show notes

It's not very often you come across someone who has spent decades as a true example of what it is to be an exemplary manager, leader, and professional. When you do find them you better be prepared to absorb their wisdom and let it help guide your own career.

Well, today we are privileged to sit down with some one who has done exactly that. We are talking all about leadership, management, and training, with Selina Viguera of Blue Bottle Coffee!

Selina Viguera is well-known in specialty coffee mostly for being an amazing and dedicated barista. She leads the Barista Guild Café at Specialty Coffee Expo and U.S. CoffeeChamps; she's been a lead barista at TED in Vancouver, as well as TEDxWomen and TEDxMed; her latte art is featured on the Pacific Barista Series Oat and Rice packages. And she's been "the face" of Blue Bottle, especially in her adopted home in Los Angeles, for years. Selina Viguera is a coffee professional who has worked in the industry for over 20+ years. Selina has managed some of the busiest Blue Bottle cafes in the North American market such as San Francisco's Ferry Building location and LA's Abbot Kinney location, where she is currently the cafe leader for over 7 years. In our conversation we explore here long career and the experiences that have shied who she is as a leader today. We cover:

Discovering the work of the cafe and then specialty coffee
Connecting with customers and becoming a leader
Leading the change to specialty in her first cafe
Learning to train and teach
Doors opening for management and leadership
Leading "Team First" and the metric of staff happiness
Training and onboarding effectively
Empowering feedback and conflict resolution
Balance of structure and culture
Embracing difficult conversations and being courageous
What she is most proud of accomplishing
Advice to fellow managers

Links:

Instagram: @sellybean_13

Email: Selina.viguera@gmail.com

Recommended Episodes:

313 : Coffee Education and Training w/ Michael Phillips of Blue Bottle Coffee

306 : A Conversation w/ 2004 U.S. Barista Champion, Bronwen Serna!

305 : Founder Friday! w/ Andrew Sinclair of MadLab Coffee, Los Angeles, CA

In Praise of Long Term Imperfect Employment

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077 : How you can Happen to your Career w/ Scott Anthony Barlow : A frame work for finding the right work

In Praise of Long Term Imperfect Employment Mar 17, 2022

Show notes

We have talked a lot about your career development on the show and for the most part I would say this show advocates that you find a place that is right for you. There are times though, when we are in what could be considered the right place, but the difficulty prompts us to move on too quickly, leaving opportunity for growth behind.

In todays Shift Break we will be chatting about how long term employment in a place that can sometimes be deeply challenging can actually be beneficial and deepen your growth.

Be sure to also listen to the linked episodes below. They provide other perspectives that will help you wrap your mind around your current situation to make a mindful and solid decision.

Related Episodes:

Hard Work is Hard

015 : What to do if You don't Advance w/ Anne Nylander : How to take the next step in your barista/coffee career

260 : Wait! Is your current Job actually the right Job?

331 : The 7 Deadly Sins of my Career

292 : How to Take Charge and Drive Your Career w/ Ed Evarts

Patience & Passivity : Career Advice for the Long Game

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Sustainability Series #4 : Consumer

335: A Better Business Model for Coffee Farmers w/ Thaleon Tremain of Pachamama Coffee Mar 13, 2022

Show notes

Most of us would say we represent farmers with our work. Few of can say we literally work for farmers. Increasingly we see the need for business models that don't just give financial reward to farms but that shift the power balance to them. This is where the example and work of Pachamama Coffee shines as an example of what is possible with true farmer ownership. Today we are going to be exploring this model with the CEO AND co-founder, Thaleon Tremain.

Thaleon Tremain is the CEO and co-founder of Pachamama Coffee Cooperative, a vertically-integrated cooperative representing more than 240,000 smallholder coffee farmers around the world. Launched in California in 2006, Pachamama is the first coffee roaster in North American to be 100% owned and governed by farmers in Africa and Latin America. Thaleon has led Pachamama Coffee's formation and growth since 2003.

Pachamama Coffee is wholly owned by its five member-cooperatives and its board of representatives is entirely composed of farmer representatives. Pachamama allows farmers to maintain quality control of their roasted coffee, while creating a brand and a simple path to share their own story with their own customers.

Thaleon's passion for the cooperative business model began at an agricultural cooperative in rural Bolivia, where he worked as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the mid 1990s. In pursuit of a better ownership and governance structure for economic development, Thaleon is a dedicated advocate for the cooperative model. He lives in Sacramento with his wife and two sons.

In our conversation we will be exploring the founding and development of Pacahamama, its growth, goals, and isights they have gained over the course of almost 20 years of changing the landscape of farmer equity.

