{"id":432871,"date":"2026-05-05T04:42:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-05T04:42:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/432871\/"},"modified":"2026-05-05T04:42:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T04:42:11","slug":"when-i-said-i-was-a-barista-people-thought-i-worked-in-the-four-courts-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/432871\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018When I said I was a barista, people thought I worked in the Four Courts\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

There was a time in Ireland when coffee<\/a> meant Nescaf\u00e9 Gold Blend couples or sophisticated visitors, while the concept of a cafe culture was something we only saw in the TV show Friends. <\/p>\n

We might have flirted with instant cappuccino sachets, or added syrup to our coffee after J1 summers in the US, but still this dark brew was tasked with just one job \u2013 to wake us up. But when Australia and New Zealand joined the Irish rite-of-passage travel list, more and more of us came back with a newfound love for flat whites, filter brews and the rest. Without getting too involved in the first or second waves, we very quickly found ourselves jumping with both feet into third-wave coffee. <\/p>\n

This third wave refers to the shift in the past couple of decades, focusing on what\u2019s in the cup, sourcing, roasting and terroir. The first wave was in the 19th and 20th centuries, when coffee houses and espresso machines appeared. The second wave was the growth of commercial coffee in the 1970s to 1990s, when cafes became cool places and Starbucks was born. <\/p>\n

The third wave had started to ebb into Ireland around 2007 when Colin Harmon<\/a>, now one of the best-known names in Irish coffee, was getting interested, researching and making connections on Boards.ie and Twitter. On a visit to London, he sought out an Australian and Kiwi-founded cafe called Flat White. \u201cI remember going in and getting a flat white and taking one sip, realising this is what I want to do. It was just so different to anything I\u2019d ever seen before.\u201d <\/p>\n

Harmon is speaking over a perfect flat white in his own place, 3FE<\/a> in Dublin\u2019s IFSC, one of the eight cafes he runs along with a roastery and wholesale business. <\/p>\n

He started his 3FE coffee business in 2009 in lobby of Dublin nightclub Twisted Pepper on Abbey Street. When he first told people he was a barista, \u201cThey thought I worked in the Four Courts\u201d. <\/p>\n

Others were dabbling in speciality coffee, but nobody else had yet stripped it back the way he had, focusing purely on what was in the cup. <\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t really a business plan, he says. \u201cWe did it from a place of poverty and privilege at the same time. I didn\u2019t have to pay any rent at the start. It was just me and a machine. Money wasn\u2019t the objective. So I could use specially graded coffee, single origins, latte art, Chemexes and all that stuff that no-one had fully committed to in Dublin yet.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"ColinColin Harmon at his 3FE Clancy Quay outlet. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw <\/p>\n

He sold 16 coffees on day one. Word spread, people returned. By 2011, he had opened a second 3FE on Grand Canal Street in Dublin 2. In 2013 he sold the Twisted Pepper business to Tom Stafford, who had caught the coffee bug in Melbourne and returned to Dublin excited by what was happening. \u201cBack then, it was seen as an emerging trend,\u201d says Stafford. \u201cA lot of our customers were people who had travelled and were looking for that third-wave, small-cup culture. Before that, coffee was about quantity over quality; what we were doing was the reverse.\u201d <\/p>\n

He rebranded as Vice Coffee and began carving out his own identity. Most cafes used one roaster; he took a multi-roaster approach. \u201cThat was the thing we did differently. We bought different coffees, guest roasters from the UK and all around Europe. As the Irish speciality roasters started getting more serious, we added them.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"TomTom Stafford at Vice Coffee, Dublin. Photograph: Dara Mac D\u00f3naill <\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Harmon had begun roasting his own 3FE coffee, and those beans, along with his approach, started to sell. Specialist Dublin food retailer Fallon & Byrne was the first big customer, followed by cafes such as Roasted Brown and Murphy\u2019s Ice Cream, which opened in Dublin. <\/p>\n

Susie Kealy was the barista at Murphy\u2019s Ice Cream at that stage. Her path there began with a flat white at Vice Coffee \u2013 a Kenyan single origin around 2012, she recalls. \u201cThe beans, roasted by Square Mile, had the unmistakable flavour of blackcurrant. I became obsessed and started researching and learning all I could about coffee. Soon after, I decided to take a year out of college. It led me to that first role in Murphy\u2019s.\u201d <\/p>\n

She immersed herself in the growing community of baristas and roasters, swapping ice cream for espressos at Roasted Brown in Filmbase in Temple Bar, which then became First Draft coffee, where the menu featured a coffee flight on the menu: a trio of tasters of one bean brewed three ways. Everything felt new, fun and experimental. There was a lot to learn, and the baristas were there to teach it. <\/p>\n

Kealy remembers that some customers needed hand-holding. \u201cThe idea that your coffee didn\u2019t need a big splash of milk and several sachets of sugar felt like we were tricking customers.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"SusieSusie Kealy, coffee content creator, at Proper Order coffee shop in Smithfield. Photograph: Alan Betson <\/p>\n

Harmon remembers people loved a spiel with their coffee, \u201cThey wanted to understand it and know about it, which was amazing but insanely exhausting when it was a 12-hour service.\u201d <\/p>\n

Stafford was lucky to inherit a lot of his Vice customers from 3FE, which meant a little less education was required. \u201cThey knew what a flat white or cortado was. Then we learned how to identify whether people wanted information or not. Some people want to know about the processing, the producer and how it was roasted. Some people just want a good coffee.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"RobynRobyn Butler at Low Lane, Kilkenny. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw <\/p>\n

