Your Coffee Spiritual Guide.

Barista Friend is a mobile coffee training service based in Austin, TX. We’re firm believers that making coffee should be super easy and super fun — sometimes you just need a friendly barista friend to come over one afternoon and show ya the ropes!

Miranda Haney learned how to make coffee like most baristas - rushed, on-shift, and from a passionate coworker. Fast forward almost a decade, and she’s become totally obsessed with the art, science, and craft of specialty coffee.

She’s an Authorized SCA Trainer in the Brewing and Barista Skills modules, a freelance writer for Fresh Cup magazine, a United States Barista Championships competitor, and most recently ran the training program at Greater Goods Coffee. Miranda founded Barista Friend in October 2023 to help the world be more present, have more fun, and learn how to appreciate the value in a good cup of coffee.

  • "Miranda is such a good teacher! This is the second class I've taken with her, and she's invested in everyone improving and getting the individualized attention needed to progress in their latte art skills."

    — Swati S., Public Latte Art Class

  • "Everyone had such a positive experience, and it’s so easy to see her passion for coffee which got me really excited! Her approach is very didactic and got us thinking about the variables involved in extraction."

    — Gaby C., In-Home Espresso Tasting

  • "We had the BEST time with Miranda. Even though not everyone on our team is an avid coffee drinker, the entire group loved the experience and came away with a deeper appreciation for what it takes to make a good cup of coffee. If you are looking for a low-stress team builder, we couldn't recommend this more!"

    — Evan H., Corporate Team Building

THE LONG STORY

When I first started in coffee, I didn’t know it could be a career. I think I would’ve really benefitted from somebody telling me their whole journey, so that’s what I’ll do for you now.

My coffee journey started around 2009, in a Barnes and Noble Starbucks in Bel Air, Maryland. I was a 16-year-old regular customer with dyed black hair and zebra-printed skinny jeans, chugging a Java Chip frappuccino between the end of the school day and the start of drama company rehearsal. One day, I’ll either be famous, I dreamed, or work in a Starbucks.

I submitted many applications to the Green Mermaid over the years, but my first coffee job didn’t come until college, when I got a part-time gig at a family-run bakery in Salisbury. Unfortunately, they went out of business three months later, but fortunately, there were two other coffee shops in town.

Anyone who was anyone on Maryland’s eastern shore knew Rise Up Coffee was the coolest place to work, but looking at the baristas, with their tattoos and their crop tops and their film cameras, I didn’t think I would fit the bill. I did think, however, that I already knew a little latte art and that ought to be enough to get my foot in the door.

By the grace of the coffee gods, I got the job at Rise Up and then some. I worked there for three years as a barista, assistant manager, and unofficial barista trainer, helping to open a couple of cafes, and even planning the first-ever Delmarva latte art throwdown. When I graduated from journalism school in 2017, I got a “real job” in marketing, the whole time still working weekends at Rise Up until I eventually quit the office job to return to the bar full-time.

To me, Rise Up was never just another job. Coffee gifted me confidence in myself, a place to meet and share ideas, and a handful of lifelong friendships. Even so, Rise Up wasn’t immune to the common challenges of many small coffee companies. There was a thin and ever-shrinking veil between the customers and the baristas, celebrities in a town just shy of 5,000. It often felt chaotic and nepotistic. There weren’t a lot of opportunities for growth.

So, in 2018, I took fate into my own hands and bought a plane ticket to Colombia for a DIY origin trip. I googled “coffee farms in Colombia” and found two women in Valle del Cauca named Mary and Gladys who had a small finca outside Calí where they accommodated travelers in exchange for farm work.

I spent two weeks with them, picking cherries and learning about growing, harvesting, and processing coffee, but also about myself and my place and responsibility in the coffee supply chain. It felt so much bigger than I’d ever imagined, and I was in love with all of it.

