For as idyllic as we all hope the coffee shop to be, it is a place that exists in the real world, with all the good and bad that entails. It is staffed by humans and frequented by imperfect humans, on their best and worst days. While we hope the cafe is place folks can go for a brief escape, conflicts nonetheless occur, and it is often up to the barista to resolve them.
That’s why former US Barista Champion and coffee consultant Laila Ghambari has created a new De-Escalation for Coffee Shops course. Designed in collaboration with Eric J. Grimm, the online class helps equip cafe workers with tactics and strategies to resolve common conflicts that may arise in a coffee shop.
Ghambari and Grimm are no strangers to working within the cafe context. Ghambari has pretty much lived at a coffee shop since she was a kid, working at her father’s chain of Seattle cafes Cherry Street Coffee House. And before they were building a fledgling oat milk empire, Grimm worked at iconic New York City cafes like Everyman Espresso and has recently turned their attention to improving human resources at coffee shops by acquiring their aPHR certification (and helping others in coffee get theirs as well). Together, they have tapped into their wealth of knowledge to create the De-Escalatiopn for Coffee Shops course.
The course will cover the topics of “self-awareness and personal wellness in the workplace, de-escalation basics and tactics, and common scenarios that need de-escalation.” The course comes in two varieties: a pre-recorded lecture-only download by Ghambari and a monthly two-hour interactive course led by Grimm. The former is intended to be used by cafe owners to train new and existing staff and along with the video includes editable slides and a “lesson plan that covers all of the topics presented in the interactive class.”
“This course is something consulting clients have requested for the past few years and it’s easy to see why,” Ghambari states in the press release. “We’re seeing more and more people in service jobs getting burnt out by difficult and sometimes dangerous interactions and not having the right tools to work through them. We know that certain tactics can make things easier and the ability to de-escalate difficult situations is now as essential as pulling excellent shots of espresso.”
The interactive De-Escalation for Coffee Shops course led by Grimm costs $65 per attendee. Participants can register via Ghambari’s website. The first class will take place March 21st, the same day Ghambari’s lecture video will be available for download. And they are offering $15 off the first class with the code FIRST15.
For more information on the De-Escalation for Coffee Shops course or to see scheduled class dates, visit Laila Ghambari’s official website.
Zac Cadwalader is the managing editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.