Ed Tesiny
eptept at gmail.com
Tue Mar 18 10:44:49 CDT 2014
Personally, I think your post is a good start, it shows a passion and knowledge of coffee. I would do all the research I could on the companies you are interested in so you get to the right person. You might want to try getting an internship at one of the places. If you already haven't I would personally check out the places and chat up the staff, ask questions that show you know what you're talking about. I don't think your resume will get you far, it's gonna be the cover letter that opens the door. On Tue, Mar 18, 2014 at 11:32 AM, Arthur Fuller <fuller.artful at gmail.com>wrote: > As regular listers will know, a while back I declared myself Semi-Retired. > But now I want to try something radically new. > > Since I was about 15, I have been a coffee drinker. Since I was about 30, I > slowly matured into a coffee aficionado. I know instantly the difference > between, say, a Guatemalan coffee and a Kenyan -- hell, that's too easy -- > I can discern a Guatemlan from a Salvadorean. And I know some if not most > of the lingo that coffee aficionados employ; it's similar to the vocabulary > of wine lovers. One tiny exception is that in coffee, "acidy" is a good > thing (to most but not all palates). > > Anyway, I have decided to realize an ambition on my Bucket List, to wit, to > learn the art of coffee roasting, and to obtain a job performing this > magic. There are several companies in Toronto that perform this art. I'm > willing to go through the motions of learning to become a barista, but that > at most would be a step toward my real goal. > > I dug out a few versions of my resume, which list in varying degrees of > detail my 30+ years' experience writing software, mostly database-oriented. > None of this experience is in any way related to my new Bucket List item, > to become a coffee roaster. In this field I have no experience other than > the consumption of vast amounts of coffee from numerous nations, and such > knowledge as "espresso is neither a bean nor a drink, but a roast, which > can be performed upon almost any type of bean." > > Even of the back story. My question is, How should I pitch myself to the > one or three companies in Toronto that do their own roasting, and locally? > (In case you wondered, Starbucks is not one of them, since they do their > roasting not even in Canada, and the distance between roasting and selling > is crucial to maintain the highest quality: distance and quality are > inversely proportional. > > There's also an event-type called a Cupping, which to my knowledge none of > the quality-coffee sellers in Toronto practice. This is very similar to a > wine-tasting event; the participants do not swallow the coffees offered but > savour them, rolling the mouthful around the tongue to appreciate the > aspects of the taste (different parts of the tongue detect different > aspects of the taste, and hence the need to roll the mouthful); then the > mouthful is spit out as in wine-tasting. Since, to my knowledge, none of > the three vendors to whom I'm considering applying for a gig, I would want > to present Cuppings as a new marketing opportunity. > > So. How might I present myself as an aficionado with a serious desire to > learn the art of roasting, and lacking any experience in this aspect of the > business? > > Any suggestions shall be gratefully received. > > -- > Arthur > _______________________________________________ > dba-Tech mailing list > dba-Tech at databaseadvisors.com > http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-tech > Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com >