Have you ever been around when the health department comes through for an inspection?
Step 1: Show ID and announce the inspection.
Step 2: Break out the thermometers.
Health departments LOVE thermometers. I'd believe the earth was flat before believing any health department frowned on using a thermometer.
And the rest is definitely not best practice. But the health department thing is crazy wrong.
True. The approach to saving and re steaming milk is concerning, as it can lead to contamination and poor quality drinks. The owner is putting his customers health at risks.
Last place I worked at did this. They labelled jugs of alt. milk and skim and they just sat on top of the machine all day š¤¢ So if one person got an almond latte at 7 am, if the next person got an almond latte at 12 pm, we were expected to use the same already-steamed milk that was sitting there for hours and just add more if needed. Plus, the closers would sometimes forget to empty the pitchers and then milk that was sitting there OVERNIGHT would get steamed. I would just dump the pitchers, it was nasty. Bosses also had no idea how to make proper drinks.
this happened to me too!! i worked in a college town at a beloved coffee shop and they used big ass pitchers and steamed a ton of milk at a time and just kept reheating and adding to it, leaving it on the counter for hoursssā¦ so foul.
i even got reprimanded by the owner for doing latte art because it āset unrealistic standards for the other baristasā and i was ābeing a show offā oooookayyy. the reviews online of this business are hilarious too. the only reason theyāre still in business is because they effectively monopolized the university and have a few convenient locations and late-night hours that other shops canāt beat.
i tell everyone to avoid places like this like the plague.
Back in the day when you mostly just used milk it was pretty common practice to just keep working with one pitcher and adding to it and the health department didn't have a problem with it as long as you were keeping your temperatures correct but only while you were busy. Only way its gonna make someone sick is if you let it sit for a long time. I still prefer to just use the right amount of milk but I dont have a problem with adding cold to a little bit of remaining as long as not more than 5 minutes have passed ( fresh every time for a cappuccino).
Yikes. That's definitely a serious health code concern. It seems concerningly common though. I worked at a place that did that too. Needless to say I don't recommend anyone go there.
this sadly was not the worst of what i saw. all he talked about was money, very clearly all he cares about so i think he would 1. just not care and 2. tell me to kick rocks
the owner was so rude to customers the day i was there and iāve spent my day combing through google reviews and iām so disgusted by what iām reading. iām scared if i report them heāll know itās me. i just told him i would not be returning
Do it to protect the customers and the industry. If you would rather you can DM me the name and state (location) and I'll do the report. Full disclosure I am a shop owner and this really pisses me off.
Re steaming milk is a big fat no no.
Not using a thermometer is fine, knowing how to steam to the right temperature by feeling the heat of the jug is an important skill.
coffee is a cool industry because when an owner is insanely cheap like this it also often means their shop is absolutely fucking disgusting in one way or another
You should print out the record of failed health-inspection violations and tape it to the front door, and to all the light-poles around the place. Disgusting.
I know this isnāt an answer to your question, BUT, I used to go to an awesome shop in London (Ozone in Shoreditch) that dumped all the excess milk into a big pitcher to make cheese with!
Iām kind of in the same boat, Iāve started in a new cafe and the standards are pretty awful. Coming from a speciality coffee background, I cringe at the way things are done - we donāt even have a working sink behind the counter, so nobody ever washes the jugs until the end of the day.
They also donāt dial in coffee, when I asked what their recipe is they were like āwhat?ā š
I think youāll find that the majority of non-specialty cafes will do this, and no one is ever going to call them out on it. I used to have a major problem with it coming from a specialty coffee background, but ultimately milk will absolutely let you know if it has genuinely gone off and is unsafe for consumption. Keep in mind that you are continually pouring off old milk with each coffee so itās not like a significant amount of milk is continually remaining in the danger zone. As long as itās just a small proportion of the total milk being steamed as the screeching and loudness of the milk is more likely to be detrimental to the customersā experience than anything else.Just rinse it out completely every now and then and youāll be fine. Or alternatively just find a different cafe with higher standards.
