Coffee handling practices are so bad

As someone who loves a good cup of coffee at a cafe, hygienic handling is extremely important to me. Recently I oversaw a few baristas with really bad hygiene practices in different places and am honestly shocked. I made sure to message them anonymously to hopefully make them consider an improvement in training their baristas better. After some research, I now know that this is basic hygiene that should be taught properly at their training. But I just wanted to let you know about these things in case you’re not aware… It’s things like touching the inside of cups/glasses with their bare hands, which transfers all the germs from their hands to the cup and therefore to the drink. This spreads all kinds of horrible stuff. This article explains it well: https://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2013/12/04/top-this-the-coffee-shop-practice-thatll-really-bug-you/ Also, there are videos online that teach how to handle cups properly and reinforces that this is crucial: https://youtu.be/xE-s0cjYn4c?si=-1-PbwaLjy0NLO2A Clearly this should be common sense, yet for many, it is not. I will be making sure that whenever I see this happen at a cafe, that I report this right away, and I encourage you to as well. We should expect hygienically prepared food and drink.

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When I worked in a cafe making drinks (I wasn’t classed as barista as wasn’t trained) my hands were washed prior to making drinks as if I were making food and there’s no need for baristas to touch the inside of cups or glasses with their bare hands so the fact you’ve seen this makes me wonder what on earth they were thinking ?? I do agree a lot of cafes need to train more in basic hygiene even for those who aren’t preparing the food

@Eli they were just picking up the cups from the top of the coffee machine. I just don’t understand why they cannot just pick them up by the handle, that’s what it is for… I assume it feels more “stable” or comfortable to them somehow to pick them up from the inside of the cups though. Seeing this multiple times now made me develop anxiety about going for coffee and I am really put off now. A shame because I find it such a treat usually.

Oh I see , the cafe I worked at stored the cups upside down so putting hands inside cups wasn’t an option , I just assumed all cafes stored their cups upside down

@Eli oh that’s a great point! I haven’t paid too much attention to this previously. The places I mentioned definitely had them right side up, but I would love to find a cafe that has them upside down and see how they handle their cups. There might be another issue though… how the cups end up on the machine. Who knows who cleans them and how they handle them after they are clean and stacked on top of the machine. 😅

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