Hosting Classes.
Good morning, it’s Monday 3/4/24 as I begin writing this. I get the feeling this one will take awhile. I’m doing some R&D on my off day, drinking strawberry lattes and driving around. Strawberries are in season and if I had the time we’d be at strawberry fest in plant city this week, but it’s my Fiance’s b-day and he says we should chill, which is probably a good idea after this last week.
In one month we had 6 events. We had a mini farmers market as usual at the end of the month, and a latte art comp! We also had 4 classes, making 6 weeks of classes total. I was able to focus on one week at a time because one of our barista’s Tori hosted the last two weeks where events overlapped. That said, the last week had 3 events all at once. Madness! A lot of that time was thinking about classes, let’s talk about it.
Classes
So these were simple in some ways and complex in others. For one there was no blueprint, I’d been to some public cuppings and I was looking online at programs like baristas hustle, but I’d never been to something like I had in mind in person. I hit up Watson’s Counter in Seattle Washington who I saw had done classes not long ago for some structure and price advice. The owner said in his experience, price high and have some pre-requisite classes to get people familiar before tackling more complex ideas. This was really helpful in breaking up my class into pieces and charging a fair price. I basically asked people what they’d pay on Instagram and in person, I was surprised to hear about $50 was acceptable, which was the high end of what I had in mind. About $25 an hour, meaning my one hour intro class would be $30 and my longer 2 hour classes would be $50. We broke it up in to “intro to specialty” “home brewing” “cafe brewing” and “latte art x2”
since writing this, I’ve seen similar classes in coffee and baking around the US for more like $100/hr. My focus was on getting the idea out there locally, so I feel like in Jax my $25/hr was still appropriate. On my personal IG I offered free or discounted classes for local baristas but nobody bit.
Advertising should have started like two months before these classes, with posters and posts everywhere. To this day people are coming in 2 months late asking when classes are and how much. We had a little poster on the counter and we’re a minimal space so people read it. But that flyer needed dates times and costs. We were doing a lot of education both on those things and “what a coffee class even is.” That said, we had small classes and it pretty much filled up just because it was such a novelty in this area. I was sort of bummed that it was mostly locals and no baristas, but more on that later.
Research meant writing a speech for each class then fact checking myself and using some trustworthy articles to really expand and nail down my knowledge. Things like regional and specialty processes required a lot more reading than I expected, there was so much out there! Things like anaerobic fermentation also lead in to carbonic maceration and co-ferments. Honey process led into dry-hulled and the nuances of partially washed coffees. Then home machines required a lot of youtube roundups and price comparisons for different retailers, man that market is blowing up! Oh and don’t even get me started on how different regions of just the USA are absolutely certain they have the correct name for a drink style, while dozens of others are sure of the opposite in origin and execution. Fun stuff!
The intro class would just be a short (1hr), affordable($30), speech on specialty coffee to avoid rehashing some basic questions in later classes; It was not required. This resulted in a lower perceived value and a lot of people asking questions in later classes that were covered in this one. It didn’t have a big turnout, people didn’t know about it because we didn’t advertise it all far enough in advance. It was a weak class but good practice and I learned a lot.
Home Brewing was focused on home hardware, like grinders, pour overs, pot coffee machines, moka pots and french presses. So I bought one of each that I didn’t already have, then we covered brew basics and how to apply all this stuff to those machines. We started with how to buy coffee and then got into actually brewing. A speech for the first hour and a hands on class for the second. This is when people really lit up, almost no one raised their hand for part 1, we gave out a lot of drip coffee to give things space to breathe and the atmosphere was nice but not super inquisitive. Once I started grinding and pouring coffee, people had tons of questions relating to their own experience and that was sick, I felt much more comfortable responding then just talking. Of course afterwards people had home machine questions and I had done some research to prepare for that. I don’t make much coffee at home anymore haha.
Brewing at the Cafe, Surprisingly, was mostly the same crowd of home enthusiasts. I was hoping to attract baristas who worked in cafes around Jax. I talked about buying coffee from roasters, and why I might choose a specific roaster, then how to use available coffee to fill needs in the cafe like flavors I’d want in batch brew or espresso. Then we dialed that coffee in, so we cleaned the espresso grinder, and put a new coffee on our espresso machine. Since the previous class was excited about the hands on stuff, I tried to do a lot of that. It wasn’t a huge class, but the 6 or so people there took turns splitting shots of espresso as we worked our way to a good place. For home brewers, they were super down to taste yucky espresso shots. Some people were new to that class, and had questions that we covered in the intro; I was a little annoyed, but I think separating them was still the right call since we just filled up the classes with this free form format.
Latte Art Class was fun! This was the easiest class to sell because people knew what it was instantly, and wanted to try it out regardless of skill level! So we hosted it for two weeks in a row, and being the last class in line there was also more advertising! It filled up! During class, Tori who hosted in place of me talked quickly for the first 15 minutes, then spent the next hour and a half taking turns with everyone pouring and receiving feedback. Having a full group of beginners was great because they all encouraged each other and got to watch each other experience the same basic issues right after them, then see watch for solutions. People were shown how to be safe, and got the hang of steaming milk enough to pour hearts by the end of class. It was cool : )
So we did it!
In Summary I think doing this 1.5 years in was the right call, we had just enough of an audience to make it work. Everyone seemed to walk away smiling and feeling enriched. It wasn’t exactly the audience I expected but it all worked out in the end. We ended up making about 1k which in our slow season is significant but nothing crazy. I split the ticket sales for latte art classes with our host to cover cost of goods, but other than some small equipment it was pretty purely profitable.
Afterwards people got the idea, and started asking about it for the future. I guess that goes to show you need to do anything for awhile to build traction even if it’s a superstar idea. So I’ve been saying “maybe next year, or when we have a slow season.” It made sense to make money after the the holidays when we slow down, but staying late to work now is hard when I already work all the time. So when we do this again if we do, will depend on the culture. It took us a full year to build up a rich culture of people who would be willing to attend, but it feels like most of them did! So now we need more time to build that crowd back up.
I’m grateful for the support, this is another one of those things I wish I had as a young barista that I was happy to put out there. -Elias
