The Coffee Gift Guide For Actual Coffee People

Coffee gift guides are rarely ever for people who work in coffee — these are the gifts for any barista or coffee slinger in your life.

Often, gift guides are about buying something for the coffee lover in your life. And to be clear, I've contributed and written many coffee gift guides — you can even see one I wrote here for Boss Barista for 2021 and 2022) but these guides don't speak to baristas: for me, I found gift guides to either have:

• Gear I love but already have (or, to be honest, stole from work)

• Gear I hate and wouldn't recommend to my worst enemy

• Gear I couldn't afford

• Coffee recommendations, which is absurd because there's no way I'm not just brewing the free bag of beans I got from work

• Gift cards, which are also absurd because if I work at a coffee shop, there's no way I'm getting coffee anywhere else if I get free drinks from my workplace/the shops my friends work at

I was a barista for nearly ten years, an identity that shapes almost everything about me, and when I was actively working behind the bar, I remember thinking all these gift guides missed the actual people serving you coffee everyday.

So here’s just a few recommendations for gifts for baristas — of course, this is not exhaustive, but these are things that made my job behind the bar a little bit easier:

Shoes You Love Because They're Comfortable But Don't Mind Getting Dirty: When I started my first barista job, I showed up wearing black Keds, which was a mistake. They offered no arch support, and I remember thinking after my first barista shift, "My feet have never hurt as much as they do right now." Despite that, I wore them as my work shoes for over two years because I couldn't afford anything else.

Over the years, many of my barista friends have recommended other, more comfortable shoes. Most land on Dansko work clogs ($90-$135), but those never felt quite as comfortable as I wanted, and I didn't love wearing them out of the cafe. I bought a pair of Nike Cortez sneakers ($60-90) on a whim once and ended up living in them during my last few years behind the bar.

This is not an advertisement for Nike, but rather for finding shoes you like that you are okay with getting covered in coffee that travel easily from the coffee shop to wherever you're going next. My feet are the first place I feel pain or soreness if I've been working too hard, so it's the best place to invest if you want to protect your body and stave off aches and pains.

Hand Cream, Both For Everyone at the Cafe and For Yourself: I'm convinced no one washes their hands more than baristas. Most cafes I worked at required folks to toggle between prepping food, making drinks, cleaning gross things, and constantly doing dishes, which always dried out my hands.

This is key: you need a lotion that's for the cafe (it lives at the cafe and never leaves, and someone must always replenish it when it's empty) and one that stays with you when you inevitably remember you dunked your hands in hot sanitizer water 11,000 times.

A regular ol' bottle of Lubriderm is good for the cafe, but you deserve a treat for your personal hand cream. Last year, for Christmas, my sisters got me the Aesop Reverence Aromatique Hand Balm ($33, fragranced but only slightly so), which is absurdly priced but made me feel like royalty every time I put it on. Currently, I'm carrying the Prequel Skin Utility Ointment ($18, not fragranced).

I've also enjoyed the Weleda Skin Food Hand Cream ($20, fragranced, so I maybe wouldn't wear while working), Kiehl's Ultimate Strength Hand Salve ($22, not fragranced), O'Keeffe's Working Hands Hand Cream ($8, not fragranced), and the Aquaphor Healing Ointment (not fragranced, varies depending on the retailer, and you'll need this one for the tattoos: see last item on list).

WEAR SUNSCREEN DAMMIT: I am a sunscreen fiend. If I had to change Boss Barista to just be about sunscreen, I'd have enough content for years. However, I only took wearing sunscreen seriously in my 30s, which is unfortunate for a kid from Miami, Florida, who worked in coffee shops with either huge windows or were basically outside (one shop I worked in was so small that on a rainy day if you didn't close the doors all the way you could get wet).

I am strictly a mineral sunscreen person (chemical sunscreens irritate my eyes), and I've repurchased the Hero Superlight Sunscreen SPF 30 ($20) multiple times — it has a green tint that helps cancel out redness for me, but it can leave a white cast if I don't rub it in enough, so it might not be great for all skin tones (Hero makes an apricot version of this sunscreen as well).

