Where there’s a cart and a sneeze guard …
Hundreds of free barista boxes since March.
Our first on-site barista training course post-lockdown is all women. So that’s one welcome change in an absolute sea of them. We certainly don’t have all the answers yet, but here’s what we’ve learned about the dramatic shifts in coffee across Brighton and Sussex:
* The most vital thing you can do for someone in a socially distanced environment is Stay. In. Touch. Instead of plowing ahead with barista training and business consulting during lockdown, we linked up with Florence Road Market to provide lush, free food and coffee packages to out-of-work coffee people and the hundreds of people we’ve trained recently. Oatly, Minor Figures, Hasbean, Crafthouse, Horsham, Cast Iron, Wolfox, Small Batch and Common Life all donated to these boxes (thank you!) and farmers’ market customers generously subsidised the produce. Beyond the material sustenance of these packages, though, the overwhelming value seemed to be connections and care during a time of loneliness and anxiety. Hundreds of people in coffee need this right now as they navigate a pretty disrupted scene. (You can still get these if you’re not working, by the way.)
* We’re now advising baristas who are receiving redundancy letters or looking for other work, though we’re also seeing creative, new coffee spaces pop up that suit the current consumer environment. Coffee bars in train stations and tight storefronts will be difficult for awhile, but we’re now consulting for outdoor carts and running one of our own every weekend to test and demonstrate best practices. We’re seeing speciality coffee bars open within large and safer spaces that have other primary uses — food halls, hotel lobbies, church halls, street markets, etc. We’re operating such a commercial venture ourselves out of our huge training space, with plenty of airflow and distancing. Old models will die, and new ones are already replacing them. Some great data showing these shifts are just emerging.
* Coffee consumption probably won’t decline overall. It’s now commonplace to see roasters sell directly to customers who are simply drinking more of their coffee at home, and our new roasting company is launching two brands for two separate segments of the marketplace, with direct sales a key piece of making them work. Common Life Coffee is offering affordable and accessible coffees and blends to the charity and church sector, which is growing rapidly. Skylark Coffee, launching soon, will be firmly aimed at selling extraordinary speciality coffee with a compelling stake in changing the power dynamics in the coffee supply chain. The appetite for conscious, socially radical coffee that invests in the marginalised has sharpened in the past four months, and we’re committing all our profits to make sure this happens at home and abroad.
* People still want to work in coffee. How many barista jobs will be available in the near future? Will the new stuff fully replace the old stuff, or is speciality coffee retrenching? That’s hard to answer, with consumers still cautiously emerging (in the UK) into shops again and a “second wave” of COVID still a possibility. Segments of hospitality work certainly look grim for a long while. We’re currently surveying the employers with whom we work, and would welcome your feedback. It seems unlikely that the market for coffee will shrink long term. Instead, it may have a different shape. So we’re opening our new season of barista training to include broader life skills, hospitality skills and more sophisticated health and hygiene savvy in order to give graduates the best chance in a rearranged labour market.
Stay tuned. We’re working on it! And the women in today’s Barista Foundations course are too.