The excitement of opening a door
Creating Baristas meant imagining a place before it existed. There was excitement, a desire to do things differently and a fairly clear idea of how we wanted it to feel when somebody walked through the door. There were also doubts, difficult decisions and problems no plan could anticipate.
Starting a business is often told from opening day, as if everything begins when the lights come on. The truth is less orderly. A project begins much earlier: in conversations, tests, mistakes, numbers that refuse to add up and people who decide to keep pushing. Excitement does not remove the difficulty; it makes the journey through it worthwhile.
It was never one person's work
Baristas was not built by a single voice. It was made by the people who imagined the project, designed and built the space, found suppliers, tested recipes, made coffee, cooked, cleaned, served tables, chose music, took photographs, developed ideas and stayed close when the course needed correcting.
It is also built by those who come to work each day and those who return as customers. Some contributions are visible; others remain inside the way we do things. Recognising them is not a courtesy—it is an honest telling of the story. The Club exists because many people gave it time, judgement, care and trust.
Trust as a starting point
We want trust to play a leading role. Trust does not mean working without responsibility or avoiding difficult conversations. It means treating people as adults, sharing context, listening to their judgement and giving them room to make decisions and learn from them.
A company needs procedures, goals and clear agreements. But rules should support the work, not replace judgement or ignore real life. When a written rule stops caring for the purpose it was created to serve, we want the courage to review it. Stepping outside unnecessary rigidity is not about bypassing rights, safety or obligations; it is about finding a more respectful solution within them.
Work and life share the same space
Nobody leaves their life at the door when they come to work. We all arrive with different energy, responsibilities, joys, tiredness and moments that require flexibility. A respectful workplace cannot solve everything, but it can see complete people rather than only the function they perform for a few hours.
We look for a reasonable coexistence between the needs of service and those of everyday life. Sometimes balance means organising better; at other times it means speaking early, swapping a shift, asking for help or accepting that not every day is the same. Flexibility only works when it is reciprocal, transparent and compatible with caring for the whole team.
If the company grows, its people should too
For us, growth cannot mean only selling more, opening new lines of work or reaching more people. Growth must create possibilities for those taking part in it: learning a craft, taking on new responsibilities, proposing ideas, improving their conditions and discovering abilities that may not yet have found a place.
We will not always move at the same pace, nor can we promise that every wish will receive an immediate answer. We can commit not to separate the success of the project from the development of its people. If Baristas gains experience, knowledge and opportunity, we want that movement to be shared.
Finding balance is part of the work
We do not have a finished formula. There will be tensions between speed and care, stability and change, individual needs and collective responsibility. Pretending they do not exist will not resolve them. Our philosophy is to name them, listen to one another and find balances that are good enough to keep moving without losing respect.
Baristas is still evolving. We want to keep the excitement of the beginning without romanticising the difficulties; to grow without becoming impersonal; to become more professional without confusing rigidity with seriousness. The measure of that growth will not be only what we build, but how we build it—and whether the people who make it possible can grow with us.