Right now, I'm wearing the Prequel Sun Barrier Mineral Sunscreen SPF 50 ($22), which is VERY DEWY, so it might not be best for oily folks (I love it — it makes my skin feel luminous), and I also have the Good Molecules Sheer Mineral Sunscreen SPF 30 ($12) and the La Roche Posay Anthelios Ultra Light Fluid Face Sunscreen SPF 60 ($34), which is tinted and leaves a lovely not-quite-matte finish, but since I mask indoors, I don't wear quite as often since it can rub off and stain the inside of the masks.

Chapstick: As a barista, I drank a lot of coffee and yapped a lot of ears off. I didn't really wear chapstick until I left Miami (it's so humid outside that it keeps your lips doing just fine) — I even remember a trip I took when I was in high school with a group of kids, most from Miami, to visit Dartmouth in New Hampshire. We were all shocked by how dry the air was. We had to take a trip to the drugstore to buy chapstick.

I keep this simple: I use the Aquaphor Lip Balm Repair Stick for Chapped Lips ($9 for a pack of two) mostly because it has SPF 30; same for the Burt's Bees Beaches & Cream SPF 30 Lip Balm ($13, and from what I can tell, not all Burt's Bees chapsticks have SPF, so double check).

Your Own Special Cup: Every barista needs a special cup to drink out of. At a coffee shop I used to work at in New York, my boss ordered himself a porcelain cup and saucer to drink out of, and I still remember when it arrived at the shop and how excited he was. The cup was covered in intricate floral designs, and I got hyped every time he poured coffee into it.

At the cafe, I always drink out of glass — no porcelain, no mugs. I'm partial to the notNeutral Vero Cortado Glasses in Amber ($20), which is the perfect size for slowly sipping on coffee. I probably poured like, three ounces of coffee into the cup and topped it off every hour or so. At home, I drink out of mostly anything (it's different when it's your house and you own all the mugs), but in the shop, I like having my special glass.

Sharpies. A Lot of Sharpies: Sharpies are one of those things that get lost over time. At one job, we made labels out of tape to mark our Sharpies and got mad when someone used ours. Our boss wouldn't give us new Sharpies if we lost ours.

So treat yourself (or your favorite barista) and buy A TON OF SHARPIES. Never buy a single Sharpie; always buy them in packs and don't bother with fine-tip: this bowl of 72 mini Sharpies is calling my name (varies based on retailer), but a classic 36 pack is always great.

A Little Notebook That Fits in Your Back Pocket: I love having a space to fill with coffee notes, and I like writing things down — but I rarely ever bring a bag or purse to work, so having something that can go into my back pocket is helpful.

I have at least a dozen empty Field Notes notebooks ($13 for a pack of three), and I always go for the graph paper packs. I can make a lined notebook work, but I cannot hang with an unlined notebook.

An Item of Clothing You Can Wear A Lot That Has Pockets: I had one pair of overalls I swear I wore to every shift while living in Oakland. I'd get home and find all types of treasures in my pockets — mostly pens and markers, but having multiple pockets to stick things in was always super helpful. It also felt like putting on the overalls was a sort of uniform to prepare me for work.

As a (sometimes) photographer, I have the same need for pockets (for batteries, sometimes for lenses, also to take notes — if I photograph someone, I always try to get their name), but now I wear a chore jacket I got from Belleville Brûlerie (€69, or about $72), a roastery in Paris. The jacket gets me in the same "it's work time" mood.

Instant Coffee That Doesn't Suck: This is the only coffee recommendation I'll make I PROMISE. But I have packets of instant coffee on me at all times: you never know when you'll end up somewhere without coffee — or with coffee that sucks.

I have a few packs of instant coffee from Monogram Coffee ($13 for four packs) hanging out on my desk in the grad school lounge on campus (if you didn't know, I'm a TA this semester), but you can usually get a good instant option from any roaster you like.

A Tattoo: Because fuck it.

What else belongs on this list? Also, we’re taking the next few weeks off, but this won’t be the last you see of Boss Barista in 2024 — stay tuned!