Mise en Place
The Organisation of Your Working Environment
Mise en place, a French culinary term, translates as ‘putting in place’. It is widely used in commercial kitchens to refer to the best-practice in organisation of tools and ingredients. For us baristas, this can be less challenging than it is for chefs because we deal with vastly fewer items. That said, the throughput of customers is usually far higher on coffee bars than for commercial kitchens, so it is just as critical for us to have a functional mis en place.
The design of your bar will restrict what you can do in this matter, as will the preferences of your colleagues. Unless your cafe is staffed in a way in which the same person works in the same role every day, then the bar layout needs to be mutually pleasing for all the barista staff.
In this video, Matt walks you through how Barista Hustle prefers to lay out our bar, firstly for dosing and tamping and then for milk preparation.
Barista Hustle’s Mise en Place (miz ɑ̃ plas)
Here are some essentials that we always make sure of:
Beans
- Store enough bags of coffee in or near the bar area for a whole shift. Don’t store the beans next to any equipment that gets hot.
- Keep the grinder hopper(s) at least 50% full. A lack of beans will stop them from feeding constantly into the grinder.
- Try to avoid touching the beans with your fingers in front of the customers.
Milk
- Some cafes use individual milk bottles and others have milk delivery machines that pump milk out of boxes. Either system needs the spare containers to be within easy reach of the barista.
- Milk bottles can be prepared for use with safety tags removed. Make sure you prepare only enough for one day’s use.