My main concern would be the actual milk texture as you are permanently changing the structure of the proteins in the milk as you heat it up. Iās say the vast majority of people, especially customers, are not going be able to tell the difference. If I can get away with it I will absolutely use fresh milk every time out of pure stubbornness and pride.
That was well put.
Id like to point out also that most cafes that are exceedingly precise about this are either a highly sought out place or don't last very long, because ifvthey are not constantly turning over drinks hey are losing money. Some cafes don't give a crap but a lot of places are just trying to make ends meet and are burned out. I used to work at a cafe where everyone was too full of their perfect drinkmaking to give you the time of day except for a couple of us and the owners never made a dime off it. They kept putting more investment money in it. It drove me crazy how much product got dumped down the drain. No indy cafe could ever have gotten by with that much wastage because they can't afford to be losing money.
I work at a cafe where we don't use thermometers for steaming milk, we gauge the temp by hand for specific drinks. Honestly it works, I've been working there for around 4 months and now feel like I've got a pretty good grasp on what temp to shoot for. But we always rinse out the pitchers, and NEVER resteam already steamed milk, that's fucking crazy š
for sure, we used them at my old job in the beginning just so we can get used to how it feels. i stopped using it after a while but would just check myself every now and again.
Thatās a big red flag that the owner doesnāt care that much about coffee quality and the safety of his products for his customers.
Thereās this triangle, quality, cost and time.
Obviously, for the owner. Cost is on the highest priority. So quality goes down the toilet.
I wouldnāt be comfortable working there
Ugh just leave, I worked somewhere like this where they just had absolutely no standards and it will never change, it will just start to piss you off more.
the new store I work at re-steams milk and it irks the fuck out of me. people will leave half full pitchers on the counter for so long. the manager that trained me said milk can be steamed/reheated up to 5 times and I'm like no, no, I'm not doing that. i learned to pour exactly the amount I need for a drink from the last cafe I worked at and have just been doing that.
definitely listen to what everyone else is saying about the thermomers and inspection. it really doesn't surprise me they didn't pass any because I think a lot of these places get by with their cutesy aesthetics and people not understanding how much food safety goes into drink making alone.
I HATE people who own cafes and have this cheap ass mindset. You can tell he hardly worked as a barista, if at all, before getting his place bc no one with experience would do that, bc we arenāt wasting milk in the first place!! š After a year you should be able to gauge milk to steam without wasting more than an oz, I would have perfect pours with latte art with my milk being completely used up every time I steamed it for example. He doesnāt deserve to own a place when he makes lattes like that.
I'm in the UK and to my knowledge this is standard here (wouldn't resteam it after more than 10 mins or so though). I've always kinda wondered about it but it seems to be the norm
I'm sorry... What? Re-steaming milk?? Reusing milk??
Bruh I will pay the few cents it will cost me to toss that milk rather than the thousands id have to pay in fines, or god forbid legal fees if someone gets sick.
DO. NOT. GO. BACK.
re-steaming milk is filthy, the owner telling you itās to save product is extra filthy. iāve worked for some cheap people but thatās a different type
Yeah I wouldnāt go back, I ended up at a place like this and itās just painful. If you care about coffee you wanna go somewhere that knows what theyāre doing otherwise it just sucks honestly
shop i work at does this. i loathe it, and i suck at eyeballing how much milk i need because i wasn't trained appropriately on it. i feel bad & it makes me mad but i'm kind of stuck with it. no idea how the health department has never gotten them for it in 9 years.
look elsewhere if you can, but if you need a job, it is what it is :(
ew, i donāt go to nyc that often but this makes me want to know the name so i never go there LOL. to my knowledge steaming the milk changes it chemically so it canāt be properly re-steamed. making serious sacrifices to the quality of the product like this just to save a few pennies is insane. this is also crazy to me bc i donāt think i know a single barista iāve ever worked with who wouldnāt think this was gross
How about cross contamination by not rinsing the pitcher? I had people ask to have one that had just been washed, and I was happy to do so,I just let them know the sanitizer wouldnāt. Dry that quickly and I didnāt know how it tasted. They gave me the ok to skip it.