Robyn Butler committed properly to the coffee world around 2014, when, she says, the scene was in full swing. \u201cThere was a lot of energy around it, and people were really excited about working in coffee,\u201d but customer reactions were still sometimes mixed. \u201cPeople weren\u2019t always used to small cup sizes, unusual flavour profiles and smaller menus. Customers tended to either love it or hate it. The coffee community took a much more purist approach at the time, and there was a lot of talk about educating people. It\u2019s funny because that paid off to some extent in that consumers seem to have a lot more knowledge of coffee now.\u201d <\/p>\n

Butler sees that now in her own cafe in Kilkenny, Low Lane, where she aims to serve really high-quality coffee and food. \u201cWe\u2019ve moved away from that desire to influence customers\u2019 preferences to be in line with our own.\u201d <\/p>\n

Kealy has since left customer-facing coffee but stayed in the industry and now works in marketing at Acaia, a company focused on aesthetic and functional coffee tools. <\/p>\n

Spotting these fancy tools and gadgets in the early days became part of the visual clue that coffee-lovers were getting a proper cup. Brew bars were another marker; they started to pop up as dedicated spaces focused on hand-poured methods such as pour-over, V60, Chemex, Aeropress and siphon. <\/p>\n

Stafford calls this the Scandi wave, when \u201csuper light roasts became popular, we had coffee from roasters like Koppi and Coffee Collective. Then a lot of the Irish roasters took influence from that Scandi wave\u201d. It might sound complicated, but it was still a purist approach. Everything was about getting the most from the beans. <\/p>\n

You can get good milk in petrol stations. People forget that about Ireland. The milk is good<\/p>\n

\u2014 \u00a0Colin Harmon<\/p>\n

And thus, Dublin\u2019s speciality coffee circuit grew. Dublin suddenly had Vice and 3FE, Coffee Angel on Pembroke Street, Brother Hubbard, Roasted Brown, The Fumbally. Love Supreme opened in Stoneybatter, then Proper Order in Smithfield. Every opening pushed things a little further. Around Ireland, more places popped up too: Coffee Werk & Press in Galway, Soma in Cork, and Rift in Limerick. Belfast had already been ahead of the game, with Established opening in 2012, then Pocket and Root and Branch. <\/p>\n

Things went up another notch when the World Barista Championship came to Dublin in 2016. \u201cThat had a big impact,\u201d Harmon says. He remembers visiting competitors asking where to source good milk: \u201cI was like, everywhere \u2013 you can get good milk in petrol stations. People forget that about Ireland. The milk is good. The water quality is very good too.\u201d He says Dublin city water is about 100ppm (parts per million), which is how baristas measure water in terms of its Total Dissolved Solids or TDS. Even he admits it\u2019s a complicated science, but all the coffee drinker really needs to know is that Irish milk and Irish water are excellent raw ingredients to pair with well-sourced beans. <\/p>\n

Milk was another big change with the new wave. We\u2019d been used to scorching hot lattes and frothy cappuccinos. The flat white was different; the milk was flatter and silkier. Thermometers in milk jugs became standard, aiming for 55\u201360 degrees, a temperature that lets you taste the coffee. It also perfectly suits latte art, or designs on top of the coffee.<\/p>\n

Speciality coffee was slow to embrace alternative milks at first, because the quality wasn\u2019t there and it affected the latte art. Then oat milk arrived. Stafford was an early adapter in Vice: \u201cI think we were the first in Dublin. One of my baristas, Dave, convinced me after trying it in London.\u201d Oat milk also worked better for latte art, holding foam where other alternative milks had failed. Now, barista-grade milk alternatives are big business. <\/p>\n

Harmon and Stafford both admit they\u2019ve chilled out since their earlier purist days. There was a time when 3FE was known as much for what it refused \u2013 no tea, one cup size only, no decaf, no alt milks. These days, Harmon is more open-minded, even adding matcha: \u201cOver the years, we\u2019ve learned to broaden horizons. Personally, I don\u2019t like matcha or oat milk, but we do both.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"ArtArt house: Robyn Butler at Low Lane, Kilkenny. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw <\/p>\n

Stafford has also shifted over the years, carving out a niche with Vice\u2019s speciality coffee cocktails \u2013 especially Irish coffees that draw tourists. \u201cCoffee shops have a life cycle unless you expand or pivot. We focused on speciality coffee drinks and cocktails, giving us a whole new customer base.\u201d <\/p>\n

Both are impressed by the overall Irish cafe scene, with much growth occurring during the Covid years. Harmon reckons that while those years felt like a bubble, they were really an acceleration. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe saw about 10 years of growth in the industry happen in about three,\u201d he says. Another layer, he adds, is \u201cthat social currency we as Irish people have, wanting to meet people and talk\u201d. Once, those conversations happened in post offices, pubs and churches; these days, coffee shops have become the same type of hub. <\/p>\n

\u201cThose years felt like peak coffee,\u201d Stafford remembers. \u201cPlaces opened everywhere, some have closed since, but it was the biggest demand we\u2019ve seen, even in suburbs and rural towns.\u201d <\/p>\n

Low Lane in Kilkenny, was a Covid baby: when the pandemic hit, Butler realised it was time to leave Dublin and build a life in her hometown with her chef partner, Mark. \u201cIt just made sense to try to build a life for ourselves outside of Dublin.\u201d <\/p>\n

Harmon, a pioneer, hopes to see more local businesses like it thrive: \u201cIt\u2019s really great to see cafes open everywhere. Coffee is for everyone \u2013 it fits in anywhere.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There was a time in Ireland when coffee meant Nescaf\u00e9 Gold Blend couples or sophisticated visitors, while the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":432872,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[13109,615,61,60,12969,43],"class_list":["post-432871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-coffee","tag-dublin","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-kilkenny","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=432871"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432871\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/432872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=432871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=432871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=432871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}