5 Time-Saving Gadgets For The Busy Barista
Running a coffee shop is busy business. Giving your customers a delectable coffee experience every time is a top priority – and that doesn’t just mean serving them fabulous-tasting coffee. Providing an excellent level of service is paramount, so having an arsenal of products that make your job easier means you can concentrate on the most important thing – your customer and their desire for that fantastic brew.
So here are our top 5 time-saving gadgets that will keep you happy and your customers coming back.
These are a must. Gone are the days where coffee shops could get by without these. When you’re making hundreds of coffees a day, your pitchers take a battering. They heat up and milk forms a crust on the insides of the jugs. Not only is this unclean when it comes to hygiene, or worse unsafe when cross-contamination of dairy/non-dairy milk is considered, but it also makes it harder to steam that perfect textured milk your customers know and love you for. Using a pitcher rinser will not only give you those fresh pitchers for every order, but it will also cool down your jug. The colder your milk and pitcher, the longer you can stretch and steam the milk – meaning perfectly velvety milk for that exquisite latte art. Install a Rhino Pitcher Rinser 300mm with Spin Jet next to your espresso machine and it’ll double up as a drain for leftover milk so your barista can conveniently clean on the go without messing up their flow. Win-win.
Scales are a barista’s best friend. When it comes to serving those perfect brews, having the right ratio of coffee to water is vital. Having a good set of scales is essential when weighing out your grind dose. Beans can vary in density so using volumetric measurements is often inaccurate compared to weighted ones. Scales will also help with keeping your coffee consistent and aids repeatability meaning you can get the same result – fabulous tasting coffee – every time. These Digital Dose Scales from Rhino are accurate to 0.1g so are perfect for weighing your espresso shot giving you the correct brew ratio time and time again.
Let’s talk used coffee pucks. There’s a lot of them and there’s one clear winner when it comes to disposing of them – the knock chute. Cut into your bench and place a bin underneath to make for an under-the-counter grinds disposal unit with a much larger capacity than without. And if you want to really save some time – place your grinder behind the chute so any run-away grounds fall directly into the bin. For any grounds that do manage to escape, you’ll be able to simply sweep them straight into the chute easily. We like the Rhino Round Knock Chute – made from 304 stainless steel it provides the ultimate in durability while also having a small enough footprint to not take up too much room on your bench, keeping your much-needed floor space clear from knock tubes.
The tamper is to the barista what a knife is to a chef – and you won’t get very far without one. Water will always flow through the easiest route so without tamping, i.e. compacting the coffee grounds together by pressure to create a dense coffee puck, you’ll be left with water that flows too quickly through the loose coffee grounds resulting in a brew that hasn’t been extracted properly – weak, lifeless, and not what you want to be serving! By tamping we are creating a high resistance – forcing the water to flow through the grounds evenly – bringing that intense flavour every time. We love the Rhino Flat Push Tamper for making your life that bit easier. It fits to all modern precision baskets such as VST, IMS and La Marzocco, and is easily adjustable so you can control the depth you want the tamper to go to with its 2-piece locking system. As this tamper is ‘handless’ it’s perfect for those busy baristas working in high volume cafés who are rushed off their feet - it even makes the process less of a strain on wrists and elbows, making tamping a breeze.
You can’t get a perfect brew to your customers without perfectly steamed milk – and you want this to be at the same temperature every time. Overheated milk can ruin coffee completely – the subtleties in its taste can be lost entirely and you run the risk of it developing a sulphurous smell/flavour. While it’s often accepted that baristas are taught to use their sense of touch and sound to know when milk is the correct heat, a thermometer removes the guess work and allows you to get that perfect temperature every time. The Rhino Digital Milk Thermometer is one of our favourites. Not only does it get you to your desired temperature easily, but it emits an audible beep when it does, meaning you don’t have to be stood watching it. You’ll get a consistent beverage temperature every time without any of the faff or guess-work.
And there we have it. Our top 5 time-saving gadgets you need in your coffee shop.
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