It used to be the case that, when coffee shops confronted business challenges, they had to handle them on their own.
Today, however, external support has become more widely available in the coffee industry. When cafes and coffee businesses face staffing strain, operational gaps, or periods of growth they need help navigating, many now choose to bring in specialized consultants to help provide structure and direction. This work often happens during moments of transition, and can be critical to future outcomes.
In this follow-up to my first story, about my career trajectory as a coffee consultant, I’m exploring how this work can be transformative for businesses—and also sharing perspectives from two coffee professionals working in different areas of the industry, Eric Grimm and Ivana Chan, alongside my own perspective as CoffeeTeaLady.
As both point out, however, coffee consulting only works when the consultants’ own needs are also supported. Together, our experiences show how important it is for coffee companies to engage with this work intentionally—for the sake of their teams, the consultants, and their own business outcomes.
Slowing Down To Build Sustainable Systems
Eric Grimm began his coffee career nearly two decades ago, as a barista, before transitioning to event logistics and planning and executing coffee service for more than 2,000 events across New York City. During the pandemic, he shifted his focus to human resources after seeing how many coffee businesses lacked the systems needed to support their teams. Today, Grimm works with coffee companies on staffing structures, role clarity, and internal communication.
Grimm notes that many of the challenges he addresses in his work arise from gaps that developed long before he was brought in.
“Most consultants are brought in during moments of urgency, but urgency does not replace the need for clarity. Without defined scope and realistic timelines, the work quickly becomes unsustainable,” Grimm says. He notes the absence of structured training and clear internal processes as recurring issues across businesses of all sizes.
Grimm often helps businesses slow down enough to define expectations, responsibilities, and systems that teams can realistically maintain—and which can put them on a better, more sustainable course.
For Grimm, building people systems shifts how teams function. Defined roles, offering consistent onboarding, and creating shared expectations reduces confusion and allows managers to lead with more confidence.
“When owners take the time to build real HR systems, you start to see immediate relief across the team,” Grimm says. “People know what’s expected of them, managers have tools to lead with confidence, and small problems stop escalating into bigger ones.”
Where the Work Begins
After leaving a career in advertising, Ivana Chan entered the coffee industry by joining Onyx Coffee Lab. Her path later led into marketing and e-commerce, where she found her niche helping coffee businesses build and maintain digital sales systems. Today, Chan works independently with coffee brands while also helping lead Raise the Bar Coffee, a nonprofit focused on accessible education for early-career coffee professionals.
Chan’s experience highlights the labor required to implement and maintain digital operations. Much of her role involves aligning expectations around revenue, workload, and the ongoing effort needed to keep online operations running smoothly.
When businesses engage with this work intentionally, both Grimm and Chan describe clear improvements. For Chan, well-organized digital systems allow teams to operate with more consistency and less friction.
“When the back-end systems are organized and the workflow is clear, online sales stop feeling chaotic,” Chan says. “Teams can focus on the product and the customer experience instead of constantly troubleshooting.”
These outcomes typically extend beyond the consultant’s immediate engagement: Instead, teams leave with processes and clarity they can continue to build on for the long term.
The Labor That Is Not Always Named
Consulting work goes beyond measurable outcomes. It’s also about the intangibles: Communication, trust-building, and awareness of team dynamics are part of the process, especially when businesses are navigating change. Ideally, those intangibles should also extend to the consultant’s own experience of the partnership.
Grimm explains that expectations can remain high for consultants to deliver immediate results, even when businesses don’t change the underlying conditions that prompted them to hire a consultant in the first place.
“Consultants are often expected to solve structural problems without being given the authority or time to address them at the root,” they say.
Chan pointed to a similar pattern in digital operations. Online sales are often treated as an extension of the cafe rather than a system that requires its own structure, ownership, and upkeep. When those pieces are not clearly defined, the work is absorbed into existing roles.
As order volume increases, those gaps become more visible. Tasks stack, communication slows, and teams spend more time troubleshooting than moving efficiently.
Chan describes working alongside teams that are already stretched, which shapes how she moves through each project.
“There’s an emotional expectation placed on consultants that rarely gets named,” she says. You’re not just advising, you’re absorbing stress, conflict, and uncertainty.”
That expectation affects how time and energy are distributed.
“When emotional labor goes unacknowledged, it becomes invisible work that’s difficult to set boundaries around,” Chan says.
Grimm and Chan both describe the challenge of maintaining sustainable workloads over time. Expanding scope, shifting expectations, and compressed timelines can gradually increase pressure.
“Burnout in consulting isn’t about a lack of resilience. It’s what happens when overextension becomes the business model,” Grimm says.
Clear scope and timelines play a role in sustaining the work over time. Chan notes that longer implementation timelines can also affect sustainability. When changes take time to take hold, responsibility can remain with the person guiding the process.
“Consulting sits at the intersection of care and accountability, and that tension is where burnout often begins,” Chan says.
Looking Inward
My own experience working in coffee, including time spent in corporate environments with constant travel and extended availability— shapes how I understand these patterns. When structured well, consulting work creates clarity and momentum for businesses that would otherwise remain stuck.
But without the appropriate support or clear communication, the work can take a toll on the consultant. When I worked as a cafe consultant for a corporate company, I was often assigned last-minute travel across the country, with little time to plan and prepare for the training. I’ve had to travel to small towns out the way that may not have been the most diverse. Many times I had to extend my trips while on assignment due to training being delayed because of equipment installation issues, or the sites not receiving product in time for the training.
At the time, I accepted those demands as part of the job. I love what I do, and I’m extremely passionate about coffee and tea education, and sharing the skills that can help coffee professionals access new opportunities in their careers.
For me, that impact became clear when I stepped away from consulting. As a mother, the demands of the work began to conflict with the time and presence I wanted to have at home. That tension contributed to a period of burnout that led to a two-year hiatus. This year, I returned as a solo-preneur leading my own consulting agency.
That experience reshaped how I now approach this work. The way I build systems for cafes is reflected in how I structure my own work. Clear boundaries, defined scope, and intentional pacing became part of my framework.
Anyone working as a coffee consultant should remember that saying yes is often rewarded more than setting boundaries—even when those boundaries are what make the work sustainable.
What the Work Reveals
All three of our experiences reflect broader patterns within the coffee industry. It’s positive that more businesses are seeing the value of coffee consulting: The work supports businesses working to strengthen their systems while managing the realities of hospitality. It also shows how responsibility is shared across owners, teams, and those brought in to support them.
But for the consultants, these engagements carry financial cost, time investment, and emotional labor. When expectations are clear and the process is properly resourced, a good consulting partnership can strengthen both the business and the person doing it.
The bottom line: If the coffee industry wants healthier businesses, it has to build healthier ways of supporting the people that help those businesses grow. That responsibility belongs to owners, teams, and consultants alike.
