Texas Coffee School Equips Aspiring Entrepreneurs To Become Cafe Owners – CoffeeTalk
Adriana Obando, a 14-year-old student at the Texas Coffee School in Arlington, is passionate about becoming a cafe owner. She spent her childhood in rural Colombia, where coffee farming was the livelihood of her family and friends. When she learned how to grind beans to the perfect fineness needed for espresso, she felt the formerly unfamiliar practice felt natural. Obando became a barista during the weekend and spent three days at the school, motivated by a feeling she hasn’t been able to shake since leaving Colombia after high school: coffee is her ultimate calling.
Obando, who has spent 20 years working in finance, is serious about opening a coffee shop. By the time students sit in front of the coffee school’s classroom counter, they have paid a $3,000 tuition fee and traveled from across the country. The Texas Coffee School operates from a small warehouse complex tucked away in south Arlington and hosts classes every weekend for up to 10 students.
The three-day business master class opened with a lesson from the school’s founder and CEO, Tom Vincent, who stressed that a successful coffee shop takes a mix of well-made coffee, good aesthetics, warm customer service, passionate leadership, and top-line equipment. Most importantly, coffee shop owners should identify their business’s “core mission” and bring it to a suitable community.
The Texas Coffee School offers classes on business owning, latte artistry, and espresso pulling, providing students with the skills and knowledge needed to open a successful cafe.
Vincent, a coffee connoisseur, started his journey in 2006 when he discovered the world of specialty black coffees. He fell in love with the drink and began a two-year weekend apprenticeship in coffee making. After being laid off from his day job, Vincent spent months living couch-to-couch around North Texas and doing odd jobs to pay for meals. One of those odd jobs was teaching people how to make coffee. Every weekend, Vincent traveled around with a cheap, portable espresso machine kit and helped design the layout and menu of Oddfellows coffee shop, which opened in 2010 to critical acclaim.
Vincent moved the school into a permanent home off Cooper Street in Arlington and has helped open coffee shops in all 50 states and across six continents. One of the new beginnings is Arwa Yemeni Coffee, which opened in Richardson in 2022 and quickly gained attention for its menu of traditional Yemeni coffee drinks and North American coffee shop staples. The cafe now has a second location in Frisco and a pop-up shop in Austin, and it’s in the process of opening locations in California, Florida, and Illinois.
Yazan Soofi, who founded Arwa Yemeni with his wife and sister, had already spent about four years building the brand before he discovered the Texas Coffee School in 2021. The class helped him perfect his espresso making, showed him what equipment to use, and gave him contacts for affordable cafe maintenance and machine repair. Soofi built his “core mission” into Arwa Yemeni: fostering community by bringing cultural diversity. Customers have responded well, and Soofi said it’s the best part when he walks into the coffee shop and sees such diverse cultures and ages.
Obando, another student at the coffee school, aims to open her own shop in Houston, where she lives with her husband and daughters. She plans to source her coffee beans from farms with which she’s personally connected. For the first time in her life, Obando was practicing her family’s trade. Now, hopefully, giving the coffee industry a shot will lead to a lifetime of pouring them double, bold, and balanced.
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Source: Coffee Talk