Baristas want to focus on customer service: polls

The results of a number of polls from the Barista Hustle online community have shown that 73 per cent of baristas would rather be interacting with customers than manually making coffee. Baristas were asked what their favourite part of their job is. The ‘satisfaction of producing a good cup of coffee’ came top (39 per cent), with ‘customer interaction’ (33 per cent) and ‘being able to explore coffee’ (21 per cent) close behind. The manual side of coffee, ‘grinding and brewing’, only received 0.6 per cent of the vote. This was echoed by the 73 per cent that somewhat or strongly agreed that they’d rather be interacting with customers and exploring coffee instead of making it. Baristas were also asked what their least favourite part of the job is, and while ‘customer interaction’ featured on that list, it only had 8 per cent of the vote. The polls were hosted on a closed Facebook group run by Barista Hustle founder Matthew Perger. “The results show that baristas enjoy the satisfaction of making great coffee more than the manual-side to coffee making,” Perger said. “Customer interaction, coffee exploration, and great coffee are respectably their top priorities. I believe that once a coffee professional understands that their profession requires more intellect and emotion than mindless repetitive labour, we'll see significant increases in the satisfaction of those priorities. This is a good thing for humans on both sides of the bar.” The series of three polls were hosted on the Barista Hustle closed Facebook group from 07-25 September. In total the polls received 2,796 responses. The polls were shared by Matt Perger and the Barista Hustle Facebook group to bring even more relevance to Eversys' #theloveofcoffee campaign. The campaign will build to the launch of Eversys’ next generation super-automatic espresso machine at HOST on 20 October.