This is a rare opportunity to join a dynamic team of coffee professionals and further your career in coffee and business. Please forward your resumes to info @ fratellocoffee.com.
Summary
The Quality Assurance Manager is responsible for the consistent excellence of every cup of coffee served at Analog Café’s. Our Quality Assurance Manager is the quintessential coffee connoisseur who is as passionate about coffee as they are the overall coffee experience. They are the key resource for coffee quality at Analog.
Areas of Responsibility
· Quality Assurance
o Key resource to Café Managers and team members, working alongside them to educate and encourage the highest quality of Analog products.
o Ensure Analog products meet expected quality standards and consistency by conducting quality reviews and testing at each Analog café. Provide Café team members feedback and encouragement to continuously improve their skills.
o Develop and document Analog product quality standards and procedures.
o Collaborate with the Quality Assurance Manager at Fratello to assist in the constant improvement of all roast profiles.
o Act as Analog “Ambassador” at regional coffee events such as Barista Competition, Coffee Association of Canada and Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA) conventions, as necessary.
o Create and maintain Café equipment Preventative Maintenance standards and procedures.
o Maintain equipment and ensure equipment supplies are available at all Café’s as required for preventative maintenance needs. Schedule preventative maintenance and report status and discrepancies to Café Managers.
· Coffee Knowledge Training
o Design and develop training materials, workshops and communications that support and improve overall coffee knowledge of Café team members.
o Coordinate with Café Managers to facilitate regular training sessions and follow up with them to ensure all training materials are up to date.
o Coordinate Train-the-Trainer sessions and regular meetings with Café trainers to ensure the consistent execution of Analog product quality standards and procedures.
o Proactively recommend and implement improvements to product quality standards and procedures. Maintain and update training materials to reflect continuous improvements.
o Design, write and distribute regular communications, i.e. newsletters, to Café team members, highlighting best practices and changes, recipes, new coffees and other information as required.
o Present quality assurance updates and information at regular Café Manager meetings. Maintain a close working relationship with the management team.
o Coordinate with Café Mangers and District Managers to ensure weekly and monthly scheduling of training and quality meetings meet the needs of the Café’s.
Experience and Qualifications
You’re a great fit if you have:
· 3+ years of experience in retail or hospitality or equivalent experience.
· 1+ year of specialized quality assurance responsibilities.
· Experienced trainer, assisting individuals and/or teams to learn new skills or processes.
· Passion for exceptional quality of products and/or services.
· Strong verbal and written communication skills.
· Excellent collaborator and team player.
· Demonstrates effective time management.
· Available to work a flexible schedule to meet the needs of the business; may require weekends and evenings
· Proficiency in using Microsoft Word, Excel, Outlook and POS systems.
· Minimum High School education.
Analog Coffee joins Instagram’s Worldwide Instameet #wwim13 #wwim13yyc April 24th 2-4PM.
Analog Coffee is excited to join in the community gathering initiated by Instagram HQ from San Francisco. Twice a year, Instagram encourages communities to gather locally to take the relationships they have online and meet in person. This will be the 13th time Instagram will host this meet and they have chosen a theme that encourages others to take action as it is related to our earth (#myearthaction). Calgary is excited to participate with communities around the globe during this weekend.
Analog will host their Instameet at their urban location located on 740-17th Ave SW on Sunday April 24th from 2-4PM. This is open to all members of the public to come gather around, connect in person, capture moments to share online and of course, drink coffee! Analog Coffee will donate 50% of all sales from 2-4PM, which includes coffee, food and bags of coffee to the building of the Community Garden Project at The Mustard Seeds Shelter. In anticipation for crowds, we are encouraging people to also gather at Tompkins Park across the street once coffee and food are in hand where we will have music.
The Mustard Seed is a Christian registered charity. Since 1984, the organizations has been serving men and women experiencing poverty and homelessness by providing them with basic necessities such as food, shelter and clothing, and also by helping them improve their health and wellbeing, as well as find jobs and homes of their own. Visit TheSeed.ca for more info.
The generous donations from Analog Coffee sales will go toward creating a community garden at The Mustard Seed Shelter. A variety of herbs (basil, parsley, thyme, rosemary, chives, and pea shoots) will be grown and then used to enhance the flavour of meals for the homeless. Volunteers are excited to start building the garden and tending to it over the summer and Shelter chefs are looking forward to cooking with the fresh herbs.
The event is also sponsored by Socality, a global online community that encourages others to use their social influence collectively for community development. This event is sure to see the local social media influencers all join to share the event live on Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter and Facebook.
Owner, Russ Prefontaine says, “Analog exists to bring great coffee to our city and we have designed our space to be a central destination in our local community for people to gather. We are proud to host Instagram’s Worldwide Instameet and offer 50% of sales during the event to support The Mustard Seed’s Community Garden at our location. We hope the community will come out and have a great time connecting.
