Barista Stories: Ian Kissick of Formative Coffee, London

Meet Ian Kissick, originally from a small town in Northern Ireland called Magherafelt, he is the founder of Formative Coffee in London. Ian’s focus on building exceptional experiences for his guests transcended to the stages of the Irish and UK Barista Championship stages where on both he snatched the golden trophy and became the champion!

During the World Barista Championship in Busan, Ian made the social media headlines by coming back after a small turbulence to the finals like a phoenix! And he took a phenomenal 6th place as one of the only two finalists from Europe. During the same event, he took part and won the World Espresso Championship.

Ian, what is your first memory with coffee? 

I didn’t really drink coffee until I got to university in London, but I remember visiting a friend’s house when I was 16, and their older brother was brewing coffee in a French press. I was fascinated by the precision (to my mind) that was applied – a very specific amount of coffee and water, and exactly 4 minutes of brew time. Even though I didn’t particularly enjoy the result, that began to shape my understanding of coffee, and I think it was my first encounter with real coffee – ie. non-instant coffee.

​​​​​​​What inspired you to pursue a career in the coffee industry, and how did you get started? What did you do before coffee?

In 2011 I moved to university to study Computer Science. Through my years of study, I spent a lot of my study time in some of London’s most prominent cafés at the time – Fernandez and Wells, Prufrock, Workshop, Kaffeine etc. 

After university, I worked in IT in finance for a couple of years. I realised pretty quickly that it wasn’t a line of work I enjoyed, so I spent a fair amount of time away from my desk at a local coffee shop.

As I built relationships with the baristas, their passion for coffee and the quality of what was served gradually transformed my understanding. I moved from consuming coffee as a lifestyle habit to understanding its origin, processing and flavour.

By the time I decided that I wanted to quit my job in IT, I’d decided that I wanted to pursue coffee professionally, with the goal of one day opening a cafe. I began by starting a multi-roaster online coffee subscription – to enable me to network well within the industry, and to help build some startup funds for the cafe.

Once this was up and running, I looked for a barista role with a company which could provide excellent training. I found this with Taylor St Baristas, where I worked for about a year, before finding the site in Victoria for our café.

It was really important to me that I take the time to learn about and understand the coffee industry at a deep level, before opening my own café, and it’s something I always recommend to people looking to switch from a professional setting to running a hospitality business.

Tell us a bit about your place. What different roles do you have?

At the moment, I work in a wide variety of areas inside and outside Formative Coffee.

I work with our cafe’s General Manager who oversees the shop, guiding them to run things smoothly and profitably. On the roastery side of things, I like to be involved in our buying decisions, but also have been leading our packaging redesign, and the next big project will be building out our website, and ensuring we’re maximising our digital presence.

This year, a big focus we’ve had has been on growing our wholesale program. This involves reaching out to potential and existing customers to see where we might find good partners, but also ensuring that we’re able to offer the services our house customers might need, from equipment supply and maintenance to promotional efforts.

The rest of my time at work is largely focused on consultancy, training, and at times, competition.

Which duties & responsibilities do you enjoy the most and bring you the most satisfaction?   

I’ve always found that I am most excited and engaged when I’m developing new systems, concepts and ideas. I try to push myself to go beyond just ‘running the business’, and make small improvements each day, as I find this helps me bring more energy to the rest of my work.

At the end of the day, those 0.1% improvements compound over time to make a big impact on the quality and efficiency of the work that we do. 

What are the current trends in cafes in your region? Are there any trends you promote yourself and would like to see more often in other places?

At Formative, we try to be laser-focused on the guests’ experience. We play with every variable we can to try to make the final cup as delicious as possible, and it’s my hope that we can do that in as welcoming a way as possible.

Part of this means that we don’t often talk about the nerdery of coffee, as, in my view, this is often just a distraction.

Across the British Isles, I’ve seen more and more cafes discussing freeze-distilled milk, custom water specifications, and novel espresso brewing techniques. All of these are things we’ve played with for years in the cafe, but I don’t feel that we should be preaching about these things to our guests, without first demonstrating that we can serve great coffee. 

Instead, we look to create experiences which drive a natural conversation, where customers want to discover why their beverage tastes the way it does, instead of ordering something “special” and being let down by the cup.

You have some amazing achievements in championships. Can you tell us more about them?

2024 was my 6th year in Competition! I’ve mostly competed in the Barista Championship, winning in the UK last year, and Ireland this year, and taking 6th place in the World Barista Championship a couple of months ago in Busan, South Korea. The Barista Championship is by far my favourite competition. 

