Melbourne, the coffee capital of the world, is a pilgrimage place for baristas.
went to a cafe in Melbourne, lived frugally and worked hard for a year, earning more than 100,000 in cash. It is the dream of many baristas to then return to a small town and open a small cafe.
But is this a perfect plan?
Sophia is the founder of Linxia Green Mo Coffee. In 2017, she went to Australia to work alone. From a novice shivering in front of the coffee machine to a barista who wowed customers with praise, Sophia spent 365 unforgettable days in Melbourne.
Let’s listen to her story:
Author | Monarch
1. The store’s sales plummeted, so I decided to go to Australia to learn coffee
My name is Sophia, not my stage name, my real name is Masofia, and I live in Linxia Hui Autonomous Region. After graduating from college in 2015, with the help of my family, I opened a local cafe.
Linxia is a small town in the fifth and sixth tiers. My store is 200 square meters and has a good design. It mainly sells Western food and coffee. At that time, I didn’t even understand specialty coffee, let alone the difference between latte and cappuccino. The number of cups of coffee produced per month was pitiful. Fortunately, there are many people trying Western food in small towns, and business is pretty good.
Sophia's Cafe
In 2016, the situation was not so good, and the turnover dropped month by month. I remember clearly that one day the turnover was 0, there was not a single customer the whole day, and all the waiters were sitting in the store, staring at each other. I knew that I had reached a dead end and that I had to go to a broader place to look and learn before I could continue to run this store well.
I heard about Australia’s working visa when I was in college. At that time, many people went there just for fun. In the past few years, I feel that Melbourne has met all my needs: improving coffee skills, learning business ideas, experiencing foreign cultures, and earning as many Australian dollars as possible.
After a complicated operation to grab a quota, take the IELTS test, and interview, everything was completed in May 2017. I traveled thousands of miles to this strange city and started my coffee exploration journey.
Melbourne attracts many people
but everything is not as smooth as expected.
2. More than 100 resumes came to nothing. How difficult is it to be a barista in Melbourne?
The first thing I did when I got there was to find a house. I saw a house that I particularly liked online. So in Melbourne, where the sun was shining one second and it was pouring rain the next, I waited for the landlord for an hour in the rain. The landlord who was late for the movie was not only unapologetic, but after learning that I had a work visa, Refuse to rent to me.
On the way back, I saw fallen leaves all over the ground, so I picked up a piece and took it home. I vaguely felt that my life in Melbourne would not be so smooth.
is indeed the case.
In Melbourne, coffee shops of all sizes are scattered all over the streets. There will be a coffee shop under any occupied building. In addition, you can see "mobile cafes" with stalls or hidden in minibuses at night markets, at the entrances of stadiums hosting football matches, and even at the boarding gates of harbor cruise ships.
In foreign countries, coffee shops are an indispensable part of people's lives.
At first, I thought it would not be difficult to find a job in cafes everywhere, but because I was obsessed with finding a boutique cafe, I even "wishfully dreamed" that I could It is difficult to study in a famous store. I submitted more than 100 resumes before and after
. Basically, I submitted my resume to all famous stores in Melbourne. I got several trial jobs, but they all rejected me. Now it seems that it is normal for to be rejected because the local experience is too insufficient.
It was the first time I went to a store for an interview. Before I walked in, I repeatedly practiced the few sentences of self-introduction, hoping that my spoken English would sound more fluent.But Head barista (should be able to be translated as barista) asked me a few "jargon" questions, such as: Where did you work? How much coffee can be dispensed? How many kilograms of beans are used in a day? What machines are you familiar with? I was completely confused.
Secondly, I have no local work experience. For cafes in Melbourne, they don’t care how many years of experience you have, they only care that you have experience in local stores.
Some of Melbourne's more famous cafes may sell thousands of cups of coffee on some weekends. While ensuring the quality of the coffee, the speed must be very, very fast. Usually there are 3 to 4 baristas behind a machine making coffee at the same time. Therefore, all cafes in Melbourne attach great importance to whether they have local experience when screening resumes.
The third is the lack of practical skills. Sometimes during interviews, the head barista would directly ask me to come in and make coffee for him. Although most of them will smile and tell me to go back and wait for news, in fact, when I turn around and go out, my resume may already be in the trash can.
Insufficient ability and experience made Head barista "close the door" to Sophia.
There was a store that asked me to work part-time and work 1-2 days a week, but because I wanted to find a full-time job, I mistakenly refused. . Now think about it, is a great opportunity to start working part-time to accumulate local experience, improve your skills and find your next job.
In the past two months, I have experienced: poverty, pressure, low self-esteem, loneliness... Every time I think about whether to lower my requirements or give up, I can only say one thing to myself: Sofia, you Don't be a coward.
After lying in bed and crying in a different place at night, the next day he ran to one cafe after another with his resume.