After Colombia, everything felt sort of different. Rise Up started to lose its luster; my college boyfriend and I were growing apart. I picked up a running habit, started writing songs, and played covers a couple of nights a week for the beach tourists. I knew I was outgrowing my surroundings, but I couldn’t see clearly what was next. So, I took a jump and did some Google searching and ended up in one of America’s Most Liveable Cities in 2019: Austin, Texas.

From the article, it sounded like a promised land of music, coffee, and easy winters. So, my relationship ended, I quit my job, packed my Honda Civic, and headed west.

I applied to three coffee jobs in Austin, but Greater Goods Coffee took them all by a landslide. On the surface, everything about that place seemed too good to be true: a woman-owned roasting company with an architectural monument as a cafe AND a built-in training lab in one of the coolest neighborhoods in town? And they were hiring baristas?! For $14 an hour???!!!

Much to my Eastern Shore surprise, Greater Goods baristas weighed their shots. There wasn’t a blender in sight; they wore Hedley & Bennett aprons, measured handmade syrups in grams, and had several different sizes of for-here ceramics. Espresso was plated with sparkling to be imbibed before stirring the crema five times front-to-back. It dripped lusciously and evenly out the portafilter spouts of a Victoria Arduino Black Eagle, the same machine used at the U.S. Barista Championships, a thing I’d only heard of once before in the Barista documentary.

After one long month on the register, the typical trial period for third-wave cafes, I was invited to the lab for day one of bar training. The barista trainer was a soft-spoken and intelligent tall boy, with a close-shaven beard, pierced ears, and a slight hunch. He slowly and meticulously explained extraction, but I had no idea what he was talking about. He was well-meaning and kind and all, but I just wanted to play barista and pour latte art.

Luckily, my Taurus sun won’t let me back down from a challenge, especially not a sensory one. I was so determined to develop my palate. I wanted to taste what everyone else was tasting, so I dialed in alongside the more experienced baristas and meditated and drilled the Le Nez kits during downtime. When I wasn’t working or putting my band together, I went out for espressos and single-origin pour-overs with my new coworkers to talk about flavor notes, extraction, and sourcing philosophy.

Then, about three months into my new job, I competed in the U.S. Barista Championship Preliminaries. To my complete surprise, I got sixth, which was the last place to guarantee a spot in the qualifiers. I went to Nashville, placed again, and then competed at the national level in Costa Mesa, California, in February 2020, where a malfunction with a whipped cream canister knocked me out in the first round (IYKYK).

After the competition, I returned to cafe life feeling inspired, invigorated, and ready for more responsibilities. And then… Well, we all know what happened in March 2020.

When faced with chaos and unpredictability, I chose to stay busy. I took on several new responsibilities at Greater Goods. I used my journalism degree to write blog posts, my decent eye to take photos for Instagram, and my passion for small businesses to do literally whatever else needed to be done to keep Greater Goods alive and well. It felt like boot camp for running my own coffee business someday.

One of my projects was a Brew Along series on Instagram Live. People seemed to like it, and it soon evolved into guided virtual tastings with customers who then became tech companies with remote workers across the U.S. This new concept turned into a passion project for me, one that would become the foundation of Barista Friend a couple of years later.

In the last three years, lots of exciting things have happened. Some highlights: the Barista League Online in October 2020, becoming an Authorized SCA Trainer in Brewing and Barista Skills, judging the 2022 U.S. Barista Competition, teaching at Expo, writing coffee articles, and collaborating with cool coffee brands like Oatly and La Marzocco. I also spent time playing shows with my band, Other Vessels, emcee-ing latte art throwdowns with the Austin Coffee Collective and in 2021, founded the Austin Coffee Run Club. I feel very lucky to enjoy this little life that I have.

In August 2023, Greater Goods sold its cafe locations to focus on roasting coffee in Dripping Springs. I decided to step away to figure out what I wanted to do next, but this coffee class business idea just wouldn’t go away.

So here we are today!