Get to Know Your Barista: Ashley Sprangers

Hi!  Welcome to the blog!  I’m Ashley.  You may have seen me around Whitefish Bay – I am the Lead Staff/Assistant Manager at Stone Creek Coffee on Silver Spring.  I’ll be the main contributor to the blog, keeping you updated on coffee trends, the latest news from Stone Creek Coffee, and other interesting tidbits I pick up along the way.  Stop in at the store and say hi sometime!

A little bit about me: I am a student at UWM, studying English with an emphasis in Creative Writing.  I’ll hopefully be graduating in December, and I am super excited about that!  Before switching to the English program, I studied Music Education with an emphasis in Choral Directing for 3.5 years, so I have been in school for nearly 7 years total.  When I graduate I hope to pursue a career in writing – my current focus is short fiction, but I am interested in internet publication as well as editing – I’m keeping my options open for now.

To supplement my writing, I’ve chosen to pursue a career in coffee!  You may not know that the coffee industry is a quickly growing one, with constant innovations forcing a culture of career-long coffee professionals.  My interest lies mostly within the barista end of things – that is, the person who keeps customers smiling and caffeinated by preparing amazing coffee and lattes!

I’ve been working for Stone Creek Coffee for about 3.5 years.  I started out at our Glendale location – on Port Washington and Green Tree – in 2009, knowing nothing about coffee (and actually hating the taste of it)!  From there, I took on the manager position of our stand at the South Shore Farmer’s Market in the summer of 2010.  After a summer of fun outdoor coffee-selling and heavy lifting, I was ready to get back into the café, and I got that chance when the Lead Staff position opened up at the Whitefish Bay location!  Kendra, our former manager, hired me and I have been here ever since!

Currently I am also pursuing the “Barista III” track, which is a series of classes and training sessions for a select few baristas in the company.  We’ve been working on developing our espresso and latte-making skills, which is culminating with the roll-out of manual grinders in all our cafés.  We just got our new grinder yesterday, and I am so excited about the espresso I’ve been getting from it!  You’ll be able to taste the difference.  The manual grinder allows me an infinitely greater amount of control over the espresso final product, which means I can take care that each shot is consistent and perfectly balanced in your drink.  Wahoo!

The final part of my current track at Stone Creek Coffee is a training element – as a Barista III, I have been starting to help train new baristas on the bar as they come into the company.  I hope to continue down that path, to help develop new employees to be just as awesome as the veterans you’ve come to know and love!  You’ll learn quickly that coffee is a passion of mine – and what’s not to love?  There is so much love and care going into the coffee process, from growing, to roasting, to brewing, and finally sipping it out of your cup, that it’s hard not to be fascinated by it.  Over the course of this blog I hope to bring some of that passion to you, and hopefully you’ll learn some cool things along the way.

Sip slowly - Ashley