A barista’s story: There is no rose without a prickle

There is a saying that goes, ‘People do not choose their job. It is the job that chooses its bearers’

After graduating, I had chances to experience different types of jobs such as tailor, marketing staff, and makeup artist. After two years of experiencing, I realized that these jobs did not fit me well.

Until one day, a friend suggested me to apply to Highlands Coffee (HC). By the time, I had no idea what it was about and how the job would be like. So I just applied without any expectation. I had been through three rounds of interview and finally got the job, as a server.

I was so excited and told my mother about HC and my new job. Sadly, she did not support me as I had expected. She even wanted to renounce me because she thought it was an “unofficial” café (this thought derived from the old prejudice of my mother’s generation). I was so disappointed and wanted to quit right away. Fortunately, I changed my mind and tried to explain her about my decision one more time.  This time, I took her straight to a HC café on the third floor of Tax mall. After seeing the café and its staff, its uniforms and its customers, my mother gradually changed her mind. She allowed me to work there with one condition that I had to change from server to barista position. To comfort her, I changed and started working as a barista since 2004. As you can see, right at the beginning, my career path was not evenly but quite challenging and difficult.

In the first few days, I was terribly under pressure from this brand new experience. It turned out tougher than I had expected. Not only I had to do the regular jobs of a barista but also had to learn and remake more than one hundred recipes of different kinds of beverages. It was not an easy task definitely! Fortunately, it was the love and passion that helped me to find a systematical way to remember all the recipes in less than two weeks. Even my bar captain was so surprised about my progress and later on, I was in charge of training new bar staffs.

However, very soon I faced the first occupational problem. Due to the fact that my hands had to expose directly to the acidic liquid from the orange and lemon juice (in those days, bartenders were not equipped with gloves like we are nowadays), after a while my hands had been “eaten” by the acid and became too sensitive, especially when I had to squeeze the citrus.  Every day, I did my job with my wounded hands but I did not give up.

Thanks to a TV show named Mi’s show hosted by Giang Mi (Miss Den Hung), I heard about a special hand treatment with only lemon juice and sugar. I tried it on my own hands and it did work magically. My hands were healed after two weeks. Since then, I keep using that hand care routine and also share it with other baristas.

One year later, my company ran a new barista training program for the new café chain and I was the first one out of the five selected trainers. With my experiences and passion, I have trained many excellent baristas for HC.

Moreover, with my well-known strictness in hygiene and working principles, I was on the HC’s list of excellent employees. If there was any new café or any stores which had poor hygiene issues, I would be the one who came and gave them advice and guidelines for better organizing, especially in the storage.

“I can do it and so can you”

The year 2008 was a turning point in my career. Our new Filipinos leader set up many strategies, including a training project for the training team, which was under the operation of the Training Center of the holding company. As two of the excellent employees of HC, I and another colleague were chosen to work officially in the holding company for that project. We were given the opportunity to attend a professional training course and another training program from the company in one month. After that, we had to make a teaching plan to train our new employees. One month passed so fast with too many new things to learn. I had to do things I had never done before, from curriculum to examination making. I also had to spend the time to test the curriculum and exam I had made. It was still the love and the passion that helped me to overcome every obstacle.

I still remember how terrified I was on the first day standing in front of more than 50 trainees. But I knew that all I needed was a kick-start and so I did.  In the next times, I gained more experiences and became more professional.

After each training session, the new trained skillful staffs with profound knowledge about the job became my motivation. Seeing how they perform at work helped me increase my enthusiasm and the belief in what I was doing.



One year later (2009), for the very first time, Vietnam and Singapore cooperated to hold the F&H (Food and Hotel) expo I. In this expo, I won ‘The Best Signature Drink’ by Vietnam Barista Competition (VBC). After that, I became more confident and fluent when dealing with the interviewers as well as teaching in front of the staffs.

Every time when creating a new beverage recipe, I always keep a principle that I should put myself in the producer’s shoes to bring the product into real life. Any new recipe should be friendly, which means quick, easy and delicious! All the recipes, which I have developed from the new company’s products - Rich’s Syrup are the typical proves for my principle. They also received a lot of attention from the barista community.





In my opinion, the happiest moment of a barista is when he or she watching the customers enjoy the drinks he or she has made.
 

Nguyen Thi Bich Thuy
Rich’s Senior Technical Sales Representative