The Career of a Barista

“A lot of time you’ll get the question, ‘What else do you do besides coffee?’” says Brye Roth, a barista at Southside Coffee in South Park Slope who has been making coffee in New York City for nearly a decade. “And for people who think, ‘Oh, barista, that art school degree must not have gotten them anywhere’ — screw those people.”

Not to show Roth in a bad light: she’s extremely polite, passionate, soft-spoken, and thoroughly versed in coffee — the makings of a great barista. Her frustration with the issue comes from dealing with the same question for nine years. “I don’t think most people really know the skill and knowledge it takes to be good at this job,” she says. “I think most people just see it as what you do on the side.”

Narratively has a great piece looking at people who work as baristas — many of whom consider it the job they want to do and not something they’re doing while figuring out what they want to do next. Salaries can start pretty low — $20,000, but can move upwards of $45,000 for highly skilled baristas, according to someone I once interviewed from Intelligentsia.

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