I’d competed for 3 consecutive years and failed to make the semi-finals in the UK even once. I had actually decided to give up, until, in 2022, I booked a ticket to compete the night before the heat in London. That year I eventually managed to take 3rd place, and this was a real boost to my confidence and my understanding of the competition.

In the last couple of years, we’ve built a really nice team, and approach, that has allowed us to win consecutive national championships, but it took a lot of hard work from the whole team to achieve these results.

Other SCA competitions I’ve competed in are Brewers Cup and Cup Tasters! Both are fantastic ways to gain a more accessible route into the competition scene.

I’m also the current World Espresso Champion! The World Espresso Championship is a knockout competition, where national barista champions, or national espresso champions, compete head to head using the same coffee, brewing 5 espressos which are evaluated blindly by a team of judges!

How did it feel to first get to know you’re not in the Semi-Finals of WBC and then actually get a chance to take part in them? It must have been a rollercoaster of emotions.

Immediately after the announcement, I was a little bit disappointed that my name wasn’t called out for the semi-finals, and I wondered where I’d gone wrong. But through the rest of the evening, I reminded myself of the reason I competed in the first place – to share my beliefs about coffee and to meet others who share my passion for this industry, by the next morning, before we headed back to the competition, I was satisfied with what we’d managed to do in Busan.

That morning I attended the debriefing session with some of my judges, and I skimmed through my scoresheets, and was really happy with my scores. My feeling was that, if I’d scored that well, my fellow competitors who’d made it to the semi-finals had done a great job, and, to be honest, I left the debrief with a real feeling of satisfaction with how we’d performed as a team.

After a few hours of exploring the expo, it became clear that there’d been a clerical error, and I was offered the opportunity to compete the next morning, before the finals. At this point, we were filled with excitement and disbelief at the opportunity, but we did everything we could to prepare well for the next morning.

That final day, where we competed first thing in the morning, and then immediately heard the announcement that we’d made it to finals was a long, but joyful day, that I’ll remember for the rest of my life. It left me exhausted, but deeply content with all of our efforts in competition this year.

Since then I’ve been asked so many times about how we coped with the emotions of the situation. Reflecting on it now, I think that what enabled us to keep a level head was an appreciation that each competitor is not just bringing an exceptional coffee and a well-thought-out theme to the table. Like us, they’re using their 15 minutes on the world stage to share their perspective on coffee, and hoping to create an emotional connection with the judges and spectators. So even if I hadn’t made it to the semi-finals, I felt I could be happy with what I’d shared. 

Who were the key people who supported you through this challenging championship time?

I had a small team with me in Busan – just myself and 2 great friends- our training manager at Formative – Maja Jajszczok – who has been my coach for the past couple of years, and Nicolas Pastellopoulos, who is my partner in the roastery, and handles our green buying and roasting.  

What message did you want to send to the world with your WBC performance?

I’ve always felt that a lot of my beliefs about coffee are embodied in the cafe and roastery I’ve been building these past 5 years. That’s why I took on the idea of “the Formative experience” as my theme this year. By talking about how we craft exceptional coffee encounters at the cafe, I could share how I believe coffee should be served, and the impact that a great barista can have on their guest’s journey in coffee.

What advice would you give to other baristas who might face such unexpected challenges during championships?

I feel that it’s really useful to consider what your goals for competing are, beyond just winning. Being grounded in those goals means that, if things don’t go your way, or something unexpected happens, you’ll not be solely focused on the impact on the points, your score, or your final ranking. Instead, you can look to those goals as a reminder of the progress that you’ve made. 

What is in your opinion the most important thing to have in mind when you start to compete in coffee championships?

When getting started, I believe that the most important thing is to enjoy the experience!

We take coffee competitions so seriously, but my favourite thing about them is the sense of shared purpose between competitors, coaches and judges, as we come together around this shared love of coffee. So take time to enjoy that moment, make an effort to meet your fellow competitors, and savour the experience. 

It’s also important to point out that you should read the rules, and the scoresheets, and try to discuss them with someone who has competed or judged before. This will help you gain a lot of insight into which elements of your preparation and presentation will help you gain the most points, and help you avoid simple mistakes.

What coffee challenges are you looking forward to? Any new projects or collaborations?

For the next 6 months, I have 3 big tasks to focus on: finding exceptional cafes to partner with through our roastery, growing our consulting business, and most importantly, learning more about the world of coffee.

The reason I want to focus on learning is that for the past 8 months, competition has been a big focus. It’s true that competition is a great way to learn more about coffee, but I want to spend time exploring our industry beyond what’s beneficial for the 15 minutes on stage. In particular, I want to look at how we can create cafe environments which facilitate better customer interactions around specialty coffee, and more sustainable employment opportunities for baristas.

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