A cover feature with Zainab Al Mousawi of the UAE, hospitality staffing in a new era, summer drinks, all about eugenioides, and much more in the new issue!
BY SARAH ALLEN
BARISTA MAGAZINE
We are so excited to welcome you to the latest edition of Barista Magazine, our February + March 2022 issue. It’s funny how the publication cycle works: By the time an issue is officially released, we are already knee-deep in the next edition. So it’s a pleasure for us at Barista Magazine to see you discover what we worked on for months, put together, and sent to press weeks ago. In reviewing the content for the February + March 2022 issue and what you readers have in store for you, I’m more than a little proud of our team and the incredible contributors who came together to share their writing, illustrations, photography, and expertise with us in an effort to bring you the best, most timely, and most interesting content being produced for the specialty-coffee community today. We hope you enjoy it!
Cover Feature: To the Moon with Zainab Al Mousawi
Want to hear a funny story? We had already found Zainab Al Mousawi and asked her to be on the cover of this issue before the World of Coffee Dubai event in January had been announced! We had already interviewed her and had the photoshoot! So imagine my excitement when, upon learning that the first World of Coffee Dubai would take place in January, I realized I could at long last visit her in person and see To the Moon & Back—her incredible café—for myself.
Zainab did not disappoint: She is super intelligent, very kind, witty, thoughtful, and aspirational. She created her café for the best reason: to make a place she herself would want to hang out. We are thrilled to share her fascinating story with you in the brand new issue of Barista Magazine, our February + March 2022 edition.
Hospitality in a New Era
This is one of the topics of this moment in time (and when I say moment in time, I mean the overall pandemic moment): Hospitality as we used to know it simply doesn’t exist anymore. Some cafés are still struggling to stay open at a time when mask wearing, social distancing, and vaccination cards are rules that are constantly shifting. When so many baristas and other coffee professionals were laid off due to the pandemic, many went on to find new avenues of work. Owners wondered how they would ever build—and properly pay—their staffs again.
Jasmin McGinnis and Nolan Nelson of the coffee company Barista’s Daily Grind in Kearney, Neb., took the topic of hiring and retaining employees and ran with it. They had every reason to put together a compelling and informational article: Barista’s Daily Grind has extraordinarily low turnover, and Jasmin and Nolan explain it all in their article, “Keys to Retaining Employees and Lowering High Employee Turnover,“ in our special section on hospitality in this issue.
Also contributing to the section is J. Marie Carlan, who tackles the topic of employee health with the piece, “In This Together: Staff Health as the Pandemic Persists.“ J. Marie goes deep with ideas and proven methods for what employers can do to take care of and support the staff they have.
All About Eugenioides
When we saw how many of the top baristas in the world were using the ancient species of coffee C. eugenioides at the World Barista Championship in October in Milan, Italy, we predicted many competing baristas would seek it out to use in their performances in 2022 competitions. For this reason, I sought to find a writer who could explore the topic comprehensively and helpfully in an effort to demystify this recently rediscovered species of coffee. We found that in Onyx Coffee Lab’s director of coffee, Dakota Graff, who does a masterful job of discussing eugenioides in this issue.
Endless Summer Drinks
It might still be winter in the Northern Hemisphere, but there’s no better time to start planning a dynamic and exciting—not to mention delicious—summer menu for your cafe. In the article “Endless Summer Drinks,“ we talk with tons of drink innovators about the biggest summer drink trends for 2022, as well as tips from experts about how to craft the perfect size and variation of menu for your own cafe.
One on One: Federico Bolanos
Federico Bolanos of El Salvador has been working in coffee for his whole life, opening celebrated retail cafés and roasters, and working with regional producers. But in elite specialty-coffee circles, he is best known for training champions—World Barista Champions (WBC), that is. In 2021, Colombia’s Diego Campos took his training with Federico and won the WBC, making Federico the only person to have trained three—count ’em three—WBC champs. Besides Diego, Federico worked with Jooyeon Jeon of South Korea (2019 WBC Champ) and Alejandro Mendez of El Salvador (2011 WBC champ). In this “One on One“ feature, Federico shares insights about what makes a winning barista competition performance, his impressions of the current coffee market, and much more.
And there’s much, much more in this issue! Check it out here to read the entire issue for free online, or go here to subscribe to the print magazine. We can’t wait for you to read this issue—and we hope you will enjoy it as much as we have!
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