Bryce Speaks about Creating Supportive Environments

Favorite coffee drink: good old espresso, or a gibraltar

Favorite origin: I love a single origin Ethiopia

Album: that’s a great question. At my current shop we like to cater more towards the customer’s needs. But when I can have more control, something by Jesus and the Mary Chain, or Chinese Fountain by The Growlers.   

“I started in coffee because my mom used to have her own coffee truck, when I was a kid. It was called The Bean Machine, and she would park in front of my elementary school and sell hot chocolates and coffee. That’s kind of what sparked my interest in coffee. As I grew older, I became even more interested in it, and in the specialty coffee side of it. My first pick for a job, because it was close to my house, was a local roasting company.

There is so much to coffee that most people don’t even know about. There is so much that goes into each shot that is pulled. So much goes into every bean, all the work that the people at the farms do just to create a pound of coffee. It’s insane how much work it takes. And coffee is so diverse- even if it’s from the same region, it’s not all the same. It’s still so different. It keeps my interest, and I like the learning aspect. Every time we get a new coffee at my current job, they are really informative about it. We go in the back and taste it and talk about tasting notes, at how many meters of elevation it was grown, what region it’s from, and we talk about the farms. And it’s really interesting to learn about the farms, because that is something I hadn’t learned while working at other shops, but at my current shop we had a direct trade for a while, and right now we have two new ones, one from Mexico and one from Ethiopia- that are from women run farms.

I would love to eventually roast. I am young so it’s harder for me to get higher up in the coffee pyramid. But I think where I am working now- that is possible. They really strive to have us be able to make a career here, and I appreciate that.”

This possibility for upwards movement is different from what Bryce has experienced at other jobs. “Back when I worked at my first coffee job- they keep people at register for years, and you might never be offered time on the bar. There was one employee that worked there for three years- never got a raise and was only ever on register. Never got asked to be on bar, never asked to be a shift lead. And the thing about that café is that they would move other people from the very bottom to the very top so quickly for no good reason at all. There was one girl who I worked with who was really sweet- I don’t know if she had coffee experience before- but she went from register to production immediately. And I don’t know if it was something she had talked about with them beforehand, but it was really fast. And then another coworker I had, he also started at register and then went straight to production, but skipped bar training. It was just a mishmash of things that didn’t add up. If you don’t know how to dial in espresso, and you don’t know how to deal with the beans, then how could you be roasting them?

There was only one other person who was my age who worked there. She worked there for three years too, and she didn’t get bar trained until I got bar trained. I had worked there for six months- and even that was a very long time. But she had worked there for three years!

I worked really hard to be on bar. I really tried to show an interest in the espresso- I would fill out the Barista Sheets every morning, which was just what you were drinking that day, the tasting notes you were getting- and no one else ever did it. But I did it every day because I knew that was one of the ways you could show that you were interested and really wanted to be on bar. I did it for six months, and no one ever said anything. Whereas no one else on register did it, and they would get bar trained. It was hard to see people who didn’t really care about the coffee or the company, and then see them making strides and getting raises and being promoted. That never happened with me. I was told I was going to get a raise when I got put on bar, and that never happened. At the time I was in high school, so I am sure they saw me as young. But I was working four days a week and going to school- I think it showed a degree of responsibility and passion.”

There wasn’t a lot of transparency around who got training and when, and Bryce never felt comfortable speaking with management. “When the general manager would come in, I would get scared that I was going to get in trouble… she would just look at you in this disapproving way, and it wasn’t very comfortable. The manager of my store was really cool when we worked together before he was a manager. But once he became the store manager, a switch flipped. He was a totally different person and was really hard to talk to.

It’s all about transparency and communication. The café where I work now is the first place I’ve felt comfortable going to management about things. I am usually not one to speak up or voice my opinion. But I feel really comfortable doing it here because the owners are clear that they want to hear from us, this is our company, you work here and you are part of our family. Everyone’s opinion matters. There have been a couple of things here where I really didn’t want to say something- but it was to the point where I couldn’t let something slide. I needed to say something. It was all handled really well- it was just problems between employees in the store. I felt really safe speaking with the owner and the manager about the issue.

This is the first time I have worked for a woman owned business. The last business was also technically owned by women, but it was run by men. The way that the owners would come in and only give compliments to the male baristas, and then only critique the women baristas. Question everything they did like ‘oh this is too hot, is this decaf? What kind of milk is this?’ just making them prove themselves.

When I worked at the other company, they would bring in new coffees and not tell anybody. They wouldn’t talk about where it was from, they would name it something else [other than the origin] and we would have no idea what the origins were. I think that the way the barista trainer at the time had set up the bar training was really good, but when it boiled down to it, they told us not to weigh every shot, and that you just have to focus on getting through a line. But when we are busy at my current shop- we still pull every shot with love and care. For claiming that they are a third wave coffee shop, there just wasn’t a lot of knowledge that the employees had.

