Barista means nothing

A little rant. I’m sick and tired of hospitality advertisers using the word “barista” to seem like their coffee is something special. “Barista made coffee” or something along those lines, seems to be thrown around to imply non-barista made coffee is going to be terrible.

But EVERYONE who makes coffee for the public is a barista… it isn’t a skill set, it’s a job title. From the Merriam-Webster Dictionary:

barista

ba·​ris·​ta | \ bə-ˈrē-stə

Definition of barista

: a person who makes and serves coffee (such as espresso) to the public

Image by Jozef Mikulcik from Pixabay

Sure, to do the job well you have to be skilled, but saying you have a barista to do the job of making your coffee is like saying you’ll have a teacher instructing your children at school, or a doctor check you over if you are sick.

It’s the language aspect (brutalising a meaning) and terrible marketing that irritates, rather than what it means for the coffee – I am not (never have and never will be) a coffee drinker, lol. I can’t even stand the smell.

What marketing campaign is frustrating you at the moment?

15 comments on “Barista means nothing

  1. Any campaign that goes for social-emotional without telling you why to buy their product. Really??

    • Oh gosh, yes, we have one of them at the moment. Love the music and song – beautiful advert, but I have no idea what the product is or why I should buy it!

  2. OH MY GOSH YOU GOT A LIKE BUTTON?!?!?!

    • Haha, yep 🙂 Never had the functionality for it before, but the option for it just appeared so I thought, why not?!

  3. Yeah, that is a bit snooty. But that’s likely the idea. Make it sound better than it is.

    There are a series of commercials here that make me crazy. It’s for food delivery, and the main person in each sees some random object (for example, a beat up old car) as a huge meal (same commercial, he sees the car as sushi). I will never buy from them (not that I get food delivery, but if I did) just because I hate the commercials *that* much.

    • I do that as well, refuse to buy from somewhere because I hate the ad. But it never works the other way. I very rarely ever buy anything because of an ad.

  4. My nephew sang on a car commercial once. I can’t remember the car, the song had no connection with the brand, but hey, that smooth, rich voice…

    • I hope he continued to make money from the ad for as long as it aired! Car ads can be the worst sometimes for the content bearing no relation to what they are trying to sell.

  5. YAY! Cos sometimes I have no comment but I still want to support the post and now I can just do the clicky the button!

  6. I like coffee, I drink half a pot each morning and then I am done. I have had people bring me some of the commercial crap a few times. and it wasn’t for me.

    That has nothing to do with the barista, of whom I have low thoughts. They only use a machine to do what it was designed for and after pumping out thousands of cups of burnt joe, they learned how to make a leaf pattern in the foam; whoopee.

    I once read an article about how hard their job is, they have to remember six, or seven, different mixes of coffee and milk foam, I can’t even remember how many, it impressed me so.

    • I know there must be some who are better than others at making coffee because they have a world championship barista competition!

  7. I’m a tea drinker, but I do love the smell of coffee 😉
    On the occasion I watch the national news in the evening, I am taken aback by the many advertisements for prescription drugs. The people look so happy and healthy, while the voice over explains all the many potential, and horrible, side effects. I have nothing against meds, as many of them are necessary and life-saving. I just find the ads to be jarring.

    • You have advertisements for prescription drugs? We don’t have that – don’t think it is allowed. There are ads for over-the-counter medications like paracetomol or anti-histamine, but that’s all. If you need a prescription, it isn’t advertised.

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