3. Become a barista: The hourly wage is 100 yuan, and the meal cannot exceed 15 minutes
In the process of submitting resumes again and again, I finally figured out how to answer those "jargon", and then I had some opportunities to try out jobs. . I came across a cafe that was particularly short of people. On the day I went for the interview, a barista happened to quit.
I am not satisfied with this store, but it is too short of people. So the manager told me that I was just a temporary replacement and he would replace me when a barista was found. The condition I made at that time was that he be my recommender and write on his resume that he had worked in this store, and both parties were happy to conclude the deal.
worked like a nightmare here initially. Coffee brewing in Melbourne cafes is an assembly line operation. Some people specialize in extraction, some specialize in milking, and some specialize in latte art.
I was assigned to pump milk. I had to pump more than 10 kilograms of milk every day, more than 300 cups a day, and 6 types of milk. I have to allocate different milk to different coffees. Sometimes there are 4 different milk coffees in one order, 4 different milks, and different milk foam thicknesses, which is crazy.
Sophia's first job was to stand on the left side of this coffee machine and keep pumping milk.
My nerves were highly tense and I couldn't pay attention at all. I couldn't even chat in Chinese, let alone communicate in English, until I raised my right index finger on . After getting rid of the cocoons, breastfeeding became stable and the process became familiar. Half a month later they found the barista and I went to another one.
With references and some local experience, I finally found an opportunity to work in a cafe. 6-8 hours a day, 20 dollars an hour (Australian dollars, about 100 yuan).
This store is called UT79. For me, it was a purgatory experience. Melbourne baristas open their doors at 6:15 in the morning and officially open at 7:00. Living in the suburbs, I basically have to get up at 5 o'clock to rush to the store.
This was an order from an old lady at that time. At 10 o'clock in the morning, the coffee order was almost 100 (100 orders means that there may be almost 200 cups of coffee, because some orders may have 3-4 cups of coffee).
At 10 o'clock in the morning, almost 100 orders of coffee have been sold.
You can imagine the intensity of work in this store. Not only does it take three cups of coffee at a time, but the right hand also has to do other things while the left hand is pumping milk. What Head barista emphasizes repeatedly is that two things must be done at the same time.
My nerves started to get tense again, because everyone works in an assembly line, and one person's mistake will cause inconvenience to others, causing the entire work process to be interrupted. So during high-intensity work, I kept thinking of ways to remember everything so that I wouldn't make mistakes. My brain couldn't keep up at the time, so I went to the drugstore to buy a brain-tonifying health product called Ginkgo biloba leaf, which can enhance memory and concentration.
The store is responsible for lunch, but it must be done within 15 minutes, because wages are calculated on an hourly basis. If you eat for more than 15 minutes, half an hour's salary will be deducted.
When I get busy every day, there will be more than a dozen or even twenty orders on my left side.
When I first started working for five consecutive days, I felt like I was going to collapse. My hands were swollen every morning when I woke up. usually finds a place to sit down and rest for half an hour or an hour after work before going home.
also tests my English proficiency. In addition to process errors, I am more afraid of customers ordering or asking me questions. Sometimes I need to ask several times, sometimes I don't understand at all, sometimes I understand the first thing and forget the last thing. A customer with a good temper will say forget it, but a customer with a bad temper will look at you with a questioning look. That look will instantly kill all your confidence and confidence.
But it was also in this shop that my coffee skills and speaking skills improved at a lightning speed.
Sofia at work
When I first started working at AU79, my daily job was to pump milk. In order to practice my English, I often attended gatherings with colleagues. Later, at a dinner party with colleagues, Head Barista learned that I owned a cafe in China and the purpose of my coming to Melbourne, and he began to teach me many things. From the most basic milking, to coffee extraction, to how to work quickly and effectively, etc.
My English proficiency has also been improved. At the beginning, I couldn't even speak the most basic service terms. In the end, I was basically able to receive customers smoothly, take orders for them, and solve some of their simple requests for help.
My self-confidence is slowly recovering. Every day, whether it is colleagues or customers, when I hear them say: "Sofia, your coffee is so delicious." I am satisfied for the day.
At this time, in addition to working 5 days a week, I often took one day out of the 2 days off to work part-time. The hourly wage of a part-time job in Melbourne is $30, which is higher than that of a full-time job, so the money you can earn from a part-time job in a day is also considerable.
But I was so tired that I went out of my body and fell asleep in 5 seconds every day.
The interior environment of the cafe where Sophia is located
When I was in Melbourne and my work and life were getting better, it had been eight months since I arrived there. More than half of my one-year visa has passed, and there are only 3 months left before I can return to my country. I have fallen deeply in love with this city, and I have already started to miss it before I leave.
4. After returning to China, I quickly transformed and upgraded my cafe.
After returning to China, I decisively transformed my Green Mo Coffee into a boutique cafe.
