January, February, March…ing into 2013

It has been an explosive start to the year for us at The Barista with the migration of our offices and arsenal of equipment to our new premises along with a string of events. After the busy January, Sam saw the turn of the month with a 10-day trip to London to cater for 3 events back to back. Most of February was spent looking after some of our regular clients and saw us take on a large conference with 3 coffee bars and 6 baristas at short notice.

It was about 3 weeks ago when the enquiry came in asking for us to provide our coffee service at a large conference just a week later; we were excited to take on the challenge. We talked in detail with the client about their requirements, which were quite simply, for all 300 visitors to be served a high quality cup of coffee on arrival and during each break. We formulated a package and outlined the proposed service for them and 24 hours later we were booked in and our preparation began.

A week later we were there, everything ready to go and looking smart as we always like to do. The event started early and the demand for coffees came by the coach load (literally!) but the skill and experience of all the baristas on the job meant we were able to provide each visitor with a fresh cup of coffee whilst achieving a consistent level of high quality and minimal queuing times. As the breaks came, we were there to make sure that we did the job in hand and it was really nice to see people becoming ‘regulars’ over the course of the day and rushing to their favorite coffee bar.

The coffee bars were stocked with custom branded 8oz and 4oz cups, the baristas were wearing branded aprons to suit and the cappuccinos were topped with the conference logo.

The theme of the conference was all about excellence and our job was to enhance that theme with our coffee bars and barista service.  The comments from the visitors on the day and the subsequent feedback from our client suggests that the product and service did just that!

Next week we’ll be sending out another 3 coffee bars with 5 baristas representing us, then we’ll be ready to really get stuck into the busy events season.