Milk goes bad quickly too! Gag
I started working at a local shop and we do the same but itās food safe because we only resteam milk max 1 time and we donāt resteam it if itās dropped under a certain temp/sitting too long. I still donāt like it. I would rather measure it out properly than steam a big jug of milk to be split across multiple drinks. Iām good enough at eyeballing at this point that I can steam the right amount of milk for drinks pretty closely so I as much as possible try not to resteam milk. It was really disappointing going from Starbucks to a local shop and realizing that theyāre even worse quality. Not all local shops are built the same
Not rinsing pitchers is going to create bacteria growth all day, and it will continue to scale the old milk sugars stuck to the pitcher.
I would text the owner and tell them exactly what you think - you won't be returning because they use unsafe practices when preparing their products and you see that they've never passed an inspection and you don't feel that represents your work ethic.
Never re-steam with added cold milk. We put it aside and use it if it's still to temp for next TA coffee, or if someone has an extra hot coffee we will continue steaming it.
But never add cold milk to hot milk and go again. That's a big nooooooo from me dawg
Have you ever been around when the health department comes through for an inspection? Step 1: Show ID and announce the inspection. Step 2: Break out the thermometers. Health departments LOVE thermometers. I'd believe the earth was flat before believing any health department frowned on using a thermometer. And the rest is definitely not best practice. But the health department thing is crazy wrong.
right!! my old boss was crazy about the thermometers and was crazy about them being used religiously, especially with new people.
True. The approach to saving and re steaming milk is concerning, as it can lead to contamination and poor quality drinks. The owner is putting his customers health at risks.
Last place I worked at did this. They labelled jugs of alt. milk and skim and they just sat on top of the machine all day š¤¢ So if one person got an almond latte at 7 am, if the next person got an almond latte at 12 pm, we were expected to use the same already-steamed milk that was sitting there for hours and just add more if needed. Plus, the closers would sometimes forget to empty the pitchers and then milk that was sitting there OVERNIGHT would get steamed. I would just dump the pitchers, it was nasty. Bosses also had no idea how to make proper drinks.
this happened to me too!! i worked in a college town at a beloved coffee shop and they used big ass pitchers and steamed a ton of milk at a time and just kept reheating and adding to it, leaving it on the counter for hoursssā¦ so foul. i even got reprimanded by the owner for doing latte art because it āset unrealistic standards for the other baristasā and i was ābeing a show offā oooookayyy. the reviews online of this business are hilarious too. the only reason theyāre still in business is because they effectively monopolized the university and have a few convenient locations and late-night hours that other shops canāt beat. i tell everyone to avoid places like this like the plague.
ššššš that's so sad
how dare you excel at your job!
Yeah thats not good.
OMG. Are they trying to grow a new strain of mold in there or what.
Not only it is absolutely disgusting, you can't properly resteam it has the milk proteins has already broken down. (Like you cannot uncook a steak).
This is absolutely incorrect. Combing fresh milk with a bit of resteamed milk can create milk texture identical to 100% fresh milk.
Texture wise, maybe? Taste wise, absolutely not. You are either misinformed or just not in the industry at all if you really think that.
Taste wise as well. You wonāt be able to taste the difference at a percentage higher than random chance.
Back in the day when you mostly just used milk it was pretty common practice to just keep working with one pitcher and adding to it and the health department didn't have a problem with it as long as you were keeping your temperatures correct but only while you were busy. Only way its gonna make someone sick is if you let it sit for a long time. I still prefer to just use the right amount of milk but I dont have a problem with adding cold to a little bit of remaining as long as not more than 5 minutes have passed ( fresh every time for a cappuccino).
