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“I love coming up with games and new

unique challenges – we should try things

and push people – and if we miss a few
times along the way that is fine, because

otherwise we’ll just end up doing the

same stale stuff as everyone else.”

Must Do Something for These Baristas

Can you tell us more about the story that inspired and
shaped The Barista League? How long did it take to get
the idea off the ground?
The first event ever was actually the 1 year anniversary
party for Love Coffee’s Café opening, which I kind of used
as an excuse to throw a party and competition. Outside of
the core mission or values I had a couple of ideas for what
I wanted the competition to be. I wanted it to be multidis-
ciplinary, not just focused on one skill and that it shouldn’t
be a knockout event so you could compete properly and
not lose on your first pour. I also knew it should be in
teams to make it more fun and communal and the rest we
just developed along the way. The first few events we tried
a lot of different rounds and in my nostalgia I think these
were the fun days – we did some kind of crazy challenges.
But along the way, listening to feedback, talking to judges creating the rules and they feel random and arbitrary, then developing with our partners at Toddy. It takes a few at-
and competitors we found out which challenges were the a competitor can feel like – “why bother? The rules don’t tempts at any competition to find out the strengths and
most fair, most fun, and had the right level of challenge matter so why bother playing properly”. So the rules are weaknesses and to find out how you can practically pull
without being too random or difficult. there so you can take the game seriously enough to play off 12 teams in under an hour and we feel that this year’s
and we just have to walk the line so it’s not too serious. version of the round is a great evolution of the concept.
I noticed that your coffee competition has a lot of
interesting rules. How did you decide to come up with What factors are taken into account in setting the Were plant-based drinks included in The Barista
these rules? Why are these rules necessary? content of The Mystery Round? League event from the beginning? Why was this de-
I heard this in a presentation by Ian Bogost, “Fun comes Over the years we have tried a lot of different Mystery cision made? How do you feel about the SCA’s rule
from the attention and care you bring to something that Rounds, but the idea is to give flexibility to the competi- on allowing plant-based milk for the 2023 season?
imposes arbitrary, often boring, even cruel limitations on tion concept so that a competitor can understand the first Except for the first event or two, we have always used
what you—or anyone—can do with them.” But in order for two rounds from event to event but that the Mystery plant-based drinks instead of milk and honestly it has
this attention to matter it also needs to have enough free- Round has some scope to move and change as the event never been a tough decision. We have been making oat-
dom of movement. You also have to take things seriously requires it. In the early days this was more of a “fun” round and plant-based drinks as baristas forever and there is no
enough to create this space for people to have fun. If they to take the pressure off, but from listening to feedback we real need for the cappuccino-like drink to be made out of
see that the rules don’t matter, then why would they take have made this round a bit more structured in order to milk. I think the SCA’s rule changes are great and seem
it seriously enough to bother playing. An example with make the competition as fair as possible. In 2023 this is a like a nice evolution and given that the scoring system is
The Barista League is that if we don’t take enough care continuation of our mocktail round that we have been still the same and it probably won’t change very much, I
don’t really understand why it took so long.

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