Exploring Practitioners 2: Barista – Muhammad Hazzry

My friend works as a barista at Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf. He’s been working there for about a little over than a year. Throughout the whole process, I learnt quite a couple of things about how CBTL makes their drinks, which I will address later in this post 😉

Tools Used

1. Cashier counter
2. Coffee grinder
3. Espresso/ EB machine
4. Blender
5. Utensils and “Jug” to make drinks

The whole process starts of course, at the cashier, where customers order their drinks/ food and make payment. 

He then proceeds to the coffee grinder machine, where the machine grinds coffee on the spot and the barista has to manually press the coffee. This is one of the things that I learnt – CBTL grinds coffee on the spot, while Starbucks has their coffee already pre-grinded. Pretty interesting, if you ask me.

Then he moves on to the big red machine, which is called the Espresso Machine. What the machine does is to dispense hot water and to extract the coffee/ tea, and is used to specifically make espresso shots and tea lattes. A different machine is used for other types of coffees, which will be covered in a bit. 

Another thing I learnt was that CBTL uses tea leaves for their flavourings and

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And finally, when the drink is prepared, it is served on this counter here! 

BONUS TOOLS!!!!

Pain points

Initially he didn’t have much pain points to tell me because everything is pretty much automated, and the machines that he uses makes the barista-work easier. However, he did say that one thing that can be improved on was their system of washing utensils that they use to make drinks. Currently, when they are not making any orders, they soak the utensils in a jug full of hot water. This means that they often have to change the water in the jug, which can be a hassle especially when there are many orders to make (another pain point!). The same problem persist for the blenders.

Also, their workstation can get quite messy when there are many orders to make.