The beginning of pachamama
True farmer ownership
Working for farmers
True partnerships
Patience and building long term solutions
The importance of marketing, branding, and the consumer
Communication of preference to farmers from the market
Long term viability through community

Links:

www.pachamamacoffee.com

Instagram @pachamama_coffee

Related Episodes:

Sustainability Series #2 : Importing & Roasting

294 : At Origin Roasting Revolution w/ Luis Fernando, founder of Amor Perfecto!

288 : The Truth behind Cheap Coffee w/ Karl Weinhold

265 : Gaining Clarity on Transparency w/ Jonas Lorenz of The Pledge

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The Problem with "Should"

When Patience is not a Virtue Mar 10, 2022

Show notes

A them of this show has been to infuse grace and patience into your leadership. For the most part, when we exercise patience and extend grace to baristas in the cafe it is a good thing that brings about positive results. There are times though, when it turns into something detrimental and it is hard to tell where that line is.

Today on Shift Break we are going to explore why patience is not always the best play and what you can to avoid letting your emotions prolong a bad situation.

Recommended episodes:

Hard Work is Hard

Reasonable Expectations

Patience & Passivity : Career Advice for the Long Game

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Pathways to Peace Training

334: How to Approach Deescalation in the Coffee Shop w/ Melissa Tucker of Mind of Matters Institute Mar 08, 2022

Show notes

Working in customer a customer facing environment like a coffee shop means that we get to serve and experience all different types of people in the course fo the day. While so many of our interaction are within the expected range of emotions, there are times where things get pretty tense and situations escalate past where we are comfortable.

What do we do when confronted with these circumstances? Are we prepared for and confident in deescalation? Sadly we often fail in this area which means bad situations often get worse leaving staff and customers feeling demoralized and without much hope for resolution.

This is a really important topic and To help us learn how to approach deescalation and make it a real process in our shops we are talking to Melissa Tucker or Mind Over Matters and Pathways to Peace.

Melissa graduated with a Master's in Counseling Psychology from University of Hawaii Hilo, in August 2015. She worked for five years, in Hawaii, as a crisis mobile responder for youth, as a counselor at the domestic violence shelter, as a counselor for a private outpatient substance abuse clinic, and as the clinical supervisor providing training, counseling, parent education and services to staff and Child Welfare Services mandated clients. After moving to Washington State in 2019, she began providing private coaching and training in Motivational Interviewing, supervision, and counseling skills. She also worked for Crisis Connections as a supervisor and trainer for counselors and non-clinicians in Mental Health related skills. She currently works as a Licensed Mental Health Counselor Associate in private practice in addition to doing private training.

In today's conversation we cover:

What leads to poorly handled conflict
The unique context of the coffee shop
Caring for staff needs and safety
Listening and understanding
The right mindset and cultlure
Inoculating baristas against conflict
Making policy a conversation
Modeling behavior
Principles and techniques of deescalation

Links:

https://www.mindovermattersinstitute.com

EMAIL: info@pathpeace.org

Related episodes:

125 : Confidence in Conflict w/ Kwame Christian : A framework for Compassionate Curiosity

262 : Understanding the Homeless Community w/ Natalie Harris, Executive Director of The Coalition for the Homeless

052 : Solving Coworker Conflict w/ Tom Henschel

165 : The Art of Deep Listening w/ Oscar Trimboli

104 : How to Deliver Difficult Feedback w/ Tom Henschel

330 : Establishing Systems in Your Coffee Shop

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327: Founder Friday! w/ Phuong Tran of Lava Java

Building your Coffee Shop's Capacity from Simplicity Mar 03, 2022

Show notes

Coffee shops are notorious for overcomplicating their menus, concepts, and services. Most shops, if left unchecked in this, will have a significant number of poorly thought through drinks, back stock of unused inventory, and frustrated staff and customers either leaving bad reviews or leaving the business. The answer is not what we can add to our already burdened shops to find success, but what can we do less of to focus more on the few things that will bring success.

On today's Shift Break we are going to discuss how to approach building your capacity and ability to make good decisions by embracing simplicity and learning what you business needs and what it can handle as you go.

Related episodes:

224 : Essentialism: Focusing on what truly Matters w/ Greg McKeown

274 : Crafting Specialty Drinks in your Shop w/ Matt Foster"

240 : What to do before your Build your Bar

Exclusivity is a Bad Strategy

Blog: Soul Searching in the New Landscape of Retail

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333: Bridging the Professional and Home Barista Gap w/ Lance Hedrick of Onyx Coffee Lab Feb 28, 2022

Show notes

We are living in a time where the average consumer is both spoiled for choice and simultaneously vexed at the sheer number of options available for great coffee and brewing equipment. What used to be a need for more and better green and gear has shifted to a need for how to choose and then use it all to get the best results for you. At the same time professionals, who represent coffee to the consumer, are increasingly hungry for reliable knowledge beyond their shops but lack the time that home enthusiasts tend to have more of.

