Why I built My Barista Trainer

Hi, I’m Doyle. I work from home building websites and digital marketing for B2B companies, and for almost 20 years I’ve been a daily coffee shop regular. A morning chocolate cortado is my ritual, and honestly most of my social life.

About three years ago, my favorite local shop started closing two days a week every winter, which wrecked my routine. The owner is a friend, and they offered a deal: learn to be a barista, work those two days, and still get my coffee. So I got trained, and I got my cortado back.

Two slow shifts a week isn’t much practice, so I built a study guide for that shop’s menu in Google Sheets and quizzed myself with formulas. It worked better than I expected.

Last year my friend had to hire, and I watched what that costs. A new person would walk in, get overwhelmed by the menu, and either quit from lack of confidence or struggle until it finally clicked. When someone quit after two weeks, all the training time went with them, and my friend had to start over.

So I turned the spreadsheet into an app. Owners add their own menu and recipes, and new hires practice on their phones before they ever step behind the bar. The order simulator is the part I like most. Every order starts simple, like a latte. Then the questions start: what size, decaf, any syrup, what kind of milk? A few questions later you’re making a medium decaf sugar-free vanilla latte with almond milk, and you have to know exactly how. Any barista knows a coffee order can turn into a game of 20 questions.

My Barista Trainer doesn’t replace in-person training. It removes the menu panic. If a new hire can nail a large dirty half-sweet oat milk chocolate chai latte on their phone first, you can spend your time teaching shots and steaming milk.

If you run a shop, try the demo.

Doyle