The barista-centric organization dedicated to supporting the barista community has some new initiatives in the works.
BY VASILEIA FANARIOTI
SENIOR ONLINE CONTRIBUTOR
Photos courtesy of I’M NOT A BARISTA
I’M NOT A BARISTA is an international platform that celebrates coffee culture and the people behind every cup. The organization shares baristas’ stories, builds community connections, and provides financial support to coffee professionals, among other things.
Since I’M NOT A BARISTA’s founding in 2019, the team has launched several social media campaigns, a podcast, and the Brewing Guide Card Deck project, with the aim to celebrate, acknowledge, and appreciate the craftsmanship of baristas around the world. Today, a year after the launch of the Brewing Guide, the team just released their second project: MOMENTEM.
Innovation, Functionality, Community
MOMENTEM is the first-ever manual grinder that features two burr sets for multi-step coffee grinding in an effort to streamline the hand-grinding experience. The first set serves as a pre-breaker, crushing beans into coarse grounds with more surface area. The second conical burr then receives the coarse grounds at a slower and more even feeding rate, reducing resistance, and allowing the grounds to travel through the burrs more quickly.
Each burr set is adjustable with two outer rings, allowing for a range of grind sizes. The titanium coating ensures durability and long-term performance. The ergonomic design makes it easy and comfortable to use, and it’s built to work with various brewing methods.
Micky Wang, founder of I’M NOT A BARISTA, was inspired by other coffee experts to create a product that would make regrinding coffee easier, and is the first to offer a hand grinder with two burr sets.
”I noticed that a lot of people were giving positive feedback about re-grinding coffee, which made me think that we should create a product that can do this easily,” Micky says. ”Our hope is to continue growing the MOMENTEM project so that it becomes a benchmark project for I’M NOT A BARISTA. This would enable us to become more sustainable and continue doing the work we started in 2020. We would be able to pay our interns, support our volunteers, and create even more meaningful and valuable coffee-related projects.”
The Power of Giving Back
Since its launch, I’M NOT A BARISTA team has worked tirelessly and consistently on other initiatives as well. In the past few months, the Coffee Wristbands fundraising project—a collaboration with coffee artists with the purpose of giving back to the coffee community—has taken off in a big way with the international barista community.
People around the world have the opportunity to purchase coffee-themed wristbands designed by coffee professionals. If the purchase is made through I’M NOT A BARISTA directly, profits go toward the #tipabarista campaign. This campaign raises money to support coffee professionals through international wire transfers. All other charity partners involved in this campaign are required to donate at least 50% of their profits to coffee-related causes in their local community.
Micky explains how the bracelet project originally took shape: They were in fact initially designed to be a gift to early supporters of the Brewing Guide in 2020. “In 2022, one of our members was attending World of Coffee in Milan. This member had the idea to bring some of the wristbands to give to people they met,” Micky says. “We thought it was such a great idea, so we decided to make a more meaningful impact by turning it into a charity project.“
All wristbands are made of stretchable, comfortable elastic fabric, are durable, and feature original designs inspired by coffee.
The I’M NOT A BARISTA team is always looking for new ways to give back to the coffee community. If you are interested in finding out more about their current projects or want to get involved, you can visit their website or follow them on social media. And if you want to find out more about how the give-back effort works, just check out the transparency of information explained about the donation progress on their website. MOMENTEM is also currently live on Indiegogo, with early bird pricing available for a short time.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Vasileia Fanarioti (she/her) is a senior online correspondent for Barista Magazine, and a freelance copywriter and editor with a primary focus on the coffee niche. She has also been a volunteer copywriter for the I’M NOT A BARISTA NPO, providing content to help educate people about baristas and their work. You can follow her adventures at thewanderingbean.net.
