If your coffee shop is in the process of hiring a new barista — or multiple new baristas — then your past few weeks of work probably looked something like this:
- You crafted the perfect barista job description, following best practices and taking inspo from key players like Starbucks.
- You posted the job description, attracting tons of highly qualified, value-aligned, and ready-to-learn candidates.
- You narrowed your pool of applicants to the few you’d like to meet and hit “send” on the interview request email(s).
Now it’s time to prep the right interview questions to help you choose the right barista.
Asking the right interview questions is key to determining whether a candidate is a good fit for your coffee shop — especially with maintaining customer experience and integrating into company culture — or whether they’d be a better fit elsewhere.
In this blog, we’ll take you through how to prep questions for a barista interview, including:
- Different question frameworks to try out (with examples)
- Five question types to include (with examples)
- A free, ready-to-use barista interview question template
Any questions?
(Just kidding.)
Let’s go!
3 Question Frameworks for a Barista Interview
As you’re prepping questions for your next barista interview, you might find it helpful to use a question framework.
A question framework informs the type of questions you ask in an interview, helping you stay organized from question prep to interview delivery. And, because a question framework offers such a clear structure in your interview process, it can make answering the questions easier for your candidate, too.
Here are three frameworks to explore as you prep for your next barista interview.
With our ready-to-use interview template, you can start interviewing smarter – not harder.
1 — Behavioral Event Interviewing (BEI) Framework
The BEI Framework helps you evaluate a candidate’s “real-life” experiences, based on the idea that past performance can indicate future performance.
By exploring tangible traits — like specific skills or capabilities — this framework helps ensure the candidate has the specific behavioral skills you want (and need) them to have. Questions within the BEI framework are often very niche, asking for the who/what/when/where/why/how of barista-specific experiences so you can gauge whether the candidate’s competencies match your expectations and requirements.
Common barista interview questions using the BEI Framework include:
- Can you tell me about a time you went above and beyond for a regular?
- Think about the last time a customer got upset about their service. What did you do?
- What’s the most complicated drink you’ve ever made? How did you learn to make it?
- Can you give me an example of a time you messed up an order and how you handled it?
2 — Situational Interviewing (SI) Framework
While the BEI Framework focuses on a barista candidate’s real, past experiences, the SI Framework focuses on a candidate’s ability to respond to different hypotheticals in the future.
The hypothetical situations in the SI framework are helpful for a few reasons. First, they let you test your candidate’s approach to common situations in your coffee shop, regardless of whether they’ve done it before. Second, they allow your candidate to showcase skills and traits that wouldn’t have been evident through behavioral questions (i.e. values, personality, etc.). Third, hypotheticals make for easier comparisons between candidates; since the situation is made up, everyone can answer no matter their experience.
Common barista interview questions using the SI Framework include:
- How would you approach training a new barista on our signature latte art?
- What would you do if a guest asked you a coffee question you didn’t know?
- What would you do if you saw another barista breaking food safety protocol?
- How would you deal with a customer having issues logging in to our mobile app?
3 — Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats (SWOT) Framework
The SWOT Framework focuses on a barista candidate’s self-reported strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (adapted from a strategic planning framework for businesses called a “SWOT analysis”).
Like the other frameworks, questions from each section of “SWOT” can be used to evaluate your candidate’s skills and traits as they pertain to the barista position. However, one of the strengths of the SWOT framework is that it allows you to get creative with what questions you ask and how you ask them. And, by answering those creative questions, your candidate can show off their personality in a new light (plus you get to know them better, too!).
Common barista interview questions using the SWOT Framework include:
- What are your 3 favorite traits/characteristics about yourself and why? (S)
- What’s one area of barista work you think you could improve on? (W)
- What’s something you don’t know how to do but would love to learn? (O)
- What scares you most about starting a new barista position and why? (T)
5 Types of Questions to Ask in a Barista Interview
Now that you’ve got a few new interview frameworks in your back pocket, it’s time to move on to the final step of the interview process (before the actual interviews): prepping the questions.
The “question creation” part of interview prep can seem daunting, especially since you know how important it is to hire the right barista. But, with this list of question types to guide your prep work, your “Things to Ask” list will be done and dusted faster than you can say “You’re hired.”
So, without further ado, here are five types of questions (with examples!) to ask in your next barista interview.
Prep for your next barista interview faster than you can pull a double shot.
Type 1 — Competency-Based Questions
Purpose
To evaluate whether a barista candidate has the specific skills they need to succeed.
Examples
- If you had to pick a barista “superpower,” what would it be and why?
- Can you tell me about a time you worked with your fellow baristas to complete a task?
- Have you ever had to deal with a customer complaint? What did you do to resolve it?
Type 2 — Experience-Based Questions
Purpose
To evaluate a barista candidate’s previous experience and how it applies to this role.
Examples
- How did your last job at [X] prepare you for this barista position?
- What kind of work environment/culture do you most (and least) thrive in?
- Can you tell me about a time when you had to learn a new skill very quickly?
Type 3 — Problem-Solving Questions
Purpose
To evaluate how a barista candidate has handled/would handle difficult situations.
Examples
- How would you handle a guest who was being rude or offensive to other guests?
- Imagine your supervisor asked you to do something unsafe. How would you respond?
- Can you tell me about a time you had to fix someone else’s mistake? What did you do?
Type 4 — Cultural Fit Questions
Purpose
To evaluate whether a barista candidate’s values/personality align with your business’s.
Examples
- Why should we hire you as a barista?
- What are three words your old coworkers/manager would use to describe you?
- Can you tell me about the best manager you’ve ever had? What about the worst?
Type 5 — Motivational Questions
Purpose
To evaluate a barista candidate’s motivations, goals, and plans for their future.
Examples
- Where do you see yourself in 1 year? 5 years? 10 years?
- What’s one thing we could do that would make you love working here?
- Can you tell me about a time you had a great idea? What did you do about it?
Download Craver's Free Barista Interview Question Template
With Craver’s free, ready-to-use barista interview question template, you can prep for your next interview in minutes, not hours. Plus, no more poring over what word to pick or whether you could have phrased something better, ‘cause we’ve done all the question-making for you.
Our free barista interview question template includes everything you need to handle interviews like a pro, from tips on how to prep before the interviews to 10 top-tier questions to ask (plus we included space for notes on each candidate’s answers, too!).
Here’s how it works:
- Download the template for free by clicking any of the buttons in this blog
- Make a copy of the template for each candidate you plan on interviewing
- Ask the template questions during the interview and note your candidate’s answers
- Repeat for every interview, then review each candidate’s filled-in template before making your decision
Yep — it’s that easy.
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