BARISTA TRAINING in Dallas, Texas

Join us at our SCA Certified Training Lab in Dallas, Texas and participate in an intensive, 5-day Barista School 

• Are you starting a coffee shop? 
• Are you a professional Roaster looking for more knowledge on how to ensure quality for your clients and customers?
• Are you a barista looking to hone your skills,  gain SCA credentials toward your Coffee Skills Diploma? 
• Are you training a team of baristas, but you don’t know where to start to build a culture of quality and excellent customer service?

We are going to learn how to take any coffee and achieve the best flavor through lecture, demonstrations, and a ton of hands-on practice to ensure you walk away with a solid foundation of knowledge, and an understanding of industry tips-and-tricks to ensure quality and efficiency.

Lunch is provided on each day, and of course we will always provide fresh coffee. 

 When you register, we will send you some travel and accommodation information to help make your trip to Dallas a great experience. 

Beginning with Basics

We’ll begin with an in depth look of “The Story of Your Coffee”. We will discover where coffee comes from, discuss the history of how coffee traveled the globe as it progressed into a specialty beverage, and identify each point of impact throughout the supply chain. We will emphasize how these elements affect the flavor of the final cup. We will examine how coffee is grown, processed and graded, dig into green coffee’s anatomy, farming challenges, and the role of the barista in extraction, brew methods, and developing brew recipes. 

Calibrating Our Language of Flavor

Coffee is one of the most chemically complex things we consume, with subtleties of aroma, texture, and flavor rivaled by almost no other food, and it can seem as if its flavors are infinite. But they are not.

If any individual wants to be a better coffee professional, understanding how to perceive all of these flavors found in coffee with our senses can be the greatest skill one can achieve. However, we all have limited experiences of these flavors and are, therefore, limited in our coffee tasting perception.

We will train our brains to heighten our sensory perceptions and calibrate ourselves to a common language among the best tasters in the world.

Developing the Foundation of Great Espresso

By understanding the physical and chemical properties happening within extraction of flavor, we can learn more about how to pull an ideal shot of espresso with whatever coffee or machine we are working with.

If our goal is this high level of consistent quality, we must learn how to do this in constant repetition with a high level of efficiency, in order to have a positive impact on our customer’s experience.

Achieving Great Milk Texture

Understanding the chemical make-up of dairy and exploring what’s happening when you apply heat and air with the steam wand will allow you to learn an easy way to ensure silky microfoam for lattes and cappuccinos. Whether you’re steaming whole milk or a plant-based alternative, you’ll acquire a go-to method for steaming perfect milk on your espresso machine.

Building a Culture of Customer Service

Your product is only as good as the way it’s served, and most customers will decide where to spend their money based solely on their customer service experience. We don’t take this lightly.

We will dive in to the philosophy behind the companies that deliver the best customer service by discussing our mentality of our approach to the interactions with our customers and what it takes to build your own culture of service.

Train the Trainer

Like learning a new language, we get better through brainstorming as a group. We will have time on the espresso machine to apply theory and help each other dial in espresso and achieve the quality we are happy with. We will use this time to also discuss different learning styles, so you can develop your own teaching skills and feel comfortable with your ability to explain these concepts to others.

Espresso bar Workflow and Efficiency

We have found that, often time, an inefficient workflow can be very demoralizing a team, and have a huge impact on the customer.

We will learn how to save time, money, and stress by focusing on the most important areas of efficiency for an espresso bar. From setting up your cafe in the best way for your baristas to understanding how a station can best be utilized for fast drink service, you will learn how to work smoothly and confidently in your own space.

Apply What You Learn

You are here because you love coffee, and you love what you do. Our aim, and sole desire, is to provide you with more than a certification or higher level of knowledge. We want to help you own your own coffee journey, whether you are starting your own business, trying to make better tasting coffee, or finding better ways to channel your passion in to your daily job. We feel confident that you will have a memorable experience and be able to take every bit of knowledge home and apply it immediately.

SCA Barista Certification

Designed to test key core and more advanced skills and understanding, expected from a competent barista (for example, from someone working as a barista for 6 months or more). Successful candidates should be able to dial in a brew recipe, make a full range of drinks with quality and speed, as well as understand the basic requirements for customer service and maintenance. Attendees of this course will be automatically qualified to take the ‘Intro to Coffee’, the ‘Barista Foundation’, and ‘Barista Intermediate’ tests. If you are interested in taking these tests, they take about an hour and will be administered as we wind down on our last day of class.

Schedule

Monday - Friday: WRC Brew Lab, 9:00am - 5:00pm (will fluctuate depending on instructor and student need)

We will email students 1-2 weeks before class with parking & lunch details. When you register, we will also send you some travel and accommodation information to help make your trip to Dallas a great experience.

How a Combo Class Works

The Combo Class is open for everyone from beginner to seasoned veteran.  It covers the curriculum in the Foundation and Intermediate Levels in order to give you a thorough experience and empowers you wherever you are in the coffee supply chain.  At the end of the course, you can choose if you would like to test at the Foundation Level, Intermediate Level or both.