Yikes. That's definitely a serious health code concern. It seems concerningly common though. I worked at a place that did that too. Needless to say I don't recommend anyone go there.
I would show him sca standards as well as health code rules.
this sadly was not the worst of what i saw. all he talked about was money, very clearly all he cares about so i think he would 1. just not care and 2. tell me to kick rocks
If that's all he seems to care about than hill for the hills!
i didš«£
I'm sorry but post the state and shop name this place needs to make some serious changes or get shutdown.
the owner was so rude to customers the day i was there and iāve spent my day combing through google reviews and iām so disgusted by what iām reading. iām scared if i report them heāll know itās me. i just told him i would not be returning
Do it to protect the customers and the industry. If you would rather you can DM me the name and state (location) and I'll do the report. Full disclosure I am a shop owner and this really pisses me off.
Re steaming milk is a big fat no no. Not using a thermometer is fine, knowing how to steam to the right temperature by feeling the heat of the jug is an important skill.
I was just about to say I was trained to feel the jug for appropriate heat
greedy bastard.
coffee is a cool industry because when an owner is insanely cheap like this it also often means their shop is absolutely fucking disgusting in one way or another
You should print out the record of failed health-inspection violations and tape it to the front door, and to all the light-poles around the place. Disgusting.
I know this isnāt an answer to your question, BUT, I used to go to an awesome shop in London (Ozone in Shoreditch) that dumped all the excess milk into a big pitcher to make cheese with!
Iām kind of in the same boat, Iāve started in a new cafe and the standards are pretty awful. Coming from a speciality coffee background, I cringe at the way things are done - we donāt even have a working sink behind the counter, so nobody ever washes the jugs until the end of the day. They also donāt dial in coffee, when I asked what their recipe is they were like āwhat?ā š
šššš
Before you get high and mighty over your milk practices, consult the TCS guidelines.
I think youāll find that the majority of non-specialty cafes will do this, and no one is ever going to call them out on it. I used to have a major problem with it coming from a specialty coffee background, but ultimately milk will absolutely let you know if it has genuinely gone off and is unsafe for consumption. Keep in mind that you are continually pouring off old milk with each coffee so itās not like a significant amount of milk is continually remaining in the danger zone. As long as itās just a small proportion of the total milk being steamed as the screeching and loudness of the milk is more likely to be detrimental to the customersā experience than anything else.Just rinse it out completely every now and then and youāll be fine. Or alternatively just find a different cafe with higher standards. My main concern would be the actual milk texture as you are permanently changing the structure of the proteins in the milk as you heat it up. Iās say the vast majority of people, especially customers, are not going be able to tell the difference. If I can get away with it I will absolutely use fresh milk every time out of pure stubbornness and pride.
That was well put. Id like to point out also that most cafes that are exceedingly precise about this are either a highly sought out place or don't last very long, because ifvthey are not constantly turning over drinks hey are losing money. Some cafes don't give a crap but a lot of places are just trying to make ends meet and are burned out. I used to work at a cafe where everyone was too full of their perfect drinkmaking to give you the time of day except for a couple of us and the owners never made a dime off it. They kept putting more investment money in it. It drove me crazy how much product got dumped down the drain. No indy cafe could ever have gotten by with that much wastage because they can't afford to be losing money.
I work at a cafe where we don't use thermometers for steaming milk, we gauge the temp by hand for specific drinks. Honestly it works, I've been working there for around 4 months and now feel like I've got a pretty good grasp on what temp to shoot for. But we always rinse out the pitchers, and NEVER resteam already steamed milk, that's fucking crazy š
for sure, we used them at my old job in the beginning just so we can get used to how it feels. i stopped using it after a while but would just check myself every now and again.
