Ever order a drink with espresso and steamed milk from a specialty coffee shop? (Starbucks doesn’t count.)
If it’s a latte, cappuccino, cortado or something similar, you’ll notice a little milk design in your cup. That’s latte art — serious business for baristas. These designs make latte art competitions, or TNTs, as the local coffee community call them, kind of a big deal.
Any “Thursday Night Throwdown” is a pilgrimage. It’s one evening out of the month when this massive group of geeks, myself included, gets to come out from behind our shops’ counters and talk about the one thing we pretty much dedicate our lives to learning about: coffee. The battles could be considered our version of a speakeasy. Not due to any type of prohibition, but because there’s no official invitation.
You can hear it from the parking lot, though — the loud, fast-paced, upbeat music signaling something big. The crowd also lets you know you’re in the right place. Flannel, over-sized shirts and high-top converse. A sea of dark, minimalistic colors in the form of grey and black T-shirts. Beanies and fedoras replace sweat bands; so do silly patterned socks, suspenders and shiny leather loafers, mustached men, and beards rule, too.
Baristas show up, swim through the crowd to find the person with the clipboard and contribute a small fee to have our name on the list.
“You in?” the clipboard holder asks.
We nod, scanning our competition. After attending several competitions, you start to see the same faces. You can then target who to fear or who to respect or who the newbies are.
It's the smallest form of gambling, a pay to play. Depending on which coffee shop is hosting, a throwdown typically costs around $5 to $10 to participate, and winner takes the whole admission pool. Anywhere between 40 and 70 competitors from all over Florida (Jacksonville, Sarasota, Orlando, Lakeland) could help the pot accumulate to as much as $700.
In the food and drink industry, baristas tend to be on the lower end of the pay scale. Compare an average $7 cocktail to an average $3 coffee, and you understand why winning a face-off makes a difference to our income.
Knowing what’s at stake, we're cautious to "like" a competition's digital flyer on Facebook because we enjoy the mystery of a surprise arrival. We're tagged on Instagram by our barista friends, foes and home-base shops with a "see you there" kind of attitude. Across the county, the state, this ritual is like a virtual tag on the playground, with coffee shops playing the roles of little kids — "You're it!"
We also learn to drink SOLO cups of craft beer, donated by a local brewery, with caution. The "friend" who brings us another round could be our greatest competition, and too much alcohol could mess with our performance
Then, just shy of lab coats and protection goggles, things quickly turn technical. Slang breaks out. Coffee lingo, our native tongue, weeds out those who don’t understand. But this isn't intentional. We spend our days educating customers and breaking down our every-day barista terms, so being able speak without the need for translation is liberating.
Participants’ names are put into a bowl and pulled out at random, one by one, then placed in a traditional bracket system. Since it’s luck of the draw, two experienced baristas could compete within the first round, knocking out someone with great skill and weakening the bracket. Other times, two virgin competitors battle it out. It’s common for folks from the same shop to go against each other as well.
Usually, the three judges have experience working in the coffee industry; with trained eyes, they know what to look for. To pull off latte art takes a steady hand, a ton of practice (like, years of practice), patience and an eye for detail to ensure proper milk texture and symmetry.
Whether we are crowned queen bee or king, throwdowns are a solo sport that also represents our shops. Sales and popularity aside, they bring together shops that would otherwise be competition as a community.
Although most of us have already worked a full day for a full week, these nights remind us why we do what we do.
Katie Callihan is a senior studying mass communications and journalism at USF St. Petersburg.
This article appears in Aug 4-11, 2016.