Church Coffee Stand Discussions

I’m starting the process of trying to set up a nice coffee ministry at our church. I learned recently that the church has had two high-end, home Espresso Machines (De’Longhi) sitting in their basement for a few years now. I got pretty excited when I learned about them and asked if I could put together a proposal for what a small church cafe set-up could look like.

I have two years of experience as a barista, so I have a decent amount of relevant day-to-day cafe knowledge. However, it’s hard to know the best way to go about managing this kind of service in a church environment. A couple of potential topics that I’d love some thoughts on:

• Volume:
  
  • I have the Breville Barista Express at home. The time it takes me to make one hot drink is pretty long. Having two machines at church will help, but I still think it would be very slow compared to the industrial machines I’m used to in past cafes.
  • We have two services. We would allow people to get coffee before first service and in between services, but not after.
  • My concern is that the people serving espresso drinks and the people ordering them will be waiting far past the time that the services start.
  • My current idea for avoiding this potential issue:
    • Continue to serve self-serve drip coffee (and increase the quality of that drip coffee to encourage people to take advantage of that service more)
    • Have an official start time for espresso drinks
    • Put a certain number of “tickets” out for people to grab. A person will grab a ticket for themselves and then the FOH barista will take that ticket from them, write down their name, write down their espresso drink order, and hand it to the barista on bar
    • At a certain cut-off time, the available tickets will be taken away (even if there are some left). This means there will be time for both baristas to work on the remaining drinks so that they and the people they’re serving can get into the service on time
• Donations:
  • I’m personally sensitive to the idea of charging people for coffee inside the church. I also think it would rub a lot of people the wrong way, so I’m leaning towards avoiding it
  • However, a suggested donation is something I think would be nice. I’m thinking the donations could go to some local or international groups/missions/people that our church supports.
• Other:
  • Open to any other thoughts from those with experience. Going into this, my top priority is to create a warm, caring environment for newcomers in order to make them feel welcomed and loved. I also want to serve people within our community without stressing out the baristas/volunteers and without keeping people waiting too long (and therefore keeping them from attending the service).

Thank you all for your thoughts!! 🙂