Barista Training
5 July 2022
Name of Event: Barista Training
Event Sector: Hospitality
Event Background / Objectives: Seven Inverness High School pupils were given the opportunity to do barista training within a local café called The Bike Shed. They would learn the necessary skills to work in a café and as a benefit would also get some budgeting advice from a separate company called CAP.
Event Format: The training was held over 3 weeks. Each week they would learn different skills related to the hospitality industry.
Week one was about the basics of coffee. They heard from one of the managers at Inverness Coffee Roasting about the process that coffee beans take and the entire roasting process. A visit to Inverness Coffee Roasting will be planned for the future. After this the group split in two. One was learning about the coffee machine and the other got a course on budgeting. The coffee training was led by a barista at the bike shed. The pupils were taught the differences between all the different coffees and how many shots of espresso each coffee got. The pupils took to this very quickly and were very confident in using the coffee machine.
The second group were taught all about budgeting from a group called CAP (Christians Against Poverty). This was done because it is something pupils are not taught about how to spend their own money in school. They were shown how easy it was to get yourself into financial difficulty through a series of tasks and videos.
Week two was more coffee making and then a bit about advertising. The pupils were tasked with coming up with their own drinks and also running their own advertising campaign. They did brilliantly at this and came up with two great milkshakes. One was after eight and the other was salted caramel. For the advertising campaign they had to come up with ideas to get the word out there that Inverness High was taking over the café for a day while also enticing people through the door.
The campaigns they came up with were a TikTok kind of video where its shows how they made the milkshakes in a very snappy video. Also, came up with the idea that customers could win a free drink if they managed to do a cup flip and get the cup to stand on the first try. They set up an advertising board outside to show that some pupils were going to be running the café for a day.
On the third week the café was opened up to the public as normal but was being ran completely by our 7 pupils. They had to take the customer on the entire journey. This included welcoming customers, taking orders, making coffee, tidying up, having conversations with young people amongst others. The café was very busy as it was being advertised in a lot of places and the local community really came out to show support. The café was busy and really gave the pupils an insight into what a day of work really looked like within The Bike Shed.
Direct Impacts
Seven pupils got a real insight into what working within hospitality was like. They were able to be creative and really shone when it came to advertising. The pupils have been offered a chance to work in the café on a Thursday morning if they were free and all 7 have said they would love too.
Benefits
The benefits are massive. All these pupils can now put this on their CV. They all now have a desirable skill in that they can make proper coffee which is something that the hospitality sector is lacking massively.
