An Interview with Frank Freeman with Hylan Joseph
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Hylan Joseph: Why did you choose coffee as a career?
Frank Freeman: The people! Working at a coffee shop, especially in your early 20s, is magical. Every band comes by to put a flier up, every cool startup is using your Wi-Fi and is very happy to talk about it, every party is getting planned at the tables, every bartender is coming in before their shift to get a coffee and offer you a round if you visit them that night. The cafe is the heartbeat of the community, and I got hooked fast.
HJ: Why did you choose to start as a barista?
FF: Absolutely by accident. In another life I was an EMT and a volunteer Firefighter, on my way to making a full-fledged career out of it. I caught a particularly bad set of calls pretty early on that let me know this was definitely not the path for me. I packed up my house, moved everything back into my parents’ house, and went hitch-hiking across the country and back for a year. I always loved this place, Taft St. Coffee, down in the heart of Montrose in Houston, and spent so much time there I got to know some of the staff and regulars. When I came back, I asked them for a job and it just so happened that there was an opening.
I didn’t know anything about making coffee (I had been drinking mochas for years and I swear I didn’t even know there was chocolate in them, it was that bad), and so I had to ask a lot of questions about everything. Our French press recipe was “put some coffee and some water in the pot, let it sit for a while, and then hand it over”. How much is “some”? I pretty soon exhausted the information available to me and started obsessively emailing anyone I could find to teach me to make coffee. Eventually, I found a couple of fairly early 3rd wavers (early for Houston in 2009, anyway) and never looked back.
HJ: What lessons did you learn as a barista that helped you become a service tech?
FF: When I was a barista, especially in the beginning, we tried to blame the equipment all the time, when really, we just didn’t really know how to dial in espresso, or how to actually use the equipment in front of us. The answer was almost always, “be a better barista”. This translates very nicely into tech work. You think you did it right but it’s still not working? Take it apart and do it again, even more carefully. Tiny mistakes and tiny moments of carelessness can add a lot of time to a call. “Be a better tech” fixes a lot of problems.
Aside from that, tech work is a customer service business just like anything else, and little things like knowing how to clean a bar, and setting the bar back up after a repair can really set you apart as a technician.
HJ: What was your path from barista to service tech?
FF: My second cafe job gave me a pay bump and taught me how to clean out the grinders and that’s where my interest started. I took that skill-set to other jobs, and eventually opened a very short-lived cafe of my own. We bought an older Synesso that had been through the wringer in a high volume shop I had worked in, and it had been sitting for a while and needed some love to get it going again. I had no money to call a tech, so the ever patient Synesso tech support guided me through a multi-day flow restrictor change and I was absolutely hooked.
Years later, I was working two jobs, one at a coffee shop and another making espresso and sometimes shaking cocktails at a bar that was open until midnight or 2am depending on the day, and the hours were miserable, but I liked having two incomes. I was trying to find some kind of computer tech support job or something else I could do from home and there it was, a job for a Mastrena tech. I took what I learned there and did side jobs for my friends that had cafes for a few years until I could take it solo full time.
HJ: What hurdles did you encounter moving into a career as a tech?
FF: For a few years I knew it was what I wanted to do, but there was no way into it. I knew one guy who worked on espresso machines, but he was a solo operator. If I didn’t find that Craig’s List ad I might still be trying to get in.
HJ: What could you have used help with when you first started?
FF: Basic tool skills. I think people just assume you have them, but I spent a lot of time on Youtube learning basic techniques with wrenches, how to select the correct type and size of screwdriver, etc.
HJ: What do you wish someone would've told you when you were first starting out?
FF: At the 2019 CTG Tech Summit in Houston, Marty Roe taught a class in which he said something to the effect of, “You know when you tighten something down, and you give it that last little bit just to make sure? Don’t. Stop doing that.” I wish I could go back and unbreak all the tubes and fittings that got me to that lesson the hard way.
HJ: Name three tools you couldn't do without.
FF:
Ernie Ball Medium Acoustic Guitar Strings - for cleaning out all the tiny orifices in various spots, running through clogged tubes and heat exchangers, poking out steam wand tips and brewer spray heads. Game changer when someone turned me onto these.
10mm socket welded to a screwdriver - for setting that GB5 steam pusher nut (bonus points for a set of jeweler’s/ignition wrenches to set the stem correctly.) Pit Crew Coffee Service makes a pre-fab one of these that is really slick.
Wera ball-end Allen keys. Fantastic set of wrenches, I haven’t lost a hex head since I bought them.
HJ: What advice would you give a person just starting out in this industry?
FF: It’s a really small industry, get to know the people in it. Many times, when you call tech support, you end up talking with the Big Boss, if not the owner of the company. There is so much institutional knowledge held by people that are so willing to share it if you just ask. The shortcut to this is to join the Coffee Technicians Guild, especially if you’re solo. The slack channel access alone has taught me so much and saved me so much heartache on the job, and I get not only the technical knowledge but advice on all things in the industry.
HJ: What’s the weirdest service call you’ve ever had?
FF: There are definitely a lot of characters and personalities in coffee, myself included, but thankfully the work has been mostly straight-forward.