I have experienced a lot of support at my current job. The owner and manager are really understanding about everything. I came in with the intent to be a barista, and was bar trained after my first month of being here. The owner is always encouraging me to compete in latte art competitions. They always tell me not to sell myself short, and that I am a really good barista. Ownership and management are also really good at communication and even communicate about finances. We had a big team meeting recently, and the owner talked about everything with us. I thought it was really cool to see. That way we know why things are happening with the business. A couple months ago we raised some of our prices. And customers asked us why we did that- they thought it was expensive. And yes it is, but if you can afford a $5 drink, you can afford another 25 cents. And the owner raised the prices because our rent went up, and because they want their baristas to get paid more, and be able to have paid time off, or vacation. I am seeing business decisions reflect this support.

Where I work now feels like home, it feels like family. People have come and gone- we recently lost a lot of employees who left to do really big things like move to New York or go traveling. Its sad to see everybody go, but that also means we will be getting new fresh faces here who will get to experience the love that everybody else has experienced here.”

Beyond supporting employees, Bryce sees coffee shops as also having a big responsibility to the community and clientele they serve: “I think a coffee shop has a lot of responsibility to the community it is in. The owner here really makes an effort to be a part of the community. She goes to all the downtown meetings and donates to local fund-raisers. We have a very big sense of community here. This is as local as it can get. I have gotten nothing but great feedback, especially from returning customers- everyone is really pleased with the service, with the coffee- I have a bunch of friends in the coffee community and they always say this shop has the best coffee.

I feel like, if you’re a customer and you come in here and see how we all interact with each other, as well as our customers, you can tell this a good place to work. This is a well-supported staff. If you had come into my old job while I was working, it would have been super quiet, very chill, no one talking, just very loud music and making drinks. Here it’s a totally different environment. Our customers aren’t our customers, they are our friends. I feel like you can go into a lot of cafes and feel not welcomed. I’ve gone into a lot of cafes in other cities and have felt like I was a burden for coming in and getting a drink. It’s the way you are looked at when you order. It’s the difference between inquiring about someone’s day, or showing that you care for them, rather than just saying “what can I get for you today?”

At my last job I definitely did feel maxed out sometimes. I also didn’t have as good of a customer base. I knew a lot of people’s names and their orders, but people weren’t very friendly. Whereas at my current job, it’s really different. I feel like people go to my last job just to get something to drink, and not for the experience. Towards the end, I knew I couldn’t do it anymore. That job took all that they could. For instance, they schedule people for 7 days in a row, and then don’t give them over time.

I think that it’s possible to create a café and space that caters to everybody. Some places cater more to a higher held stance, cater more to people who have money, and live in really nice neighborhoods- that was a lot of my customer base at my last job. Rich soccer moms and businessmen-and this reflected ownership. Like they created a space where they wanted those people to be the customer base. Whereas where I work now, its people from all over- displaced people coming up from this city by bus, people from all sorts of class backgrounds- all sorts of people that you can think of. I think it’s a matter of showing interest and really making people feel comfortable in your space. That could mean talking to people and asking them about their day, or just having a courteous quick transaction cause some people don’t want to talk about their day. You have to find that balance.”

Advice that Bryce would give herself as a new barista: “Don’t work so hard at a place where you know you won’t get anywhere. Apply somewhere you know you will get support sooner. Go for where you actually want to work sooner and believe in yourself.

I think the coffee community needs to be more safe for everybody. It can be really easy to be stepped on. I feel like the coffee community is very competitive. Like ‘oh, you can’t pull a rosetta in a gibralter, or you can’t dial in that espresso,’ and I think people need to be more understanding with mistakes. I think that we need to be more accepting of people who are learning because all in all, no one ever truly knows everything about coffee. We are all learning all the time. So I think people need to take that into consideration and not worry about where other people fall short, and instead try to help them. The industry needs more woman-owned businesses, more places that are accepting of the LGBTQ community. The coffee industry can be really rough, and there needs to be more love and caring for the needs of the people that are working. And also recognizing passion and determination. I feel like that can be overlooked really easily.”

What Bryce loves most about working in coffee: “My favorite thing about working in coffee is serving someone a fine piece of latte art, or giving someone a shot of espresso and having them say “oh my god, that was so good, mmm, thank you.” I work really hard and it means a lot to me when people realize that. I think to the outside eye it’s easy to think, oh, you work at a coffee shop, thats all you do- that is so common. But there is so much more to it that people don’t see. We work so hard to create the perfect shot, steam the perfect milk, present the perfect drink. Someone who doesn’t work in coffee doesn’t get how hard it can be to do this work. I think people kind of look down on you when you say you work at a coffee shop. I feel like anyone who says they work at a job that could be paid at minimum wage, people consider that like a “kid job,” like go get a career. But coffee could be a career if you really want to make it such.”