IT TOOK TWO YEARS TO DO THIS.

HI! And welcome back to another post on the O3. I’m your host Vic- wait this isn’t the podcast is it.. maybe one day ? ANYWAYS today I wanted to talk about the insane amount of adoration I get when I pour a latte and before you click off and say, “wow this girl is so full of herself,” you need to let me explain.

   I once was a girl who would follow the Starbucks Secret Menu instagram pages in 2012. At the time, Instagram didn’t have the ‘save post’ option that they do now, so you best believe that my camera roll on my 4th Generation iPod touch was filled with ‘top secret Starbucks menu recipe' screenshots. I remember going into Starbucks, with my iPod in hand, recipe ready to go, and then it was time to order. Looking back, I probably ordered a drink with more than like 5 different syrups. Don’t @ me, @ the internet instead, but it was flavour shot after flavour shot as you could imagine. I didn't really love candy growing up, but boy did I like sugar in my coffee. I also have my parents to thank for that. So thank you parents. 

  I grew up in a place where coffee was a double double at Tim Hortons or 2 shots of this and 4 shots of that with a pump of this at Starbucks. I never knew coffee the way I know it now. In 2024, I now understand coffee culture more than I ever had. I definitely grew up on a different part of the coffee spectrum because what 9 year old is tasting espresso and talking about the flavour profile of espresso beans...? I'll leave that up to the universe and the internet to answer that one for me. But in 2022, my coffee journey would change from always using my beloved Keurig coffee with lots of sweet creamers to two things : espresso and milk.

   This was foreign to me, I didn't know what lattes were let alone a cortado or a flat white. I even have a video of me from my first training shift sipping a drink that I had just made, and I was struggling to recall what it was - it was an oat milk latte. To go from not knowing anything, to then knowing more is such a drastic change that you don't really prepare yourself for. Until you realize you have and now you're someone writing about it and you're reflecting on it and it makes you happy because you've come such a long way on your coffee journey and- okay, okay that's just how I feel. Apologies for the run ons here! I AM VERY PROUD. But as the title of this post reads, 'it took two years for me to do this." And that is exactly what I tell customers and guests every time they mention how cool the latte art looks. 

   I'm a huge believer in 'trust the process', but with coffee so much more goes into it than the latte art. There's a lot of work that goes into creating latte art, for example: The tulip. Before there were tulips, there were blobs. Blobs of all shapes and sizes. Blobs that were small dots as well as blobs that looked like things I don't even want to describe. But there is always a key takeaway in everything I do. As I understood more and more about the coffee culture, the drinks I produced reflected that. As I gained a deeper understanding on A) how should the coffee taste and B) how should the coffee look, the latte art part was all just down to practice. You can't rush art they say, and latte art falls right into that category. It's a process and for me, it took two years until I was able to post pictures of better art. 

   With this experience in mind, I look at other baristas differently now too. Whenever I see a barista posting the most insane reel or photo of their latte art, I always bring myself back to earth and remind myself that producing that art takes time and that time should be appreciated. I'm grateful for my fellow baristas who helped carve and shape me into the barista I am today. I also love how barista's such as Morgan Eckroth share their coffee journey experience too. While I'm at a coffee shop in Toronto serving up drinks for the everyday go getter, Morgan Eckroth is probably in her kitchen whipping up a drink for the World Barista Championship. But my favourite thing about Morgan is that she posts the behind the scenes of when she's making the fancy shmancy drinks. One that she recently posted on her Instagram Story was a photo of how messy her kitchen was after she posted a photo of a beautiful drink she had just made and part of her caption was 'post drink making transparency'. AND I LOVED THAT. YES MORGAN please show us what really goes on when the cameras are off because I NEEDED THAT and most importantly, I appreciate that because being transparent about your journey makes mine easier to understand. So thank you Morgan Eckroth. 

   Although both her and I's coffee experiences are on different parts of the spectrum, we both serve the same purpose. Which is to share the art of coffee to the world. I probably sound like Willy Wonka right now or not, but I do take this barista thing seriously. Why? Because I'm passionate about the ways that people connect with each other. Coffee has been one of the most shared commodities around the world throughout our history. I kinda feel bad for the people before the invention of the espresso machine, imagine not being able to get that skinny latte after a cardio session from running away from the dinosaurs, yikes! But nevertheless, I think it's pretty freakin' cool. So to wrap up THIS barista's sob story, the past two years has meant so much to me. I can now hold down a conversation about the different countries of coffee bean origins. To skillfully preparing the different ways people make coffee drinks from around the world. To getting to know people from around the world. And then a handful of those people became really great friends of mine. It took two years to do this.