Dale Harris has an unflattering assessment of his own performance at work, describing himself as “the worst employee in the business.” Most mornings begin with a gym class and a 25-mile commute that can take 90 minutes, so that he arrives already feeling behind. After a brief meeting with his team, he spends the day switching between suppliers, payroll, marketing and unfinished jobs.
“I'm like the least focused member of staff,” he says. “Which also means I never finish anything. I would hate to work with me.”
The 2017 World Barista Champion now runs Birmingham-based Ithaka, a coffee roastery and café. On the day we speak, the shop is waiting for a delivery and almost out of coffee.
“Our success,” he says, “is getting in the way of our success.”
A championship rewards one extraordinary performance. At Ithaka, Harris needs his team to deliver quality every day, whether or not he is there.
The champion starts again
Although he does less of it than he’d like to, Harris still enjoys making coffee, though he doesn't romanticise life behind the counter.
“You have to be incredibly empathetic,” he says. “You have to be interested in every conversation.” Doing that all day can be draining.
Nor does his world title count for much with customers. Harris reckons 90% of first-time visitors have no idea who he is. “You're judged on what you do today, not on what you did yesterday,” he says. “No one's going to come in just because I used to be something.”
In fact, he wants his team to deliver the same experience whether he’s there or not, he says. The physical skills of making coffee are relatively easy to teach, but maintaining care and consistency is harder.
“It is very difficult to maintain the attention to detail and the true focus on delivering quality every time,” he says. And quality goes beyond the cup. Ithaka operates a café, supplies wholesale customers and sells online. Harris thinks about whether someone answers a customer call, whether a package arrives as it should — even whether its label is straight.
Wholesale clients bring their own demands.
“Bespoke solutions are not scalable and they're not easy,” he says. “It's the most expensive thing to provide, but it's what customers really need.”
What quality costs
Good coffee does not guarantee good margins. Harris estimates that even a well-run café might make a margin of only 10% once staff, premises, energy and ingredients are paid for. He watches customer spending, repeat visits and margins, but remains convinced that quality matters — a belief he admits is still being tested.
“There is someone who can do coffee cheaper than I can do it,” he says, “and there will always be somebody else who can do it cheaper than that. That's not a game I want to play.”
That conviction guides decisions at Ithaka. Opportunities to grow come along, but some would stretch the young business beyond what it is ready to deliver. Not Harris. He’s also holding off on outside investment while he works out what the company is worth.
“God, it'd be so much easier with a little more money,” he admits, but he’s “not ready to compromise any of those foundations.” Not for the sake of getting there a little faster. “I'm really proud that we are moving slow, that we're not breaking things, but we are making things right,” he says.
His plans also include the people working alongside him. Harris aims to pay staff at least a living wage, introduce profit-related bonuses and help baristas build careers in production, sourcing or training.
“I want them to be able to grow beyond the bar,” he says. “I want them all to have the choice.”
A champion’s case for automation
Harris is happy to hand repeatable tasks to machines. Ithaka uses an electric roaster to reproduce carefully developed profiles and automated equipment to make espresso. But the barista still has to pay attention.
“The machine is designed to replicate the recipe, but it's only as good as the information you're giving it,” he says. Otherwise, “it'll very quickly serve lots of bad coffee very fast.”
While he’s willing to automate repetitive physical functions, he draws the line at using generative AI for any of the company’s written materials. When junior staff turn to it for product descriptions or stories about coffee growers, he pushes them towards books and their own judgement.
“I want you to read books and I want you to write something,” he tells them. For Harris, automation can handle repetition, but the decisions that give Ithaka its character still need people.
No finish line
Harris is considering a café experience inspired by high-end cocktail bars, where customers are guided through unfamiliar flavours rather than simply handed a drink. Further ahead, he imagines taking Ithaka overseas, perhaps to Asia. Neither is a firm expansion plan, and he does not want every café to feel alike.
“If I go to a café in Manila or I go to a café in Michigan or in Birmingham, I don't want it to all taste the same,” he says. “I want it to have the unique flavours and preferences of those baristas, of those consumers and their culture.”
He’s seen businesses grow before their staff and systems were ready, and he’s aware of the risk. “There's that danger always of wanting to be something that you're not ready to be,” he says.
Harris knows what it takes to win a world championship. Building a business offers no judges, no final round and no definitive moment when the work is complete. His next achievement may be a customer walking into Ithaka, ordering an exceptional coffee and leaving satisfied, all without knowing that a world champion had anything to do with it.
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