I am reading through LinkedIn when a post stops me mid-scroll. Someone is writing about their time inside a Capital One Café in Chicago, describing the “amazing matcha” and the kindness of the baristas who served it. I smile. I know that counter, that rhythm of service, that kindness.
Chicago was one stop in a long stretch of travel I did for Capital One, a bank that opened dozens of cafes across its nationwide locations. A couple of years ago, I worked as a cafe consultant for Tradecraft Coffee & Tea, a company that partners with brands to build or refine cafe programs, from menu development and equipment selection to on-site barista training. When Capital One began rolling out its cafes, Tradecraft was brought in to lead the coffee side of the transition.
I was part of the original rollout team that started at New York City’s 59th Street location in 2022. Verve, a California-based coffee roaster, first acclimated us to its program before handing training over. From that point on, we led barista and cafe operations training across every Capital One Café, new or existing while Capital One handled internal onboarding for team members outside the cafe. After taking a short break—also known as maternity leave—I returned in May 2023 to help reimagine the service model and retrain staff at more than 60 cafe locations.
The LinkedIn post celebrates the cafe’s calm atmosphere and sense of community. I keep reading, feeling quietly proud. It echoes what I remember most from working with baristas at the cafe: teams learning together, the satisfaction of a drink served just right, and the growing confidence of a city’s coffee culture finding its shape.
But as I read through the comments from consultants, coaches, and brand strategists, a thought lingers: When did everyone become a coffee consultant?
When Consulting Was a Whisper
Consulting in coffee once felt like a quiet calling. It wasn’t something you added to your bio. It was a reputation earned in back rooms, after long shifts, through word of mouth.
Before consulting officially became my work, I was a coffee shop manager in Bushwick. In 2020, I was deep in the day-to-day flow of cafe operations, building systems, training teams, and smoothing workflows. In 2022, everything shifted. I moved from managing a single shop to taking on a travel role as a cafe consultant with Tradecraft. At the same time, my tea business was growing, so I was balancing both worlds at once.
My shift into coffee consulting feels representative of the wider industry. A decade ago, the work wasn’t as prevalent, and most of us were still grinding it out behind bars. But as baristas found themselves mentoring others in the industry, consulting work arose organically for many.
For coffee consultant and communicator Niki Tolch, coffee has always been personal. Long before she ever worked behind a bar, coffee represented the comfort and belonging of third places that felt steady and familiar.
She traces that feeling back to spaces like Barnes & Noble, which had a Starbucks inside, and says the smell of coffee “lived in me long before I ever worked a bar.” Even after stepping away from Starbucks, her first job in the industry, coffee stayed with her. It reminded her of family, and of “being held inside something familiar.” What kept pulling her back to the industry was the promise coffee seemed to hold: “Community. Kinship. A place to belong.”
That pull deepened through craft and science. Niki became fascinated by how technical and creative coffee could be, a curiosity that sharpened when she entered a brewing competition at the start of the pandemic. “I learned a lot. I hit walls. I got frustrated,” she says. “But it cracked something open.”
That curiosity led her into drink creation, teaching, and eventually consulting. As a contract barista trainer, she moved between cafes, helping teams grow. In that work, she noticed a familiar resistance to change, where “good enough passed as excellence.” Consulting became a way to work differently.
As is true for many other coffee consultants, what began as side projects and small training sessions eventually became Tolch’s main focus. People kept asking for help, and she realized there was value in what she had learned, and that she could help other coffee workers see what they were capable of. Coffee professionals who once sought growth within cafe walls realized the next step was to teach, build, and shape the systems they once worked inside.
Today, Tolch leads with people first, builds systems that teams can realistically sustain, and values honesty over comfort. As a Black neurodivergent woman, consulting has also allowed her to show up without masking or shrinking. For Tolch, the work is not about authority. It is about shared knowledge, real growth, and leaving an impact.
The Digital Shift
For many coffee consultants, the pandemic accelerated the shift toward digital teaching and visibility. When cafes shut their doors,consultants began teaching from their kitchens, filming workflows at home, and answering technical questions in comment sections instead of behind the bar.
A new kind of consultant emerged online. Carousel slides broke down workflows. TikTok baristas taught from their living rooms. YouTubers offered deep dives into brew theory. Instagram Q&As moved faster than any cafe’s morning rush. No flights required, just reach. Coffee brands accelerated this shift by partnering with consultants who were already teaching publicly, including Morgan Eckroth and James Hoffmann.
Coffee consultant and sales representative Kayla London first entered the industry in 2016, expecting it to be temporary, something to do before settling into a career in HR. After a few years away, she realized how much she missed it. “The more experience I gained, the more questions I found I was being asked,” London says. Coffee kept pulling her back, not just for the work itself, but for the way it invited curiosity and conversation.
London grew up in Durham, North Carolina, and learned from industry professionals like Lem Butler, the 2016 U.S. Barista Champion and co-founder of Black & White Coffee Roasters, which gave her early grounding in cupping, latte art, and brewing science. When she later moved to Atlanta, those skills stood out.
London moved from barista work into roasting at Portrait Coffee, deepening her understanding of coffee from production to flavor. She later stepped into leadership as an F&B director and launched a pop-up, Color Cold Brew, where consulting began to take form. “Consulting was an organic progression for me,” London says. “The more I learned, the more I saw it as an opportunity to help others reach their goals.”
Today, London works as a sales representative with La Colombe, which gives her yet another angle on the industry. As she explains, consulting was never about a title. It was about answering questions honestly and helping others move forward with clarity. Rather than marketing consulting outright, London used social media to document her work. Posts from Color Cold Brew and her time as an F&B Director showed how she built systems, and solved problems. Along the way, she used social media to document her work, allowing her experience to speak for itself.
Leave a Space Better Than You Found It
In the summer of 2023, right in the thick of the Capital One and Verve transition, I found myself walking the halls of Meta’s New York City offices, calibrating every batch brewer on every floor. Each office kitchen had its own quirks, from shifts in water pressure to temperature swings influenced by AC vents. It wasn’t glamorous work, as I crouched beside brewers and used a scale to measure each brew, but it was revealing.
That is the quiet side of consulting most people never see, beyond the online presence and polished explanations. The best coffee consultants, whether online or in cafes, are guided by the same instinct and attention to detail, and the imperative to leave a space better than they found it.
Consulting usually emerges after years of experience. It shows up when people have worked bars, opened cafes, trained teams, and solved the same operational problems repeatedly. At a certain point, that knowledge becomes transferable. A consultant’s value is in helping others apply experience to their own environments, not in promoting trends or personal brands. That is why the number of coffee consultants has grown: As the industry has expanded, experience now moves more freely among cafes, companies, and communities.
The next chapter is not just mine. I have been gathering perspectives from people working at different points in the industry, including Eric Grimm of The Coffee Human Resource and Ivana Chan, an e-commerce consultant with a focus on specialty coffee. In the next piece, I will bring their voices together to examine what consulting actually costs, what it gives back, and why so many people continue to choose it.
