Coffee Roasting, Business and Barista Training Bundle (7days)

Prerequisite: No prior experience required.
Duration: 10:30 am to 5 pm all 7 days.

This 7-day bundle of classes brings together our most important classes with a discounted price tag to give you a clear pathway on how to open and run your own cafe and roastery. You can choose to take the classes all at once, or you can spread the classes over time, there is no time limit. 

Once you complete your purchase of this bundle then please send us an email to let us know which class dates best suit your schedule. Please choose from our online calendar here.

Coffee Roasting Level 1 Curriculum:

Learning to roast coffee successfully requires mentorship over a period of time, varying from a few months to a few years with lots of trials and errors. In spite of that fact, we can teach you the fundamentals of coffee roasting, safety procedures, simple maintenance and basics about coffee in a weekend. Anything beyond that is not realistic in a weekend course. This course is a hands-on experience of coffee cupping, tasting, roasting and barista fundamentals to insure your roasting business success.

Some of the topics covered during Day 1:

• Canadian Market Share
• Differences between Artisan and Commodity coffee
• Principles of Roasting
• Biology of tasting and the coffee tasting wheel
• Cupping, Tasting Espresso, Calibration and Discussion
• What is the #1 seller of coffee shops? 
• What are the Roasting differences for 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th Wave
• Myths and Stereotype Roasting for Espresso, Batch Brew drip coffee, Pour Over filter coffee and all the rest
• Thermocycling

Roasting is about developing flavors.. not colors. If you cannot taste your mistakes you will never make the appropriate corrections to your roast. Tasting is fundamental to all culinary arts, and roasting is a culinary art.

Some of the topics covered during Day 2:

• Espresso variations
• How to track a roast
• Philosophies of Roasting
• How to Choose a Roaster
• Main machine types of Roasting
• Different ways to develop a Roast
• Freshness standards

Some Topics covered during Day 3:

• Profile Roasting
• Decaf
• Terroir & Processing
• Green Coffee Defects
  

Throughout the 3 days, the Roasting Instructor will provide you with an overview of operating a coffee roaster, temperature time profile, breakdown in a roast and how to adjust for every outcome, fundamental roasting concepts followed by a demonstration of a complete coffee roast, from start to finish. Each student will be guided and given an opportunity to run many roasts on their own and with their classmates. During and after each roast there will be time for a Question and Answer period to continue deepening your understanding.

Some Handouts and Resources included with your registration:

• Daily Cleaning and Maintenance
• Weekly Cleaning and Maintenance
• Monthly Cleaning and Maintenance
• Fire and Safety Plan Templates for both Canada and USA jurisdictions
• Roaster Fire Protocol - Discovery
• Pollution Control information

You will be given samples of your roasted coffee to take home with you.

Opening a Coffee Business Curriculum:

This course is designed to help you plan, design and critically think through the process of opening your own cafe.

Business is much more complicated then in past decades. You are now competing against people and large coffee-chain businesses that have sophisticated ways of collecting and analyzing data to compete against you.

We are here to teach you to manage your risk and increase your chances for success by teaching you the science of business versus relying on your feelings and gut instincts.

We understand the challenges that you face in this pandemic economy. Understandably, you may be feeling apprehension with your coffee shop project.

The harsh reality is, just like what is happening on our financial markets today, from this pandemic there will emerge some opportunities. 

Some coffee shops or retail lease locations may suddenly come available.  So our best advice to you is to do some homework now, and not wait until it's too late. 

This course is designed to accelerate your projects to allow you to be more prepared to jump at opportunities as they arise. We will answer all your questions with personalized advice and take you through our most important coffee business course content, for both new startups, purchasing existing businesses and for those owners and operators that want guidance on navigating out of this very difficult time.

Some of the topics covered:

• Your competitive advantages
• Canadian coffee market
• Customer expectations and who they are
• Specialty Coffee
• Quality Control
• Service Models
• Vision
• What to look for, what to avoid and how to gather Intelligence the correct way
• All about the competition
• Drink, food menu and equipment related decisions
• Choosing your equipment suppliers, espresso machine and coffee roaster
• Finding a location, choosing a general contractor, tradespeople and case studies
• Marketing, Promotions, Holiday planning and Branding
• People Management, Staff Training & Fostering a Barista Culture
• Managing Your Numbers

Barista Level 1 Curriculum:

This class creates consistency through step by step instructions that are presented written and hands-on. Even if you have barista experience, we recommend taking this class to correct any flaws in your coffee making technique, which can and will affect consistency. Without consistency, each and every customer gets a different tasting drink.