1, upgrade equipment and materials.
replaced the bean grinder, coffee machine, etc., which cost more than 5 times the original price.
2, price reduction.
Coffee in Melbourne is really cheap. A cup of milk coffee only costs 4 dollars (about 20 yuan), which is less than one-third of a meal.
3. Firmly adhere to the business idea of coffee + meal.
In cafes all over Melbourne, there are very few that do not bring meals. For Australians, cafes are places to quickly replenish energy and satisfy their food and drink needs. Most cafes serve breakfast and lunch. Therefore, the price per customer in Melbourne’s cafes is between 30 and 40 knives.
4. Change the tone of the cafe.
Cafe is a quiet place in China that plays light music and makes people daydream. Not so in Melbourne. Cafes are usually very noisy. People talk here as they normally would. They don’t deliberately lower their volume and pay attention to their words and deeds. Think about it, a coffee shop is a place where people can relax and feel comfortable. If you need to deliberately suppress yourself, who will come often?
5. Cupping tests are conducted from time to time.
Most stores in Melbourne hold regular cupping sessions, using the same recipe and brewing method to brew different coffee beans to feel the dry aroma, wet aroma, sweetness, acidity, flavor, body, and taste of the coffee. After rhyme and so on. After returning to China, I held cupping sessions like this in the store from time to time to teach customers how to appreciate coffee.
Australian cafe cupping meeting
After a series of reforms, I cultivated a group of loyal customers. Now I consume 15 kilograms of green beans a month, about 500 cups. Although the data is far from Shanghai, in our small fifth- and sixth-tier city, I am very satisfied.
5. Can you really save 200,000 a year in Australia?
The salary in Melbourne, converted into RMB, really sounds very attractive: 100 yuan an hour, 800 yuan a day, 800 yuan, working 22 days a month, basically you can get nearly 20,000 yuan.
Secondly, if you find a part-time job on holidays, based on a part-time hourly salary of 30 dollars (part-time job is higher than full-time job), you will end up with more than 1,000 yuan per day. In an ideal world, it would not be a dream to earn 20,000 yuan a month or more than 200,000 yuan a year.
But I want to say that if you make money in Australia and spend it, you can rarely take it home. why?
1, Unless you find a job as soon as you get there, don't be like me, wasting two months, making no money and still spending less.
Sophia had no job after two months, and only had so much money left in her body.
2, Australia makes a lot of money, but the money spent is also in Australian dollars. For example, if I work 6-8 hours a day, my monthly income is 3,000 U.S. dollars, and the rent for sharing a house with others is 700 U.S. dollars a month. Dinner is very cheap if you cook it all at home. Basically, you can buy a week’s worth of ingredients at the supermarket for 30 knives. But I’m so tired every day, so eating out for a regular meal costs about 12 knives.
The most important thing is that in a city like Melbourne, life is so rich that you will resist spending money. In , you have to visit stores to learn, have social gatherings, practice speaking skills to increase your feelings, experience everything, and buy some good things that you may only encounter once in your life.
3, and the most important point is that most people can’t resist traveling around Australia. The scenery there is so beautiful that tens of thousands of yuan will be spent on a trip.
Most people can’t resist traveling around Australia
4, Of course, if you are a person with strong self-control, you don’t eat out, don’t socialize at parties, don’t buy or travel, you work full-time 5 days a week + 1 day Working hard part-time, saving more than 100,000 yuan is not a problem. But it’s too difficult.
5, To sum up, would be very good to go to Australia to improve coffee technology and learn coffee knowledge, but if the purpose is to save money, I can only say that it is very difficult.
6. Should I go to Australia to become a barista?
In just one year in Melbourne, I have met many excellent baristas from China. So if someone asks me whether you should go to Australia, I think you'd better think clearly about why you want to go, otherwise you will be easily influenced by others.
I met a lot of people and went back after coming for a few weeks, just because I didn’t know why I came here. I saw in the promotional video that it was profitable and fun, and it was very exciting. But the actual situation was tiring and painful, and there was a big gap between what I imagined.
It is important to know what I am going to do. Life in Australia is so rich. People will constantly invite you to go here and there, to do this and that. If your purpose is not clear, you are likely to be led by others. When I couldn't find a job, I was invited to make coffee at a sandwich shop and I almost went. Later I was told, “Think about what you came here to do, you’re just wasting your time by going there.”
Finally, I would like to say something to my colleagues who have the Australian dream. What Monica said to Rachael in Friends who just entered the society: "Welcome to the real world, it sucks, but you will love it!"
This article is compiled from the dictation of Sophia, the founder of Green Mo Coffee.
Co-ordinator | Zhengyu Editor | Ruoyun Visual | Jiang Fei
article is original to Kamen and any unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited.
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