While a large proportion of the global coffee community has been in Dublin for the World Barista Championships, it’s appropriate to consider what one of Ireland’s most successful baristas has to say.

During Colin Harmon’s visit to Australia recently, Leigh Michelmore from Veneziano Coffee hosted an event and about 50 people from Queensland’s coffee community came to hear Colin casually chat about industry trends, give advice and pose some challenging ideas and questions.

Why listen to a barista from the other side of the globe? Colin’s international success in a small space of time and the way he thinks ‘outside the box’ are reasons enough. He ‘4 times entered and 4 times won’ the Irish Barista Championships. And also made it 4 times to the finals of the WBC, the first being 6 months after starting a new career in coffee. There’s always a lot to learn from someone like that.

What advice does Colin Harmon have to those who are disenchanted with their chosen career and want to follow their passion? 

Consider a change. In 2008 Colin decided to devote everything he had to coffee. Despite a four-year degree in Business and Legal Studies and a very lucrative career in finance, the realisation dawned that he’d chosen the wrong path. Spending the rest of his life in an office was not what he was cut out to do, so he gave it all up.

Experiment and learn. Colin’s foray into coffee began with an espresso machine in the kitchen of his 3rd floor apartment where he experimented and learned everything he could about coffee. Soon he was making some pretty tasty coffees – better than most in local cafes, he believes. He then took a job as a barista at Coffee Angel. In Colin’s words ‘It was freezing cold, hard physical work, and involved a 4.50am start, but Karl Purdy who ran the business was a former Irish Barista Champion and gave me an excellent schooling in coffee quality.’

6 months later he won the Irish National Barista Championship. Colin said  ‘It was a shock to me as it was to everyone else. I had created my own blend and worked tirelessly over the cold winter in an inner-city lockup to perfect my routine. Although I came to the competition as a complete outsider, I reaped the rewards of all that effort on the day.‘

What advice does Colin Harmon have for baristas entering competitions?

He stressed the importance of having a great 60 to 90 second introduction. Of being really well organised and keeping your routine simple. He believes signature beverages have reached their peak and perhaps become overly complicated. His strongest advice was …

Practice, practice and practice. With an opportunity to compete in the 2009 World Barista Championships in Atlanta, Colin sold his car to set up a replica of the WBC competition space in the spare room of his apartment – complete with a WBC standard machine and tables custom built to WBC specifications. He contacted Steve Leighton at HasBean Coffee in the UK to roast his coffee for the competition, having recognised the coffees he’d bought online from Steve to be among the best he’d tasted. He tirelessly practised and perfected his routine. He came fourth in the WBC that year.

Study the scoresheets! He spoke mostly about the need to study the scoresheets, saying the largest proportion of the scores are ‘giveaways’ – all you have to do is know what you have to do and do it. When there might be just a point or two between a winner and runner-up, every point counts! He said this was the case in the 2015 WBC where there were just a couple of points between Sasa Sestic, the winner and Charles Babinski, the runner-up.

Share and be fair. Colin believes you must let the winner win! He said there comes a time when a champion should hand over an opportunity to win to someone else in their country. He suggested perhaps there should be a limit on the number of times a barista can compete. Or that there should be a few years between each time the same competitor competes. He made a personal reference to a time when he won the Irish championship for the fourth time, and how bad he felt as others had so much more to gain from winning than he did.

What advice does Colin Harmon have for setting up a café ‘on a shoestring’?

Soon after competing in his first WBC, he left Coffee Angel and began working as an independent consultant and trainer – mostly overseas. After a year travelling and learning in Europe, Japan, USA and Scandinavia he came back home to fulfill his ambition of opening a café – with very little cash to do so. His snippets of advice included …

Take any opportunity you can get.  Colin accepted the kind offer of a friend to use the space in the front of his nightclub, The Twisted Pepper. Hence the first 3fe was born – affectionately and cleverly named after his third floor apartment where his first espresso experiments took place.

Never ever give up. On the first day of opening, a Friday, Colin sold 150 coffees. The following Monday, he sold just 16 (10 of which were for friends). He refused to be disheartened, stuck to his core principle (make nice coffee, be nice to people and they’ll probably come back) and spent the next 12 months building his business up one cup at a time.

Build relationships. Colin believes in what a café can collectively achieve with the contribution of individual skill and passion. 3fe have had latte art champions, a brewers cup champion, and even a Slovakian barista champion amongst their staff. He also believes, in forging mutually beneficial relationships with suppliers and customers. He cites his lasting relationship with Steve Leighton who’d helped with his initial WBC preparation, eventually offering him half of his business for exclusive distributorship of HasBean coffee in Ireland.

Be bold and adventurous. At a time when water quality was just starting to be a hot topic of debate, Colin and his team decided to educate the public – by selling different tasting water experiences to customers.  He laughed confidently as he told the story about how the local newspaper heard about 3fe ‘selling water’ and the bad publicity he got – which ultimately led to good publicity and educated customers.

Clearly, 3fe went on to be a success as 3 years later a more spacious 3 level premises was opened with a basement kitchen, ground floor café and first floor office and training room. More recently he has set up a roastery.

On trends in the industry …

Colin believes global brands and bespoke cafes will both grow and sit happily side by side.

One observation he made is that customers want more convenience, so anything a cafe can do to fulfil that need will be a winner. Its not just about speed and efficiency. It’s about things like dog-friendly cafés. And catering to the needs of early morning bike riders and commuters.

He said we need to be on the look out for freeze-dried specialty coffee, which will be a popular trend in the future.

Café owners were challenged to ask loyal customers why they come to their cafe.  He recently learnt, to his surprise, that it’s not always all about the coffee – as most specialty café owners might like to believe. When he posed the question to his customers, one told him it was because there was always a car park available out the front!

Another observation is that customers are looking for ‘the total experience’ and Colin challenged café owners to address what they offer in terms of this in their cafes – apart from good coffee. He posed the question, ‘If coffee didn’t exist tomorrow, would you still be able to run a café?

He said the ultimate challenge for the future is to think creatively – even disruptively – to think of the worst-case scenario (or bad idea) and find a way to apply it. He cited the example of supermarket customers now happily doing their own checkouts, packing their own bags and returning their trolleys – things that would never have been heard of some years ago. All this which would have been considered an inconvenience in the past is now seen as a convenience. It’s all in the marketing!

When asked which cafes he would recommend around the world, 5 were mentioned: Pixel Coffee Brewers in WA (for the total experience, he said) but also Tim Wendelboe’s in Oslo, Screaming Beans in Amsterdam, Prufrock in London and Telescope in Paris.

Finally, he acknowledged that Australia is leading the way with so many good specialty cafes. Advice taken; compliments given. Thanks Colin; it was an inspiring chat!

About the author: Christine Cottrell is a widely travelled coffee enthusiast with a passion for writing and photography. She’s the author of the Barista Bible and the Perfect Espresso Training System – a series of coffee books and training materials that are now selling globally.

www.perfectespresso.com.au