Some of the topics covered:

• Essentials of espresso, tools and equipment
• Equipment Knowledge
• Grinder differences, efficiencies and burr sets
• What is espresso, its history, fundamental theories and preparation
• Defining what is drip, pour over, press pot, french press, moka pot, stove top espresso
• Espresso Fundamentals
• International Definition of Espresso
• How to pull a consistent technically correct espresso shot
• Preparing Drinks To Standards
• What Espresso is and is not
• How to Grind, Dose and Tamp
• Learn to troubleshoot coffee
• Foundational barista knowledge
• Milk texturing and microfoaming technique and principles

Barista Level 2 Curriculum:

Practice, practice and more practice. This class expands all the technical fundamentals you learnt in Barista Level 1. You will learn to perfect and manipulate techniques to enhance taste and fine-tune the technically correct drink. Our Advanced barista training level 2 course prepares the student for the challenges presented in Barista Level 3.

Some of the Topics covered:

• Espresso Machine and Grinder technical standards and requirements
• Pulling a consistent shot – grind adjustment, tamping the coffee puck level
• Espresso drink names, sizes and recipes: Building, Making and Tasting Ristretto, Normale and Lungo and Americano
• How should Espresso taste
• Roasters influence on taste
• Dose and Grinders role in affecting taste
• Machine engineering and taste
• Baristas impact on taste
• Milk based drink names, sizes and recipes: Building, making and tasting macchiato, cappuccino, latte, cortado, flat white
• Preparing Drinks To Standards
• Milk texturing and microfoaming technique and principles
• Latte Art Instruction, Demonstration and Practise
• Essential barista knowledge

Barista Level 3 Curriculum:

This class expands the fundamentals you learnt and practised in Barista Levels 1 and 2 until you Perfect the One Person Bar. This understanding and experience of perfecting the one person bar is essential for efficient high quality cafe operations.

You will also explore why people drink the coffee they drink, ask important questions about how and what people taste when they drink coffee? In this class we pull back the curtain and reveal the real truth about coffee. Despite being the most consumed drink in the world, very few people know anything about coffee. All we know are advertising factoids and propaganda.

Some of the topics covered:

• Specialty and commodity coffee types
• Tasting exercises
• Developing and understanding your palate
• Exposing Coffee Myths
• How to talk about and taste the essential Coffee Wheel of flavours
• The tongue map, umami and basic elements of tastes perception
• Blind Cupping
• Comparative cupping for roast level, branding and taste descriptors
• Comparative Cupping
• Cupping for quality
• Choosing a Roaster and their influence on taste
• How to Dial in the coffee by taste
• Preparing Drinks To Standards
• Milk texturing and microfoaming technique and principles
• Peak of coffee freshness and understanding expectations
• Changing the coffee marketing narrative
• Making adjustments to the grinder to change taste depending on retention, dosing and tamping

Barista Level 4 Curriculum:

This is a practical, down-to-earth class that will cover simple to expert complex latte art designs. You will try your hand many times at creating your own artistic milk masterpiece! Barista instructors demonstrate and share coffee bar skills and secrets with you while explaining clearly the techniques of Latte Art. Milk temperature, texturing and pouring skills will be reviewed as well.

Some Topics covered:

• What is the real true value of the barista
• Adapting to and adjusting for retention, dosing, tamping and flow
• Espresso preparation as the perfect foundation for latte art
• Learn and practice Latte Art for the Moon, Heart, Detailed Heart, Rosetta and Tulip
• Many ways to refine your abilities to pour
• Advanced barista techniques
• Equipment and Espresso Fundamentals
• Preparing all Drinks To Standards
• Milk texturing and microfoaming technique and principles
• Dialing in coffee by taste
• Latte and cappuccino milk texturing principals
• One-person bar and two-person bar practice
• Equipment cleanliness and maintenance

Registration: Pre-registration required, no dropins.

Class Sizes are small with most of the class time being hands on giving you lots of time to learn. 

Private Groups: We can accommodate private group training on weekdays and weekends - just ask and we are happy to schedule your course to work best for your coffee business needs.

Included with your class:

• Printed Student Manual, Study Guide and Certificate of Completion
• Free Membership to the Wholesale Student Buying Club ($799.00 Value)
• Lifetime Alumni Membership and Benefits