I decided to take a job while going through
grad school.
One of my mentors told me that the local coffee
shop – there was a decent chance I could
get a job and they would work around my hours.
I knew not much about coffee.
I didn’t go to coffee shops; I drank coffee
for the caffeine.
After a while, it just kind of took.
I started getting into different types of
latte art - designs and competitions.
So after I saw I had a knack for it, it was
a lot of fun.
People really enjoyed getting their drinks,
and someone urged me to start an instagram with it.
And so when I started the instagram I saw
people from around the world
posting latte art videos.
I didn’t know it was a big thing on Instagram,
but now I definitely do, working at a shop.
Everyone comes in, you know, they like to
‘gram their drink.
I started to see all these different types
of designs
that I didn’t know were even possible,
and started to see the techniques
that were being used.
And that’s when I really started to develop
my own type of flow or my own style of latte art.
Earlier this year I won the Coffee Fest World
Latte Art Championship Open.
It’s held at Coffee Fest every year, which
is a big coffee festival.
The biggest, actually, in the world.
It’s held three times a year.
This last one was held in Chicago in June.
It’s set up like March Madness, so you have
64 competitors, kind of like the 64 teams,
and you’re seeded 1 through 16 in 4 different
quadrants.
It was a very difficult bracket.
There were a few past champions who were there,
and I had to go against someone from Hong Kong who had won it last year in New York.
So my wife, she got into school at the University
of Memphis for grad school, and since she
was moving here, obviously I tagged along
and that’s how we ended up here in Memphis.
The coffee scene now is a little limited,
but it’s growing and it’s growing pretty quickly.
Memphis is fertile. It’s ready to explode in that area.
I am the lead barista at the Hub Coffee House,
so I’ve been here a couple months now.
It’s all Memphis themed.
We want it to be centered on Memphis to kind
of give back to Memphis.
So we are focusing on trying to get people
to come together to one location where
ideas can be exchanged.
We’re trying really hard to facilitate conversations
between people of all Memphis.
