Quick barista, good barista. How to be a faster barista?

Improve your procedures and supplement your equipment with effective barista tools. You'll serve more customers and, in turn, get rid of stressful moments behind the machine. Want to know how to do it?

Do you know what you're doing? Barista procedures and processes

When you're preparing an order, the first thing you do is picture the best process in your mind. Ideally so that your customer doesn't get a cold espresso and a melted lemonade. Prepare individual items from the order according to how susceptible they are to quality reduction by standing on the bar.

Let's put it practically. The cupcake can conveniently wait while you pull the mineral water out of the fridge, and it won't spoil in any way in the time it takes to create the espresso either. The other way around, when you find that you have to go to the store to get the lemonade because it's no longer in the bar fridge, the espresso at the bar would lose its quality by waiting.

Standardised coffee preparation procedures

Step by step, also lay out the actual preparation of specific drinks. Avoid inefficient handling of utensils. All barista processes, i.e. your every move, should have a clear purpose. Shifting milk jugs or cups before you realize which coffee you're actually starting the order with is unnecessary and delaying. For coffees, there is a clear rule of preparation procedure, milk coffee first and then black. Ideally, you whisk the milk at the same time as extracting the espresso.

In coffee machines with volumetrics you can set the automatic shut-off according to the volume of water during extraction. If you get a coffee maker with gravimetry , monitoring the extraction is even more precise as the dosage is controlled by the resulting weight of the drink in the cup. These technologies mean thatthere is no longer any reason for the barista to stand at the coffee machine and finish the extraction manually while just watching the cup being filled.

Automatic aids for baristas

Cappuccino. This is on average the best selling coffee in European coffee shops. Let's illustrate what can be automated = accelerated in the cappuccino making process.

The usual steps of cappuccino preparation are:

weighing the milk into the teapot
weighing the batch of ground coffee
distributing the coffee in the portafilter
tamping the coffee with a tamper
inserting the portafilter into the coffee machine
pressing the extraction button
placing the cups under the portafilter
blowing out the nozzle and whisking the milk
end of whisking and cleaning of the nozzle
pouring milk into the espresso machine

Each of these ten steps of cappuccino preparation provides room for human error. The barista must concentrate on each task. Depending on his personal experience and ability, he is more or less limited in his communication with the customer. In doing so,automated barista aids can be used in each of these steps, ranging from smart weighing to separate whipped milk makers for latte art.

Barista aids for quick coffee preparation

The first thing you should consider is your scales. By that I mean consider whether you have the right barista scales. Smart scales for baristas actually have a number of features that will make your life behind the coffee machine easier. In doing so, buying the right scale is the least costly practice in increasing your work efficiency.

For an example, let's take the most popular digital scales for baristas in recent times by Timemore. Clear display, long battery life, accuracy to 0.1 grams, waterproof, USB-C charging, these are the basic parameters. But did you know thatthe scale can start a countdown on its own as soon as it senses a weight gain? With no display on the coffee maker, you'll be thankful for this simple scale capability.

Of course, checking back the extraction time is an important part of a barista's job, as we know, right? If we focus even more on speed and convenience of use, then there is no faster and at the same time more accurate barista scales than those from Acaia. Which have an extremely long battery life and a display that you can see from almost anywhere, even when the sun is shining through the window.

Grinders and coffee machines with gravimetry

The most efficient weighing is integrated directly into the coffee machine or grinder. This eliminates the process of handling an external scale and the coffee is weighed automatically. This feature is referred to as gravimetry. Victoria Arduino's professional coffee makers describe it as the gravitech feature. This means that each of these gravitech coffee makers has a weighing device built right into the surface of the coffee maker. Just place the cups under the portafilter and the espresso will automatically weigh itself during extraction.

The Victoria Arduino grinders with coffee portion weighing, i.e. gravimetry, are from the popular Mythos line. Specifically the MYG85 or 75. For their sister brand Nuova Simonelli, it is the GX85W grinder. In Mahlkönig grinders, the function is called "Grind by Weight" abbreviated GbW.

Automatic coffee distribution and filling

The first pieces have not yet reached the warehouse and already many of our customers have applied for it. We are talking about the barista tool AutoComb from the popular Barista Hustle. This gadget changes the game, or rather adds precision to your coffee preparation in the portafilter. Perfect coffee distribution in the lever is important for proper espressoextraction. As you can read in article dedicated to the Autocomb barista tool.

After distributing the coffee in the lever, the obvious next step is to froth the coffee. When using a manual tamper, errors arise, which you solve once and for all with the PuqPress. While a manual coffee tamper is a cheaper affair, if it is not used properly and when you need to speed up espresso preparation, there is no better solution than an automatic tamper. It always tamp the coffee at the same strength and perfectly straight. All in the blink of an eye, just check out the separate article on the PuqPress tamper.

Milk froth for latte art without whisking? It's possible!

One thing thatreally holds up during coffee makingis whisking the milk. Not to mention the many mishaps and mistakes during this process when an inexperienced barista takes over. Don't slack off on your quality milk drinks, don't waste your time or expensive milk. Investing in an automatic milk beater will pay for itself many times over. Anywhere there is a little more traffic should have this machine.

Rinse the teapots as a hygiene standard

No barista can do without a clean milk jug. Rinsing the teapot under running tap water is another big time waster. Avoid the time stress of making coffee in the first place by having plenty of teapots on hand. It is also important to have a variety of different sized teapots to save time when making many milk drinks at once.

A neglected accessory of a coffee bar is the teapot sharpener. There are several options to choose from depending on space or your own personal preferences, but be sure to choose one teapot sharpener . This little thing can makecoffee preparation unexpectedly efficient, while also providing an excellent tool for keeping milk jugs clean. Inadequate cleaning of tools that are in contact with milk is simply unacceptable. Remember that it is milk that is considered the most risky in terms of hygiene in a café.

Why have more expensive and better barista equipment

The speed of the barista has a direct impact on guest satisfaction. That's what the café is all about. If your customer is delighted with the quality and speed, they will be happy to return, but the barista and café staff will probably also enjoy the extra tips. I bet that if you are still hesitant about upgrading your cafe equipment with the aforementioned things to speed up the barista's work, the financial side of things is behind the indecision.

Now try to look at the matter purely economically. It is a simple comparison of how many people you employ per shift and how many you are able to serve. To give you a better idea, here is an example shown in the table with an average order value of 200 CZK.ravu of coffee.

persons per shift	5
orders per hour	50	80	100
labour costs	60 EUR	60 EUR	60 EUR
wages vs. sales	12,5%	7,8%	6,3%

By acquiring tools and technology to baristas work faster, you will have the space to serve more customers during busy times in the café. In direct proportion to the increased sales, the cost of wages decreases, as shown in the percentages in the table above. This is where the investment potential of café equipment for efficient coffee preparation becomes apparent.