How a Shift Behind the Bar Actually Runs
A barista shift is three overlapping jobs done at once: preparing and maintaining the station, taking orders accurately, and pulling drinks to a recipe that does not change between sites. The bar runs on sequence, grind through dose, tamp, extract and steam, and the espresso itself is judged against a shot time of roughly twenty-five to thirty seconds.
That last number is why cafe onboarding cannot be delivered as a list of drinks. A new barista learning recipes without the sequence produces inconsistent coffee and cannot say why, and the correction comes from whoever is on shift, which means it comes differently in every store. One thing to keep off screen is the commercial layer: supplier pricing, margin per drink, and wastage targets are management figures that do not help anyone at the bar.
The shift is set out across nine scenes: two on station preparation before service, one on the order-taking sequence and repeating back, two on the espresso standard and what a bad shot looks like, one on milk texturing, one on the handoff and calling drinks, one on maintaining the station during a rush, and one on the closing checklist.
.PNG)
.PNG)
.PNG)