In the field of resources for making sense of coffee, today's guest, Lance Hedrick, stands out for his friendly, accessible, and well reasoned and researched approach to demystifying brewing for both pros and the average consumer.

Lance Hedrick is a PHD student truanted coffee student who gave up his path in academia and pursuing a professorship in philosophy and linguistics to pursue coffee science and equipment.

In Lance's time working in coffee, he has worked bar, in a kitchen, bagging coffee, making deliveries, roasting, quality control, managing, opening a shop, consulting, designing bars, servicing equipment, training, and is currently overseeing wholesale for the west coast and international accounts for Onyx Coffee Labs.

As an accomplished competitor Lance has won somewhere over 30 latte art throw downs, is a 2 time CoffeeFest Latte Art World Champion, and has won 3rd and 2nd, respectively, in the US Brewers Cup Championship. Finally, he has been a coach to Andrea Allen in the Barista Championship since joining in 2018.

Lance has taken his passion for academia and coffee and combined them to create his popular Youtube channel where he breaks down the complex world of coffee and coffee equipment to make enjoying the best coffee accessible to all.

In our conversation today we are going to hear a bit of Lances story and dive deep into the subject of how he approaches research, coffee education, and the importance of creating in roads for consumers to more fully enjoy specialty coffee.

We cover:

Abandoning academia for coffee
Discovering specialty
Becoming latte art famous
Developing skills for training and teaching
Starting to develop online material
Making coffee education accessible
The education gap between consumers and professionals
Equipping our customers well
Methodology for what is right vs what is best
The importance of investing training and education
Barista education as the key equipping and embracing consumers

Links:

Lance Hedrick YouTube

Lance on Instagram

Related Episodes:

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256 : Founder Friday w/ Varat Vichit-Vadakan of Roots Coffee Roaster in Bangkok, Thailand

332: Founder Friday! w/ Iman Kusumaputra & Putri Yulandari of Kopikalyan, Jakarta, Indonesia Feb 25, 2022

Show notes

On this Founder Friday we go to Jakarta, Indonesia to explore the story of Kopikalyan! This ground breaking roaster retailer sources, roasts, and serves exclusively Indonesian Coffees. Innovation, Hospitality, and relationships are what drive this fantastic company and in today's episode we get to talk to Iman and Putri, two of the co-founders about how they took this business from idea, to reality

Iman & Putri are two of six friends who co-founded Kopikalyan, both studied in Melbourne, Australia, one of the best cities in the world to enjoy coffee. The idea to start a coffee shop business happened over a casual conversation in 2016 and today Kopikalyan has 4 outlets in total, 3 in Jakarta and 1 in Tokyo, Japan.

Iman is an ex-banker who turned into a full-time entrepreneur due to his interest in F&B Business. Upon entering the coffee industry, he got interested in enhancing the synergy between upstream & downstream, particularly on how coffee shops could directly support a better life for farming families of Indonesia through fair prices.

Putri is an architect who previously worked on many hospitality projects. What interests her most about designing a coffee shop is the limitless possibility of always creating something different, in terms of customer's experience as well as branding identity. She believes that visuals are an important aspect of showcasing great coffee. A coffee shop should be representing and spotlighting the coffee as well as the people behind that cup of coffee.

We cover:

Their inspiration to start
First year success and challenges,
Learning coffee and roasting
Growing the business , and staying true to values
Differentiation through sourcing and innovation
Building relationship with farmers
Scaling and metrics
Balancing intuition with dataLinks

Links:

www.kopikalyan.com

Instagram @kopikalyan

Related Episodes:

247 : Founder Friday! w/ Ritesh Doshi, CEO of Spring Valley Coffee, Nairobi, Kenya

289 : Founder Friday w/ Ochen Simon Eidodo of Chariots Coffees, Uganda!

171 : Founder Friday w/ Matt Chitharanjan and Namrata Asthana of Blue Tokai Coffee Roasters in India

134 : Founder Friday w/ Jeremy Zhang of M2M Roasters & Uni Uni Coffee in Nanjing ,China

294 : At Origin Roasting Revolution w/ Luis Fernando, founder of Amor Perfecto!

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The Barista Series: Best Plant Based Beverages on Earth!

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How to Talk to Each Other Feb 23, 2022

Show notes

Do you have an agreed upon way that you and your staff talk to each other? Poor communication is one of the most cited issues in exit interviews yet we rarely end up doing much to address it specifically.

Since we have been focusing on values in action lately today on Shift Break I thought it would be good to discuss how to collectively establish rules of engagement that will help guide how everyone in the business thinks about, approaches, and works with each other.

291 : What to do if Your Baristas Wont Listen to You

244 : Top 10 Ways to Lose Employees

329 : How to Teach Company Values to Your Staff

Scaling Values

Bridging the Values-Actions Gap

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