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As a coffee roaster, we work closely with a whole host of businesses including coffee shops, hotels and restaurants, for examples, and understand that each industry has different needs and demands. However, we have noticed one challenge being faced throughout all sectors, that being retaining quality baristas and bar staff.

Currently, 95 million cups of coffee are consumed in the UK each day, which has risen by 25 million cups from 2008-2018. And this demand for coffee is only rising, which is having a direct impact on the rise in demand for top quality baristas.

Since COVID-19, we have noticed a huge decrease in baristas, waiters and waitresses, and bar staff. A lot of café workers were from Europe which meant that many returned to their country of origin at the start of the pandemic. Additionally, Brexit has effected café workers as it is now less financially beneficial for Europeans to live and work in the UK rather than their country of origin.

These changes have resulted in a shift in employer behaviours as we’re now in an ‘employees market’, where there is so much choice for work that café owners are having to to compete with each other for employees. To do this, café owners are beginning to offer more incentives for their employees such as higher wages, more holidays and more flexible hours, for instance.

Unsurprisingly, having either a lack of baristas or having baristas who aren’t knowledgeable about coffee will be directly affecting the quality of coffee being served, and also the customer experience.

At Bridge Coffee Roasters, because we’re passionate about coffee, we love sharing our knowledge and experience with as many people as possible to create consistently great coffee time after time. When we’re faced with issues such as retaining quality staff, our suggestion to the café owner is to 1) Concentrate on customer service, 2) innovate and 3) deskill your processes. One of the biggest challenges for café owners is consistently serving perfection to their customer, regardless of how busy they are – being understaffed only compounds this issue to the point where some cafes have had to either operate on shorter opening hours or close altogether. Is there a silver bullet that can solve this issue you may ask? Well…. Yes! Let us tell you about the Eversys super automatic coffee machines.

We work with Eversys; the professionals choice of super automatic espresso machines, not to be confused with a standard (or even premium) bean to cup machine, although they share a similar operating model. Eversys super automatic machines are head and shoulders above their competition when it comes to in cup quality (it’s the best), reliability and consistency. These machines are changing the roles of Baristas worldwide. They enable the operator to concentrate more on customer service and less on crafting the perfect espresso, because the machine does it all for you in a way that doesn’t diminish the authenticity of being served by a barista and designed to give the very best beverage time and time again.

The massive benefit in todays staffing climate, is that these machines mean your café can operate at much lower staff levels without any compromise on in cup quality or customer service. It’s possible to operate with 2 staff in instances where 4 staff (2 of which would be baristas) are needed with a traditional espresso machine. These machines have been endorsed by some of the worlds most renown speciality baristas.

They combine premium Swiss engineering with industry leading technology to pull the perfect espresso time after time, taking coffee creation to the next level. Eversys are on a mission to create ‘true espresso with a touch’. They do this through the optimisation of technology and blend it with traditional barista customs.

These machines are the future for any café or coffee shop who have faced staffing challenges, as it massively reduces the need for baristas with a vast amount of knowledge and training.

Super Traditional

Eversys has always aimed to bridge the gap between the worlds of traditional and super-automatic machines to elevate the role of the barista to a higher level of creativity, in order to let human skills flourish.

“In many ways, Super Ts are still unexplored territory. It’ll continue to test the future of customer service, coffee quality, and consumer expectations. But the thing that will really transform this landscape, is that well-made coffee will no longer be an exclusively hand-made product. Once you realise that, the business model has to change.”. Champion Barista, Matt Perger.

However; it must be said that now may not be the perfect time for you as a café owner to invest in new equipment and that’s where making your existing staff the very best they can be is paramount. We offer SCA accredited training courses to give baristas the confidence when creating consistently great coffees, and we regularly monitor this through our Brand Champion programme.

Brand Champion Programme

Our Brand Champion programme is a bespoke plan which focusses on helping to create and maintain the wow factor from baristas. There are three main factors which we take into consideration which include brand standards, brand manual and brand monitoring. The first task is to develop the brand standards which acts as the backbone of the Brand Champion programme. Once this has been developed, we use this to create the brand manual, which is an overview of the whole operations process that is tailored to you and includes, but is not limited to, best practice guides, drink recipes and upselling promotional offers. And to make sure all staff are fully trained and competent at crafting consistently great coffee, we offer comprehensive training and monitoring in line with the brand standards.

As a result, our tailored Brand Champion programme could be a solution to retaining baristas as they receive regular training, monitoring and the confidence to craft consistently great coffee. Our dedicated coffee trainers and engineers are masters of their craft, and they inspire and share passion to encourage any business to keep serving world class coffee. It could be a better option than installing a new bean to cup for those who already have trusty traditional machines, depending on your business’ priorities. Find out more in our video below.

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