Meet Fratello Sales Consultants, John Mitchell and Joel May. They have been part of the Fratello team for years and are here to support clients with everything they need to run a successful cafe. If you are seeking to open a cafe or are you wanting support in your current business, John and Joel are here to help. You can read below to find out more about their role and how they may serve you!
Joel May, Fratello.
John Mitchell, Fratello.
What are your roles within Fratello and what do you do?
Our roles within Fratello is ultimately a sales consultant. We stay current with the newest industry trends, provide exceptional training, phenomenal coffee, and help our customers set up with the right equipment and layout. My goal is to become my customers most valuable asset, their key contact for any coffee related questions, issues or needs.
As a wholesaler working with independent and franchise cafe operators, we help our partners (customers) succeed through providing exceptional, high quality coffee, as well as the skills, tools, and knowledge required to showcase the best that our coffee has to offer. In addition, we consult with cafe operators to ensure they have the right equipment and flow for their particular location. Capitalizing on flow makes a world of difference to the bottom line. This ultimately creates a win win sales relationship.
We offer:
– Initial consultation
– Equipment sourcing, specs, and quotes
– All maintenance training
– Installation and pre installation site inspections
– Help with equipment placement for optimized flow
– Help with coffee cost analysis
– Full training for all staff from Owner to Barista, from basic espresso training to advanced barista
– Ongoing training and support as required
– Coffee knowledge seminars
How many locations serve Fratello in Canada?
We service and support literally hundred of cafes.
What advice would you give for those who want to open a cafe?
There are a lot of answers to this question, but a few of the most important points of advice I would offer are:
Location, location location! First and foremost, a great location sets you up for success, look for places offering massive amounts of foot traffic. Consider looking for foot traffic and making an offer on the right location even if its not for lease or sale. Stand alone locations with no foot traffic are always a challenge. Be wary of spaces that are too large, cavernous cafes give the impression that the cafe is not busy even if its doing well. A crowd always attracts a crowd and 1200 to 1500 square feet seems to be the winning footprint.
Be prepared to float yourself for a year, it often takes all of that to create a strong loyal regular customer base.
Do your research, understand the micro market you are looking to set up shop in.
Decor and renovation budgets are important but don’t forget to budget for your brewing and espresso gear. So often we see the gear as an afterthought, the espresso machine is the heartbeat of the cafe, get the right machine, espresso grinders, and brewing gear.
When selecting your coffee, choose quality over price every time, strong margins coupled with the high yield in coffee translates into $0.03 cents per cup for every $1.00 per lb. Not much of a savings for using a lower quality product…
Higher passionate staff, who love coffee. If your not a people orientated person, higher a great manager who is.
What is the point of difference with those who work with Fratello?
When choosing to work with Fratello it is important to know that our customers are our partners, their success is our focus. We don’t charge a fee for helping them succeed.
While our coffee is exceptional, poor brewing and extracting techniques can ruin even the finest of coffee, we offer the tools to ensure that every cup is amazing!
We are of the belief that by helping our customers becomes better café operators, offering a high level of quality beverages with a great experience, we will all benefit. We produce excellent coffee.
We also have the experience to carry blends and dark roasts along side boutique style micro lots. In many instances, a customers key demographic in their area is looking for a really good dark or medium roast that is stable and unchanging all the time, one that can work well with cream and sugar. We know this and can help.
Is there any limit to the amount of coffee that needs to be ordered?
There are no minimums and there are definitely no maximums.
Meet Rodrigo Dumont, a farmer from El Salvador that grows and provides some of Fratello’s favourite coffees like the El Salvador Malacara B and the El Salvador Pacamara. We interviewed Rodrigo to learn more about his farm, community and more about the behind the scenes of what it takes to fill your cup with that flavour you enjoy each morning!
Q. How often do you grow coffee? What does a season look like?
We have a coffee renovation program for the next five years that contemplates an investment of at least 15,000 new coffee plants per year. We are growing different varieties of coffees each year, from our traditional red bourbon, to our new and exciting microlots: orange and pink bourbon, mokka, and pacamara, among others.
A season includes different activities within the coffee farm:
Coffee pruning and management, which is essential for new growth and the stimulation of new foliage, which will eventually provide more crop.
