The Rise of the Coffee Consultant: How the Role Became Commonplace

A LinkedIn post catches my eye as I scroll. Someone is recounting a visit to a Capital One Café in Chicago, praising the “amazing matcha” and the warm baristas. I smile, because I recognize that counter, that service rhythm, that warmth.

Chicago was one stop on a long travel schedule I kept for Capital One, a bank that has opened dozens of cafés nationwide. A couple of years ago, I worked as a café consultant for Tradecraft Coffee & Tea, a firm that helps brands build or improve café programs—menu development, equipment selection, on-site barista training. When Capital One started rolling out its cafés, Tradecraft was enlisted to guide the coffee side of the transition.

I was on the original rollout team that began at the 59th Street location in New York City in 2022. Verve, a California roaster, first introduced us to its program before handing training over. From then on, we led barista and café operations training at every Capital One Café, new or existing, while Capital One managed internal onboarding for team members outside the café. After a short break—maternity leave—I returned in May 2023 to help rethink the service model and retrain staff at more than 60 café locations.

The LinkedIn post highlights the café’s calm atmosphere and community feel. I keep reading, quietly proud. It mirrors what I remember most from working with baristas there: teams learning together, the satisfaction of a drink made just right, and a city’s coffee culture gaining confidence and shape.

But as I scan comments from consultants, coaches, and brand strategists, one thought lingers: When did everyone become a coffee consultant?

When Consulting Was a Whisper

Consulting in coffee once felt like a quiet calling—not something you put in your bio. It was a reputation built in back rooms, after long shifts, through word of mouth.

Before consulting became my official work, I managed a coffee shop in Bushwick. In 2020, I was immersed in daily café operations: building systems, training teams, smoothing workflows. In 2022, everything shifted. I moved from managing a single shop to a travel role as a café consultant with Tradecraft. At the same time, my tea business was growing, so I balanced both worlds.

My move into coffee consulting feels representative of the wider industry. A decade ago, the work was less common, and most of us were still grinding behind bars. But as baristas began mentoring others, consulting work arose organically for many.

For coffee consultant and communicator Niki Tolch, coffee has always been personal. Long before she worked behind a bar, coffee meant the comfort and belonging of third places that felt steady and familiar.

She traces that feeling to spaces like Barnes & Noble, which had a Starbucks inside, and says the smell of coffee “lived in me long before I ever worked a bar.” Even after leaving Starbucks, her first job in the industry, coffee stayed with her. It reminded her of family and of “being held inside something familiar.” What kept pulling her back was the promise coffee seemed to hold: “Community. Kinship. A place to belong.”

That pull deepened through craft and science. Niki became fascinated by how technical and creative coffee could be—a curiosity that sharpened when she entered a brewing competition at the start of the pandemic. “I learned a lot. I hit walls. I got frustrated,” she says. “But it cracked something open.”

That curiosity led her into drink creation, teaching, and eventually consulting. As a contract barista trainer, she moved between cafés, helping teams grow. In that work, she noticed a familiar resistance to change, where “good enough passed as excellence.” Consulting became a way to work differently.

As with many other coffee consultants, what began as side projects and small training sessions eventually became Tolch’s main focus. People kept asking for help, and she realized there was value in what she had learned—that she could help other coffee workers see what they were capable of. Coffee professionals who once sought growth within café walls realized the next step was to teach, build, and shape the systems they once worked inside.

Today, Tolch leads with people first, builds systems teams can realistically sustain, and values honesty over comfort. As a Black neurodivergent woman, consulting has also allowed her to show up without masking or shrinking. For Tolch, the work is not about authority. It is about shared knowledge, real growth, and leaving an impact.

The Digital Shift

For many coffee consultants, the pandemic accelerated the shift toward digital teaching and visibility. When cafés shut their doors, consultants began teaching from their kitchens, filming workflows at home, and answering technical questions in comment sections instead of behind the bar.

A new kind of consultant emerged online. Carousel slides broke down workflows. TikTok baristas taught from their living rooms. YouTubers offered deep dives into brew theory. Instagram Q&As moved faster than any café’s morning rush. No flights required—just reach. Coffee brands accelerated this shift by partnering with consultants who were already teaching publicly, including Morgan Eckroth and James Hoffmann.

Coffee consultant and sales representative Kayla London first entered the industry in 2016, expecting it to be temporary—something to do before settling into a career in HR. After a few years away, she realized how much she missed it. “The more experience I gained, the more questions I found I was being asked,” London says. Coffee kept pulling her back, not just for the work itself, but for the way it invited curiosity and conversation.

London grew up in Durham, North Carolina, and learned from industry professionals like Lem Butler, the 2016 U.S. Barista Champion and co-founder of Black & White Coffee Roasters, which gave her early grounding in cupping, latte art, and brewing science. When she later moved to Atlanta, those skills stood out.

London moved from barista work into roasting at Portrait Coffee, deepening her understanding of coffee from production to flavor. She later stepped into leadership as an F&B director and launched a pop-up, Color Cold Brew, where consulting began to take form. “Consulting was an organic progression for me,” London says. “The more I learned, the more I saw it as an opportunity to help others reach their goals.”

Today, London works as a sales representative with La Colombe, which gives her yet another angle on the industry. As she explains, consulting was never about a title. It was about answering questions honestly and helping others move forward with clarity. Rather than marketing consulting outright, London used social media to document her work. Posts from Color Cold Brew and her time as an F&B Director showed how she built systems and solved problems. Along the way, she used social media to document her work, allowing her experience to speak for itself.

Leave a Space Better Than You Found It

In the summer of 2023, right in the thick of the Capital One and Verve transition, I found myself walking the halls of Meta’s New York City offices, calibrating every batch brewer on every floor. Each office kitchen had its own quirks, from shifts in water pressure to temperature swings influenced by AC vents. It wasn’t glamorous work—crouching beside brewers and using a scale to measure each brew—but it was revealing.

That is the quiet side of consulting most people never see, beyond the online presence and polished explanations. The best coffee consultants, whether online or in cafés, are guided by the same instinct and attention to detail, and the imperative to leave a space better than they found it.

Consulting usually emerges after years of experience. It shows up when people have worked bars, opened cafés, trained teams, and solved the same operational problems repeatedly. At a certain point, that knowledge becomes transferable. A consultant’s value is in helping others apply experience to their own environments, not in promoting trends or personal brands. That is why the number of coffee consultants has grown: As the industry has expanded, experience now moves more freely among cafés, companies, and communities.

The next chapter is not just mine. I have been gathering perspectives from people working at different points in the industry, including Eric Grimm of The Coffee Human Resource and Ivana Chan, an e-commerce consultant with a focus on specialty coffee. In the next piece, I will bring their voices together to examine what consulting actually costs, what it gives back, and why so many people continue to choose it.