If you followed a link to coffeejobspodcast.com: that address belonged to James Hoffmann’s Coffee Jobs Podcast, nine interviews released in 2016. The domain now points to this page, and jayarr.coffee has no connection with Hoffmann or the podcast. The episode list is further down.
What a barista earns in the US
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) doesn’t publish a barista-only wage. Its Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) count baristas in “Fast Food and Counter Workers” (occupation 35-3023), alongside fast food and concession workers; O*NET, the Labor Department’s job database, files “Baristas” under that code. So the figures below describe the whole group, not specialty cafés alone.
OEWS wages are straight-time pay and include tips, commissions and production bonuses. They leave out overtime premiums and benefits such as health insurance.
| Fast food and counter workers, May 2025 | Hourly wage (BLS, checked October 18, 2026) |
|---|---|
| 10th percentile | $10.98 |
| 25th percentile | $13.32 |
| Median | $15.00 ($31,200 annualized at 2,080 hours) |
| 75th percentile | $17.34 |
| 90th percentile | $20.51 |
| Mean | $15.46 |
About 3.85 million people worked in the group in May 2025. Its 90th-percentile wage was $20.51 an hour, below the $21.19 median for first-line food-service supervisors (BLS, checked October 18, 2026); workers above that percentile may earn more. Actual annual earnings depend on hours worked.
Where the next steps go
Here are jobs a barista can move into, with the BLS occupation that covers each. The pay is the national median for the whole occupation in May 2025, not a coffee-only figure; the comparisons with the barista group’s median are calculated.
| Next step | BLS occupation | Median, May 2025 (checked October 18, 2026) |
|---|---|---|
| Shift lead or café supervisor | First-Line Supervisors of Food Preparation and Serving Workers | $21.19 an hour, about 41% more |
| Café manager | Food Service Managers | $33.36 an hour, about 2.2 times |
| Production roaster | Food and Tobacco Roasting, Baking, and Drying Machine Operators and Tenders | $21.54 an hour, about 44% more |
O*NET lists “Coffee Roaster” and “Roast Master” among the job titles in that last occupation. Trainers, green coffee buyers and quality managers don’t have a BLS occupation of their own, so there’s no official pay figure for them.
The Specialty Coffee Association (SCA) runs courses and credentials aimed at those jobs. As the SCA describes them (checked October 18, 2026):
- Skills courses take one to three days each and are taught by Authorized SCA Trainers, of whom the SCA lists more than 2,000.
- Four diplomas combine courses into a role: the Café Diploma for working in and running a café, the Roastery Diploma for roasting and production, the Coffee Trade Diploma for sourcing and buying green coffee, and the Sustainable Coffee Diploma. They’re earned over time, course by course.
- Q Grader is the SCA’s certification for evaluating coffee, used by tasters, traders and quality staff; the course takes about six days. The Coffee Quality Institute ran the Q Grader program until the SCA took it over on October 1, 2025.
- Coffee Business Education is a 12-week online course for current and would-be café owners and managers.
If buying or quality control is where you’re headed, start with the tasting skills those jobs test: cupping the SCA’s way, training your palate on the flavor wheel, and how coffee scores are given.
The trade-offs
- The pay data stops at wages. OEWS leaves out benefits, so two jobs with the same hourly rate can be worth different amounts once health insurance, paid leave and scheduled hours are counted.
- The work is physical. Mikaela Wallgren, who began as a part-time barista at Coffee Collective in Copenhagen and placed second at the 2016 World Brewers Cup, told Barista Magazine that working with coffee “can be really tough for your body”, naming shoulders, wrists and elbows and the repetition of bar and roasting work.
- There are fewer jobs above the bar than behind it. A café has more barista jobs than supervisor or manager jobs, so a step up may mean moving to a larger company or to a roaster.
Questions to ask before you take a coffee job
This checklist is ours, built from what the pay data leaves out:
- What’s the hourly rate, and how are tips shared? Ask what tips have averaged per hour, and whether they’re pooled.
- How many hours are scheduled, and how steady are they? A good rate on 20 unpredictable hours isn’t a living.
- What benefits come with the job, and after how long?
- What does the next job up look like? Ask who holds it now, and how they got it.
- Is training paid, and is there a budget for courses? SCA courses count toward the diplomas above, and some employers run their own training.
- Does anyone here roast, buy coffee or train staff? Those are the people to learn from next.
