Serving Up a Skinny Mocha Latte with Low Whip and High Foam Isn't as Easy As it Sounds

Editor's Note: Today, Patch is debuting the first of four new video series. The first, ‘Fish Out of Water’ features Minnetonka Patch Local Editor Katelynn Metz (me) trying my hand at a new job somewhere in the west metro. New editions of Fish Out of Water will appear every Monday. In this first segment, I try my hand at being a barista at Minnetonka’s beloved neighborhood Caribou located on Highway 101, south of Minnetonka Boulevard.

 Not to brag, but I seem to take to most new jobs pretty well. And in my three-plus decades I’ve done many jobs besides being a journalist, including waitressing, ice-cream scooping, babysitting, teaching nutrition and even answering phones at a nunnery (you’d be surprised how many calls the ladies do get!)

So although nervous, I felt pretty confident when I put on the Caribou apron for this first installment of ‘Fish out of Water.’ But let me tell you, making a latte is far more complicated than it seems—and way more intense than the sleepy-eyed coffee making I do early every morning with my beloved 10-year old Mr. Coffee.

"The basic role of the barista is to make sure that you understand the needs of the customers, that you are making it just the way that they want it, going through whatever combination that they want to get it just perfectly for them,” said Steve London, Caribou Coffee Manager. “And you're doing that all the while that you'll have three or four or five different drinks at the same time happening, and balancing the needs of all those customers. It's kind of fun."

Fun? Fun if you like to be precise as a surgeon, congenial as a beauty queen and fast as a racehorse, all at the same time. 

My only question—next time, can I wear the headset?

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On Tuesdays Patch will run ‘Superstar Next Door’—a video segment highlighting notable athletes and teams in community sports leagues. Wednesdays will feature the ‘Ask Me Anything’ feature where local experts in various arenas of expertise showing us what they do and how they do it. And finally on Thursdays, Patch will debut ‘Order Up!’ which introduces us to the personalities in the kitchen of a local restaurant.