Let's Talk Coffee™ Barista Scholarship

In an effort to continue the peer-to-peer training initiated at the Let's Talk Coffee™ event, Sustainable Harvest brought a young barista from a coffee-producing country to the United States during the United States Barista Championship (USBC) held in Portland, OR, on March 5–8. The goal of the LTC Barista Scholarship is to foster barista culture in producing countries; exchange knowledge of drink preparation, espresso, and industry standards; experience the consumer side of the coffee supply chain through tastings and cafe visits; and create an international community of baristas by encouraging peer-to-peer training.

Experience the Barista Scholarship as we follow the first recipient, Christian Mora, through a busy 10 days of barista training in the video below.

The first LTC Barista Scholarship Program recipient was Christian Mora, from Costa Rica's Afaorca coffee cooperative. Christian Mora is the son of organic coffee producers and the founders of Afaorca. His position in Afaorca is sales and marketing, and he also supervises projects and helps with quality control. He has been working for the cooperative for 10 years.  Christian says “Coffee is an industry where it does not matter what do you do; there is always something new to learn and every day you have to keep updated. I am always thinking about how I can add value to our product. That's how I started working in coffee roasting, preparation, and local sales. This is a very relevant subject in Costa Rican coffee production.”

The Barista Scholarship trip was essential for Christian to learn about barista culture, and it will be the beginning of what he hopes is a long career in coffee. In this hands-on internship model, he saw how US companies are managed and he learned many things to take back to the farmers he works for in Costa Rica. The excitement of watching the US Barista Championships in Portland was a culmination of how powerful espresso can be in building a culture of coffee excellence - and this connection to coffee quality is something that Let's Talk Coffee holds as a core principle.