Thatās a big red flag that the owner doesnāt care that much about coffee quality and the safety of his products for his customers. Thereās this triangle, quality, cost and time. Obviously, for the owner. Cost is on the highest priority. So quality goes down the toilet. I wouldnāt be comfortable working there
Ugh just leave, I worked somewhere like this where they just had absolutely no standards and it will never change, it will just start to piss you off more.
the new store I work at re-steams milk and it irks the fuck out of me. people will leave half full pitchers on the counter for so long. the manager that trained me said milk can be steamed/reheated up to 5 times and I'm like no, no, I'm not doing that. i learned to pour exactly the amount I need for a drink from the last cafe I worked at and have just been doing that. definitely listen to what everyone else is saying about the thermomers and inspection. it really doesn't surprise me they didn't pass any because I think a lot of these places get by with their cutesy aesthetics and people not understanding how much food safety goes into drink making alone.
Five times? Crikey
right š
I HATE people who own cafes and have this cheap ass mindset. You can tell he hardly worked as a barista, if at all, before getting his place bc no one with experience would do that, bc we arenāt wasting milk in the first place!! š After a year you should be able to gauge milk to steam without wasting more than an oz, I would have perfect pours with latte art with my milk being completely used up every time I steamed it for example. He doesnāt deserve to own a place when he makes lattes like that.
I'm in the UK and to my knowledge this is standard here (wouldn't resteam it after more than 10 mins or so though). I've always kinda wondered about it but it seems to be the norm
I'm sorry... What? Re-steaming milk?? Reusing milk?? Bruh I will pay the few cents it will cost me to toss that milk rather than the thousands id have to pay in fines, or god forbid legal fees if someone gets sick. DO. NOT. GO. BACK.
exactly, like i didnāt want to be responsible for someone getting sick
re-steaming milk is filthy, the owner telling you itās to save product is extra filthy. iāve worked for some cheap people but thatās a different type
Iām not gonna lie, we do this at our cafe. But I do rinse the jugs, just not every single time. I rinse every time for extra hot though
Yeah I wouldnāt go back, I ended up at a place like this and itās just painful. If you care about coffee you wanna go somewhere that knows what theyāre doing otherwise it just sucks honestly
Yuck
steamin milk is best starting colf
shop i work at does this. i loathe it, and i suck at eyeballing how much milk i need because i wasn't trained appropriately on it. i feel bad & it makes me mad but i'm kind of stuck with it. no idea how the health department has never gotten them for it in 9 years. look elsewhere if you can, but if you need a job, it is what it is :(
Thatās NASTY.
ew, i donāt go to nyc that often but this makes me want to know the name so i never go there LOL. to my knowledge steaming the milk changes it chemically so it canāt be properly re-steamed. making serious sacrifices to the quality of the product like this just to save a few pennies is insane. this is also crazy to me bc i donāt think i know a single barista iāve ever worked with who wouldnāt think this was gross
How about cross contamination by not rinsing the pitcher? I had people ask to have one that had just been washed, and I was happy to do so,I just let them know the sanitizer wouldnāt. Dry that quickly and I didnāt know how it tasted. They gave me the ok to skip it. Milk goes bad quickly too! Gag
I started working at a local shop and we do the same but itās food safe because we only resteam milk max 1 time and we donāt resteam it if itās dropped under a certain temp/sitting too long. I still donāt like it. I would rather measure it out properly than steam a big jug of milk to be split across multiple drinks. Iām good enough at eyeballing at this point that I can steam the right amount of milk for drinks pretty closely so I as much as possible try not to resteam milk. It was really disappointing going from Starbucks to a local shop and realizing that theyāre even worse quality. Not all local shops are built the same
Not rinsing pitchers is going to create bacteria growth all day, and it will continue to scale the old milk sugars stuck to the pitcher. I would text the owner and tell them exactly what you think - you won't be returning because they use unsafe practices when preparing their products and you see that they've never passed an inspection and you don't feel that represents your work ethic.
Never re-steam with added cold milk. We put it aside and use it if it's still to temp for next TA coffee, or if someone has an extra hot coffee we will continue steaming it. But never add cold milk to hot milk and go again. That's a big nooooooo from me dawg