Shade pruning and its efficient management provide enough light for the coffee plants to regenerate its foliage previous to the rainy season, and as it grows back, maintains a cool temperature in the farm during summer. Shade also provides further benefits:
- Organic material for the soil from fallen leaves
- Canopy for a sustainable ecosystem
- Less fertilizers required for coffee trees with more shade
Soil & Foliar Fertilization: coffee plants, like all plants,
require light, water, and soil to grow and bear fruit:
- Quantity of light is managed by shade
- Quantity of water, as of now, cannot be regulated
- And the quality of soil can be analyzed and further improved with organic and/or chemical amendments and fertilizers
- In our farms we provide our coffee plants both organic and chemical fertilizers: Pulp is used in a compost for new coffee plants, N-P-K formulas are created for specific soil types and at certain growth times of the plant for fertilization optimization and less waste
Picking and sorting is crucial to the quality of coffee. A cherry picked at its ripest will deliver a well-formed and larger bean, with higher sugar content, and thus a better cup.
Milling: the milling process is outsourced to Beneficio El Borbollon, even though it is an integral part of the value chain.
These are some of the most important activities that go on at the farm level. They are critical for coffee growth and coffee production. Without these we could not have a harvest at the end of the season.
Q. What makes for a good crop?
A good crop can be defined as producing what was expected, not having an environmental impact on the farm (e.g. some kind of plague, strong rains or draught), stable costs, and a secure space to work on.
The quality of the coffee can be established to a certain point by the hard work of the farm workers.
Q. Are there any unique techniques that you use for growing coffee?
We have a established a traditional method in Malacara B called agobio parra This technique was used in the Santa Ana volcano region more than 50 years ago and provided superior productions for bourbon varieties. The technique consists of bending the coffee trees when they are relatively young. With proper shade and coffee pruning, new trees will grow from the mother tree and provide additional production. Each season, the newer trees are bent and further trees grow to produce the new crop. The growing philosophy behind the agobio is to always have in one parra, three or four producing generations of coffee trees.
Q. Tell us a Little about daily life. What does your day look like?
In Malacara B, work on the farm starts at 7 am. Usually workers are divided by 20 or 30, supervised by a “Caporal”. There is a farm administrator called “Mandador”. During the year there are between 20 to 60 people working on non-harvest work. During the harvest the amount of workers can increase to 100 at a time. Each group has a specific activity to work on: shade pruning, coffee pruning, or fertilization for example. Lunch break is at noon: beans, rice and “chengas” or tortillas, which the farm provides as part of the work benefits. Work usually ends at 3 pm. If there is any work paid by the job, people choose to keep working and earn additional cash.
In my case, I visit Malacara B and the other two farms we administer, Piedra Pacha and Las Mercedes. At least once a week each.
Q. What kind of environment conditions are best for growing coffee?
Malacara B I would say has an ideal microclimate to grow coffee. It is at 1500 m above sea level, perfect temperature in El Salvador for quality coffee. It is in a side of the Santa Ana volcano where no wind hits the farm. It is always partially cloudy, so there is not too much sun or too little. The soil comes from volcanic rock. All great conditions for specialty coffee!
Q. How do you like to drink your coffee?
When I drink coffee I have two preferences.
When it is black coffee, I like to drink a Malacara B red Bourbon in a Chemex. Clean, round, balanced and sweet. I could drink that coffee on and on and on.
If there is a good barista around, and a good espresso machine, I like a good cortado: the perfect combination of sweet espresso and milk.
There is so much that goes into roasting that perfect cup of coffee, including a process known as cupping. This is a regular practice done at the roastery to ensure quality and flavour are to complete perfection. When you buy our beans or taste our coffee, we want to ensure that what you are getting is the best. Here is a step by step process known as cupping as completed by our roasters David Schindel and Meghan Gould.
Step 1: Weigh and grind your coffee samples. The ideal ratio is 8.25 grams of coffee per 150 ml of water.
Step 2: Evaluate dry fragrance by smelling the dry grounds within 15 minutes of grinding your coffee.
Step 3: Infuse dry grounds with hot water (200° F (93° C)) filling all the way to the brim of the cup. Let it sit for 4 minutes leaving the crust unbroken.
Step 4: After the 4 minutes is up break the crust by stirring three times allowing the foam to fall off the back of the spoon while gently smelling the back of the spoon.
Step 5: Evaluate wet aroma/fragrance of the coffee samples on your SCAA scoring sheet
Step 6: Before tasting the coffee clear off the remaining wet coffee grinds floating on top of the samples in one swift motion using two cupping spoons.
Step 7: When the samples have cooled for about 10 minutes you can begin your flavour, aftertaste, acidity, body and balance evaluation.
When tasting: the coffee should be aspirated into the mouth so that it covers as much area as possible, making a very audible slurping noise. Flavour and after taste are then rated.
As the coffee continues to cool the acidity, body, balance are then rated. Lastly, the sweetness, uniformity and clean cup should be evaluated before your samples reach room temperature.
Step 8: Add all your scores on your evaluation sheets and you’re done! Based on your scores you can now determine the best coffee suited for your coffee shop.
