Looking for internship arrangement

[MSol Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close MSol]

G'day all,

Keen to move on from my current "white collar" and unfulfilling "career" and now learning about coffee (brewing and roasting) with a view to open my own humble place overseas in around three years - so there's no intention to learn and compete with whoever is willing to answer this request

I do have a lot of experience in the catering/hospitality space having grown up with an Italian father who ran hotels, restaurants and cafes in Scotland. Backgrounds in science and business.

I'm willing to work for knowledge and learning say, on Saturdays or when I'm available in Melbourne (management consultant who may find himself in another city four days a week and with downtime between contracts).

Roasting is specifically what I'm interested in and I may well have skills that you can utilise from my professional bag of tricks (process/business improvement, coaching, training, presentation etc).

I could go off and do a course but, at this stage it would be wasted as I would not use what I learn for some time and it would likely be forgotten when the time came. I'd rather observe, help, learn and assist in real terms before I go off and do a course.

If anyone is willing to teach me please feel free to contact me.

I live in Brunswick West - dont mind really early mornings and willing to pitch where I can to return the favour.


Cheers,

Marco

[magnafunk Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close magnafunk]

I often see posts with people asking about work experience and nobody ever gets any replies. I'm not a coffee roaster but will give my view as a chef (we get a lot of these kind of requests too) . I'm not sure if my experience transfers to other industries, but I'll give my view in case it might help explain why nobody gets any bites when making a post like this.

With the advent of shows like masterchef , my kitchen rules etc, there seems to be a number of people thinking they'd like to change up their lives and try their hand at cooking, so they come and ask if they can do a few hours a week unpaid to learn the ropes. What often ends up happening is this person with no idea what is involved in preparing food for a couple of hundred people turns up to "help out ". So you give them a couple of menial jobs to get started , of which they have no clue how to do, so a chef ends up having to hover over them to make sure they don't mess it up. So now instead of getting an extra pair of hands to help out, we are actually getting less done, because Mr middle age work experience takes twice as long to do something , and someone is supervising them most of the time, taking time away from getting their own work set up for the night. If this is happening with an apprentice or a kitchen hand , we can at least take the long view of this person being a valuable member of the team within a few weeks/months of supervision. When it's a "free" work experience person, there is nothing to look forward to. Even if you spend the hours getting them trained up well, we end up with nothing at the end of it. Sure, an apprentice might also leave once they've gotten some skills but it's worth a gamble. The work experience person generally is not sticking around.

I hope I don't come off as being overly negative, I might be completely wrong about this, and I wish you the best of luck. But if you get no hits, you may want to consider whether it might be better to start off as a delivery boy or warehouse assistant. That way they'll see how you work before dedicating time to showing you the ropes.