Barista CV Examples & Writing Guide

This sample is for a barista with about five years in coffee: a drive-thru coffee shop first, then a speciality roaster's café where she became a shift lead. The name and employers are made up. Copy the layout and replace the numbers, equipment and hours with your own.

Café managers read barista CVs in about 20 seconds, often between rushes on a phone. They are hiring to fill specific shifts and to stop retraining. Four things decide the interview.

• Availability. Can you open at 6 a.m.? Weekends? Both? Write it plainly in your personal statement or under your contact line. Opening availability is the single most common reason a barista gets called back.
• Speed under pressure. Drinks per hour, cars per shift, window time, transactions per shift. Any number that shows you have worked a real rush.
• Accuracy and food safety. Remakes, order accuracy on the till or app, a current food hygiene certificate, allergen awareness. One wrong milk in a latte is a customer complaint or a hospital visit.
• Whether you will stay. Cafés lose half their staff a year. A stay of 12 months or more anywhere counts in your favour; say it if you have it.

“Tell me you can open, tell me you have a food hygiene certificate, and show me one number from your last café, drinks an hour or cars a shift. Then I want to see you steam milk. Everything else on the CV is a tiebreaker.”

Write one bullet per thing you actually did on shift, and put a number in it. Below are bullets by station. Change the numbers to yours; a smaller true number beats a bigger vague one every time.

List 8 to 12 skills. Put equipment and drink skills first, then the till and food safety, then people skills. A manager reads the first four and skims the rest.

Coffee and equipment:

• Espresso: dialling in (dose, yield, time), tamping, shot consistency across a rush
• Milk steaming for dairy and plant milks; latte art if you can pour it (say which patterns)
• Machines and grinders you have used: La Marzocco, Nuova Simonelli, Victoria Arduino, Sanremo, Mazzer, Mahlkönig; bean-to-cup machines at chains count too, name them
• Brew methods: batch brew, pour-over (V60, Chemex, Kalita), cold brew, nitro, cafetière, tea and matcha

Till, food and safety:

• EPOS systems: Square, Lightspeed, Zettle, EPOS Now, chain-specific tills; mobile order and delivery app tablets
• Cash handling, tips and tronc, end-of-day cashing up
• Level 2 Food Hygiene, the 14 allergens and PPDS labels, temperature checks, FIFO stock rotation, hygiene inspections
• Opening and closing checklists, par sheets, receiving deliveries

People skills (write them as things you did, not adjectives):

• Working a rush with a queue out the door and staying accurate
• Remembering regulars' orders and names
• Handling a wrong drink or a refund without a manager
• Suggestive selling (add-ons, pastries, retail beans)

A personal statement looks back at what you have done; a career objective says what you want. Use an objective only for your first coffee job. Either way, three lines: your experience or background, one or two numbers, and your availability.

Most cafés and every big chain hire baristas with no coffee experience and train them in one to two weeks. What they cannot train is showing up for the early open, staying calm in a queue and being nice to the 200th customer. Your CV needs to prove those three things from whatever you have done.

1. 1Put "Barista" (or the advert's exact title) under your name so the manager knows what you are applying for.
2. 2Write a two-line career objective that states your availability first: which mornings you can open, which weekends, how many hours a week.
3. 3Get a Level 2 Food Hygiene and Safety certificate before you apply. It is not a legal requirement for every job, but most cafés ask for it; online courses cost roughly £10–£25 and take a few hours, and it moves you ahead of other first-timers.
4. 4Pull customer-facing tasks out of anything you have done: retail tills, fast food, tuck shops, school events, babysitting with money handling, volunteering. Give each a number (customers per shift, cash handled, hours per week).
5. 5Add a short skills list: cash handling, a till if you have used one, cleaning and closing routines, memorising a menu, a second language, and any coffee you make at home (moka pot, pour-over, espresso machine) if you can talk about it.
6. 6Keep it to one page, PDF, plain layout, and hand a printed copy in at small cafés during the 2–4 p.m. lull; ask for the shift lead or manager.

Coffee itself has no licence. What matters legally is food safety: UK food law requires food businesses to make sure staff who handle food are supervised and instructed or trained in food hygiene to suit their work. No particular certificate is required by law, but most cafés expect a Level 2 Food Hygiene and Safety certificate, plus allergen awareness covering the 14 allergens and PPDS labelling under Natasha's Law. If the café sells alcohol, every sale must be authorised by a personal licence holder.

• Level 2 Food Hygiene: expected almost everywhere. List the level, the provider or awarding body and the year; many employers ask for a refresher every three years. If you do not have one yet, write "Level 2 Food Hygiene in progress" and finish it before the interview.
• Level 3 Supervising Food Safety (if you have run shifts or a café) and allergen training: both show a manager you can be trusted with the food hygiene rating.
• Specialty Coffee Association (SCA) Coffee Skills Program: Barista Skills Foundation, Intermediate or Professional. Not required anywhere, but speciality shops recognise it. Only list a level you have actually completed with a certificate.
• A personal licence (Award for Personal Licence Holders) if you supervise alcohol sales, and Challenge 25 training if the café serves alcohol.
• Chain training completions (for example a chain's own barista or coffee master programme) are worth one line, by the name on your certificate.

• One page. Nobody needs two pages to describe coffee jobs, even after ten years.
• Order: header with target title and availability, personal statement or career objective, skills, experience, certificates, education. If you are new, put certificates and education above experience.
• Plain single-column layout like the cvplex ats-classic template. Chain applications go through an applicant tracking system; small cafés print it in black and white. No photo, no date of birth.
• Dates by month and year. Seasonal and short jobs are normal in cafés; a line like "summer 2025, seasonal" reads better than a gap.
• Name the file Firstname-Lastname-Barista-CV.pdf. Send PDF unless the application asks for Word.
• For a big chain, use the exact title from the advert ("Barista", "Shift Supervisor", "Team Member") and the words in the advert: customer service, order accuracy, food safety, cash handling, availability, teamwork.

Words to mirror from the advert when they are true for you: espresso, latte art, milk steaming, dialling in, pour-over, cold brew, EPOS, till, cash handling, order accuracy, drive-thru, Level 2 Food Hygiene, food safety, allergens, opening, closing, weekend availability, customer service, stock, training, shift lead.