We’ve drawn from our 8+ years experience as a leading coffee school to design the best, most affordable, Introduction to Coffee course on offer! This AQA certified course gets you making coffees straight away and also covers drinks menus, sensory development, espresso extraction and more! It also offers a taste of our bespoke approach to building additional personal skills and awareness whilst still keeping all the content centered on coffee. 

Using coffee roasted by our sister project, Skylark, this is a focussed course designed to help students quickly attain a proficient skill level for employment. Upon completion, graduates also become eligible to volunteer at our cafe and put their new skills to use in a “live” customer service environment. 

£200 per person*
4x half days
Runs every month

Our next course -
Days: 4x Monday Afternoons
Dates: 13 Jan, 20 Jan, 27 Jan, 3 Feb
Time: 1:30pm - 4:30pm
Place: One Church Gloucester Place, BN1 4AA
Price: £200

Enquire to book onto this course

*We’re a not-for-profit charity project that’s been running for almost a decade and our “Intro course” has always stayed at £100 despite all our costs having risen significantly over that time! In order to continue operating we’ve needed to increase the fees on all our courses so we can generate sufficient revenue to run. Our courses are still better value than any other coffee school around, and we still offer additional free support too, in the form of drop-ins, work experience programmes, and 1-1 mentoring.

Over 350 years ago, In 1670, Dorothy Jones became the first licensed coffee seller in the land that would became the United States of America. Now, coffee is a heavily male-doinated industry and it can feel daunting for women to take their first steps in it. That’s why we’ve designed this bespoke course, to empower women and non-binary people with the skills they need to confidently work in the specialty coffee industry today. 

Run by our Head Trainer, Tara, with support from graduates of the Pro Baristas programme, the course delivers the same barista skills and certification as our Intro to Coffee course, with a bit of additional support throughout. 

£150 per person
6x half days
Runs sporadically

Next Course:
Days: 6x Monday Afternoons
Dates: 28 Oct, 4 Nov, 11 Nov, 18 Nov, 24 Nov, 2 Dec
Time: 1:30pm to 4:30pm
Place: One Church Gloucester Place, BN1 4AA

Enquire to book onto this course

Our Head Barista Course is for those looking to take their coffee skills to the next level. On this course students can add the skills of latte art, advanced sensory assessment, espresso recipe creation and speedy drinks service to their repertoire. Additionally, the course features extraction measurement and refraction, water chemistry, blind cuppings, a look at varieties of Arabica and more! 

Just as with Intro to Coffee, this course is AQA certified and students will receive certification upon completion. We’ve designed it to be as practical and helpful as possible to anyone aspiring to (or already does) hold Head Barista, Cafe Manager or Cafe Owner positions.

£250 per person*
4x half days
Runs every 2-3 months

Our next course -
Days: 4x Monday Afternoons 
Dates: 3 Mar, 10 Mar, 17 Mar, 24 Mar
Time: 1:30pm - 4:30pm 
Place: One Church Gloucester Place, BN1 4AA
Price: £250

Enquire to book onto this course

* Intro to Coffee is strongly recommended but not mandatory providing student has sufficient prior experience

This course is an amalgamation of our Intro to Coffee Course & the Head Barista Course. It’s designed for people with little to no coffee experience who want a single pathway to progress to a high level of skills and knowledge. In addition to the convenience of this consolidated course, it’s also slightly cheaper than doing the two courses separately. 

£400 person
8x half days
Runs every season

Enquire to book onto this course

The Drop-ins work both as a looking glass, showcasing what we do, and a gateway, offering paths to get involved. Come and visit if you’re not sure what you want to do, or if you have any questions, and we’ll have a chat with you over a delicious cup of coffee and you can even get started right away have a go on the machines! 

The Drop-ins have also naturally evolved to be a lot more than just this. They now foster a wonderfully diverse, safe and inclusive community ranging from coffee professionals to NEETs. Don’t be surprised to see people of all ages and assorted needs sharing the space, drinking coffee and improving the community together. 

Sessions take a relaxed form, with everyone pitching in to help teach and learn from one another. They include: 1-1 support, peer-to-peer barista training, coffee experiments, practice space, CV help and more! 

There’s also no limit to how long a student can access the Drop-ins and subsequently they have become a wonderful touchpoint for us to continue supporting individuals over months or even years. 

Free (just bring your own milk!)
Tuesday afternoons from 1pm - 4pm at Gloucester Place (busier)
Thursday afternoons from 1pm - 4pm at Florence Road (quieter)

At Pro Baristas we’re passionate about training & supporting people who want satisfying jobs in specialty coffee – and who might not normally get a chance. The Supported Journey Programme covers all the career options in the booming coffee industry whilst providing world-class barista training, one-to-one personal mentorship, real-world work experience and ongoing post-programme support, all with a focus on confidence building and personal development.

Here are the details for the next course we’re running!
Dates: January 7th - April 1st (detailed dates listed in the document below)
Days: 4 days a week, for 12 weeks
Hours: A total of 110 hours
Locations: One Church Gloucester Place, One Church Florence Road & Fairway Business Park
Cohort size: 4 - 6 students
Price: Free (scholarships paid for by Garfield Weston Foundation)
Eligibility: Applicants must be unemployed 

Designed specifically to be run in collaboration with other agencies, this 10 week course features training and work experience as an entree to speciality coffee and full-time work whilst allowing coffee employers to assess a student's potential. The training includes industry recognised certificates from the Speciality Coffee Association, job interviews or work placements for real-world experience and an emphasis on our Interdependency Framework, which helps people flourish personally and excel in hospitality. Employers can develop the next wave of coffee talent with no hard costs. This programme can serve as a ramp into other training or directly into full-time jobs, and qualification criteria are comparable. This course is frequently tailored as a bespoke offering for clients including the St Johns College, Jobcentre, the YMCA, East Sussex College, LVS and others. And we work with a range of prominent coffee businesses on quality placements.

£600 per person
10x half days
Runs by comission

Email us for details

We have years of experience working with an extremely diverse range of coffee companies, and have a lot of insight as a result. We can advise on cafe setup from bar design and infrastructure through to budgeting, machine sourcing, hiring, setting menus and the ever-crucial workflow. We can also show you the best ways to get lush coffee at home or in the office, without advanced purple prose or expensive equipment. We can support anyone from a volunteer cafe on a tight budget to a truly groundbreaking cafe business focussed on head-turning products and staff. We also have our own roasterie, Skylark, which in addition to giving you some of the best coffee in the UK would also give you discounts on training and support. We can handle one piece -- like hiring -- or advise from the ground up. Just tell us your spec!

If you’re starting a coffee business and need support, shoot us an email!