Unemployed? Underemployed? Not entirely happy with the status of your employment? Then you should probably move to New York City. This place is chockablock, brimming, absolutely lousy with available coffee jobs, and only the barest familiarity with coffee is seemingly required. Like seriously, if you know what a portafilter is, or even have just lived in Portland, Seattle, or San Francisco, you’re pretty much golden.
Please? With so many quality shops opening or expanding, things are getting kinda desperate…
Many of the more established companies are sucking up talent left and right. Intelligentsia is opening their first NYC retail location imminently, and is in the process of filling out staff. Stumptown is opening their second NYC store Valentine’s Day (ish), and they’ve been hiring widely and putting their trainees through a grueling hyper-caffeinated bootcamp of 9 hour training days. Joe Coffee is always hiring for their many busy shops, including looking for multiple people for their Waverly shop right now. Blue Bottle has expanded greatly in the last year, creating many opportunities on their staff.
It’s not just the big companies either. Kaffe 1668 (who expanded in 2012 as well) is hiring. Super adorable spot Prodigy Coffee is looking for a new manager. NYC coffee OGs Third Rail Coffee have a second location in the works that they will surely need staff for. According to the excellent resource newyorkcoffeejobs.com, the folks at Ports Coffee and Tea (recent winners of the Knockbox Classic) are looking for a new barista as well.
Expanding interest in specialty coffee means that it’s not just traditional cafes that are hiring: here’s a Michelin starred restaurant looking for a new barista. Skytown in Bushwick has a very interesting sounding opening for a “coffee partner” to join their management team. More and more restaurants are seeking to up their coffee program, which creates great opportunities for baristas to advance into more program manager roles.
I took a second to chat with Jesse Kahn, sales guy for Counter Culture Coffee NYC, and he said that many of the dozens and dozens of accounts he works with on a daily basis are hiring or will be soon. Echoing the increase I’ve observed in restaurant coffee jobs, Mr. Kahn said that he feels there are many openings right now for higher level coffee jobs, from shop manager to restaurant coffee program manager to multi-unit brand builder. These are jobs that people are having trouble staffing with sufficiently professional and motivated employees. Mr. Kahn pointed out that in applying to these jobs, it is particularly important for job seekers to be able to strongly and clearly articulate their skills and abilities beyond making coffee.
So in summation, if you’re looking for a coffee job, you should move to New York City like immediately. 2013 is already shaping up to be another year of break-neck expansion for the teeming specialty coffee scene in this city, and we’re gonna need all the help we can get.
Alex Bernson is a staff writer for Sprudge.com.
