Ashley D’Angelo is a 20-year-old barista at the North Starbucks in Kent Ohio. She works over 22 hours a week while also studying and taking classes for environmental science.
“It’s funny. When I was in high school, I was very like unfocused. And then one summer, like one of my close friends she introduced me to this teacher, his name is Chris Carmen, and he kind of like saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself. Then I spent the summer with him. He runs this like institute and it’s like a science camp about conservation. And I just realized I had such a passion for it. He really changed my life. I am really lucky to have met him.
So going into my junior year of high school, I spent the summer setting water quality and studying erosion techniques and what we can do to stop the water crisis. So I spent my whole junior year studying with him in his environmental science class. And then when I was a senior with independent study, I actually surveyed all the streams here in Kent and did governmental forms for them called QHEI forms which I turned into the state government and got credit for them. During this time my teacher would send me links to stuff like what Starbucks was doing for sustainability and what they are doing with their coffee. So when I had my interview with my boss we talked for hours, like two hours about everything I knew about how we sourced coffee and paid farmers and everything like that.
I applied for the job at Starbucks because I’m studying environmental science. I’m a sustainability major, and Starbucks puts a lot of effort into being a sustainable company between, how they source their coffee, how they serve it and everything in between. I really wanted to work for a company that aligned with my morals and like I couldn’t do that anywhere else.
Me and two other baristas that are passionate about this actually have a coffee club the third Friday of every month at this very place where we talk about sustainability in the store and coffee. Starbucks has also been using something called Cafe Practices that’s about like making sure that the farmers are treated well. And for the farmers to be treated well they have to treat the environment well. SO what they do is provide resources to the farms not only to develop as a farm but also to like to develop the plant’s sustainability. Then it’s all uphill from there. Like everything from the way they ship the beans to how they are roasted."
Then we are interrupted by D’Angelo’s boss getting everyone in the Starbuck’s attention to announce the certification of a new barista, Sarah. We all clap, and D’Angelo yells out a “Go Sarah” cheer from our table.
"She’s the sweetest girl here. She just got certified as a barista. So, like you spend a few months working here and you get tested and if you pass the test you become a certified barista. It’s like a huge deal. The goal is for everybody to be certified. So like for me, for my test. I sat at one of the bars with my manager, and he was like make this drink for me, make this drink for me. And he checks to make sure you are making it right. And then there is a test with six drinks with the goal of getting them all done in a minute and 20 seconds or less. It’s hard. It’s pretty hard. But like the spirit her is always so positive, like, every time I made a mistake it was always laughs and ‘it’s going to be fine.’ It was never like, ‘I can’t believe you did that.’
John my manager actually was meeting with me and asked where I saw myself in this company. That’s when he told me about the Arizona State stuff. If you go to Arizona State University or if you do it online, Starbucks pays for it. So I’m kind of on a hiatus from Kent and doing schooling through Arizona State and getting my pre-recs done which Starbucks will reimburse me for at the end of the semester. So he like helped me find my passions and stuff. And I’m actually on track to go to headquarters like by the time I get my degree finished. I’m hoping to have an entry-level job in New York at Starbucks at one of their chapters. They have this one chapter that is called Partner Outreach which is all about talking to the employee which we call partners. So it’s all about talking to partners and stores and making sure they feel represented in the company. And the other I’m looking at is the sustainability chapter where we’d look at what we could be doing better and how we can lower different levels. Now, I just got promoted to barista trainer a coupe fo months ago and now I’m just waiting and trying to get promoted to shift manager.”
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