What Matters More, the Espresso or the Cold Foam? Café Owners Weigh In

As the indie coffee world expands, shop owners and educators weigh what today’s baristas need to learn and how to make time for it.

BY JADE VALORE
BARISTA MAGAZINE ONLINE

Featured photo: A participant displays a finished latte during a hands-on class at Texas Coffee School. Photo courtesy of Texas Coffee School.

What to know:

• For many modern coffee drinkers, a café beverage isn’t just about the espresso—other ingredients, like syrups and cold foam, matter just as much
• Learning how to dial in good espresso can take months for a new barista; some shop owners are debating whether the time investment is worth it
• Café owners weigh in on what they think makes a great coffee shop experience; while some still prioritize espresso quality, others are focusing on having unique offerings, standout hospitality, and eye-catching seasonal specials

Five years ago, the hands-on beverage portion of the program at Texas Coffee School ran roughly 75% espresso, milk, and workflow, and 25% recipes and other drinks. Today, CEO Tom Vincent estimates it’s about half and half. The class is longer than it used to be.

Something had to give, and it did. The school no longer dedicates class time to cupping the way it once did, and it has pulled back on brewed coffee extraction theory. Core espresso, milk, and bar workflow skills weren’t touched.

“The biggest change I see isn’t that coffee has become less important,” says Tom. “It’s that the definition of a retail coffee shop business has become much broader.” The school has helped more than 750 independent shops open since 2010.

That broadening is visible on café menus across the country: cold foam, matcha, energy drinks, syrups, seasonal builds, a modifier for everything. What’s less obvious is what it costs, and who pays it.

At Grounded Coffee House in Corona del Mar, California, owner Brittany Rowley launched a 68-ounce Coffee Bucket in June 2025. A video of the bucket passed a million views. According to Brittany, customers have driven from Salt Lake City, roughly 700 miles one way, for one.

Each bucket takes eight shots of espresso. Pulling them to order ate up time and machine capacity during a rush, and orders rarely stopped at one bucket. Grounded began pre-batching espresso specifically for them.

“We wanted to build a system that made the bucket fit seamlessly into an operation that already worked,” Brittany says.

A new hire at Grounded is on bar in three to four weeks, with recipes memorized before they’re expected to perform. In peak season, two baristas work as what Brittany calls the left arm and the right arm, constantly telling each other who added the syrup, whose shots are decaf, which milk, and which modification.

Asked what the foundation of a great barista is, she did not say espresso. “I know a lot of people say espresso is the foundation of being a barista, and technically it is an important skill, but for us, I’d actually say communication and consistency are the foundation of a great bar,” she told Barista Magazine.

The time it takes to teach espresso

At MoonGoat Coffee Roasters, senior district manager Joshua Bisset described a different constraint, one that has nothing to do with the menu at all.

MoonGoat teaches new hires enough to pull a good shot and to recognize when one isn’t dialed in properly. Shift leads handle grind size and machine settings. Deeper espresso work begins around the six-month mark, or earlier for someone who arrives with a strong skill set and shows genuine interest in the craft.

The reason, Joshua says, is turnover. Cafés churn, and there is only so much a shop can invest in someone before they prove they’ll stay.

He also describes a gap between learning recipes and learning espresso: A barista can learn most drink builds in a day but needs one to two months to dial in espresso with confidence. In his experience over more than five years, the exceptions could be counted on one hand.

1 Oz Coffee is named after a shot of espresso, and owner Yulia Kolchanova trains accordingly. Asked what takes longer to teach, the builds or the espresso, she doesn’t hedge: “Espresso, without question.”

Dialing in takes one to two months before a barista is confident, and the shop doesn’t rush it. Experienced staff pull shots while newer baristas finish drinks.

1 Oz serves cold foam on exactly one seasonal drink, which sells best at its Huntington Beach and Santa Clara University locations.

“It’s one small part of what we do rather than the foundation of our menu,” Yulia says.

What makes a drink well-executed?

Consider a barista who can build a six-component drink perfectly but can’t consistently dial in espresso. Put that hypothetical to these operators and educators, and the answers diverge.

Brittany said neither that barista nor their opposite qualifies yet. Tom is more blunt: “If espresso is part of the drink and the espresso tastes bad, I don’t think the drink was executed perfectly.”

Tom says he’d rather start with someone who can dial in, because recipes and sequencing can be taught. “They already understand the part that is harder to fake,” he says.

What none of them describe is a craft in retreat. Core espresso skills remain part of the training. The trade-offs appear in what gets cut, deferred, or handed to a shift lead: cupping, extraction theory, and the deeper espresso work that takes months to learn. The challenge is finding room for that learning while keeping the bar moving.

“The business has to survive the rush,” says Tom.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jade Valore is the CEO of Rad Coffee, a Southern California coffee brand she co-founded in 2015, and a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree in Food & Drink. She has spent more than a decade in specialty coffee and writes about the industry from behind the bar.

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