The Coffee Jobs Podcast (2016)
The podcast was James Hoffmann’s. The 2007 World Barista Champion had also created the Coffee Jobs Board recruitment site, which he sold in 2017. On his own site he says the podcast “was created to dive deeper into the challenges around both hiring and career progression in the coffee industry”, with each episode a single interview. Nine episodes came out between August and October 2016. The table below summarizes the episode notes, with Harmon’s competition record corrected against championship sources.
| Episode | Guest | Role at the time and competition record |
|---|---|---|
| 1, Aug 15 | Colin Harmon | Co-founder and co-owner of 3FE in Dublin; four-time Irish Barista Champion and four-time World Barista Championship finalist |
| 2, Aug 24 | Gwilym Davies | 2009 World Barista Champion; ran a coffee training school in Prague; co-founder of Prufrock Coffee in London |
| 3, Aug 31 | Michael Phillips | World Barista Champion; co-founder of Handsome Coffee in Los Angeles; then Director of Training at Blue Bottle Coffee |
| 4, Sep 8 | Anne Lunell | Swedish Barista Champion and Swedish Brewers Cup Champion; co-founder of Koppi in Helsingborg |
| 5, Sep 15 | Charles Babinski | US Barista Champion; co-founder of G&B Coffee and Go Get Em Tiger in Los Angeles |
| 6, Sep 22 | Laila Willbur | 2014 US Barista Champion; director of coffee at Cherry Street; part of the team behind The Coffeewoman |
| 7, Sep 29 | Mikaela Wallgren and Klaus Thomsen | Both of Coffee Collective in Copenhagen: Thomsen a World Barista Champion and co-founder, Wallgren a Finnish Brewers Cup Champion who placed second in the world that year |
| 8, Oct 6 | Ellie Hudson | Director of Professional Development for the Specialty Coffee Association of America |
| 9, Oct 13 | Jenni Bryant | Of Market Lane in Melbourne |
Davies won the World Barista Championship in 2009, Phillips in 2010 and Thomsen in 2006. Harmon reached its final in 2009, 2010, 2012 and 2013; the episode notes undercount his record, and Sprudge’s retrospective omits the detailed 2010 final. SCA Ireland’s champions list and the organizers’ 2010 results supply the missing year. The Klaus Thomsen and Coffee Collective page tells the episode 7 story in more detail, and Boss Barista and the women-in-coffee movement covers The Coffeewoman.
The audio is hard to find now. When checked on October 18, 2026, the original Blubrry feed returned “410 Gone” and the Apple Podcasts listing returned “not found”. Listen Notes still lists the nine episodes, with a warning that their audio may be broken.
Sources
- US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 national estimates, via the BLS public data API, checked October 18, 2026: series OEUN000000000000035302301, 03, 06–10 and 13 (35-3023 Fast Food and Counter Workers: employment, mean, percentiles, median and annual median); OEUN000000000000035101208 (35-1012 First-Line Supervisors of Food Preparation and Serving Workers, median hourly); OEUN000000000000011905108 (11-9051 Food Service Managers, median hourly); OEUN000000000000051309108 (51-3091 Food and Tobacco Roasting, Baking, and Drying Machine Operators and Tenders, median hourly).
- US Bureau of Labor Statistics, “OEWS Frequently Asked Questions” (the wage definition: what’s included and excluded), checked October 18, 2026: bls.gov
- O*NET OnLine (US Department of Labor), “Baristas” (35-3023.01) and “Food and Tobacco Roasting, Baking, and Drying Machine Operators and Tenders” (51-3091.00), sample job titles, checked October 18, 2026: onetonline.org
- Specialty Coffee Association, “SCA Education” and “SCA Diplomas” pages (skills courses, the four diplomas, Q Grader, Coffee Business Education, trainer count), checked October 18, 2026: sca.coffee
- Specialty Coffee Association, “The Specialty Coffee Association and the Coffee Quality Institute Announce Historic Partnership…,” announced at the Specialty Coffee Expo, April 2025 (the SCA runs an evolved Q Grader program from October 1, 2025): sca.coffee
- Joshua Dusk-Peebles, “10 Minutes With 2016 World Brewers Cup Runner-Up Mikaela Wallgren,” Barista Magazine Online, October 3, 2016: baristamagazine.com
- James Hoffmann, “Work” (the Coffee Jobs Podcast and Coffee Jobs Board entries), checked October 18, 2026: jameshoffmann.co.uk
- Coffee Jobs Podcast episode list and notes, August 15 to October 13, 2016, as listed by Listen Notes and iVoox, checked October 18, 2026: listennotes.com
- Sprudge Staff, “Every World Barista Championship Finalist, Ranked,” Sprudge, October 29, 2021 (finals 2004–2017): sprudge.com
- SCA Ireland, “Barista (IBC),” Past Champions list (Harmon in 2009, 2010, 2012 and 2013), checked October 18, 2026: scaireland.ie
- Speciality Coffee Association of Europe and Specialty Coffee Association of America, “Michael Phillips Is 2010 World Barista Champion,” results release via PR Newswire, June 28, 2010 (the 2010 finalists in order of place, Harmon fourth): prnewswire.com