| Gaggia encourages grass root involvement to improve coffee served in restaurants
Barista contest hailed as a success
The Gaggia barista contest was held at the 2006 Restaurant show for restaurant staff who work on coffee machines. The competition was organised by Gaggia's own caffe academie run by some experts in the field. Jon Skinner has been associated with the catering industry since 1981 of which the last 17 years he has worked as a professional trainer. Simon Robertson was the UK barista champion for three years and both are now judges for the UK barista championship. They were joined by another heavyweight in the industry - Paul Mikle-Jenny from Coffee Community.
Boughton's Coffee House news flash reports:
In what was a very decent contest indeed, Warren Dukas of the Pennyhill Park Hotel, Bagshot took the first prize, followed by Danielle Hadley of Rick Stein's in Cornwall, and third was Justin Elliott of a motorway service area in Cumbria. Justin and Danielle both took part in the UK barista championships this year. Judge and compere Jon Skinner told us that in the qualifying round, only six points divided the three finalists."
According to Gaggia's managing director Raj Beadle, "I have always felt that we need grass root training and enthusiasm and this is one way of encouraging staff who are involved in day to day operations in restaurants to improve their skills in coffee making. Don't we all say that the last thing you taste is what you judge the restaurant by?. You can have the best machine in the world and the most expensive coffee but if you do not train your staff you cannot expect to have a good result in coffee."
UK Barista championships have helped create enthusiasm at the top level. "What we are trying to do is to encourage the grass roots, after all these are the people who are going to make our coffee at the restaurant."
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