Sasa with the world barista champion trophy
Bringing the Best Coffee from Bean to Brew – Sasa Sestic’s Secrets of Success
It’s been a long hard road to success for Sasa Sestic. The current Australian and World Barista Champion is the founder of Ona Coffee, winner of best espresso and best roaster. After seven years of striving for the title of world champion, he has finally won it, and has been busy ever since. Success never sleeps, and a good cup of coffee certainly helps.
Winning competitions is nothing new to Sasa. In his native Serbia, Sasa and his brother were top handball players in their country. After immigrating to Australia, they played for the national handball team in 2000. Though he had a chance to sign on to continue playing professionally with several teams, Sasa decided to leave the world of sports and enter another extremely competitive field: the hospitality industry.
Sasa first worked in bars, clubs, and fine dining restaurants. It wasn’t until a barista position opened up in his wife’s café that he decided to move into the coffee industry. Back then, he didn’t love the taste of coffee – that is, until a trip to Sydney and a local Campos Coffee – made him wonder if they were just brewing it wrong. “You’re looking at these baristas, how professionally they work…they’re making these delicious cappuccinos and you do not need to add any sugar.”
When he returned to his adopted hometown of Canberra, he decided to try out some of the methods he’d seen in Sydney, including brewing on demand and producing rosettas in the cups. Part of it also included changing the recipe to better suit the coffee to the water in Canberra, as he discovered that the taste of the coffee changed depending on where the water came from.
Sasa & Pete
In some ways, working in coffee can seem glamorous. And passion, Sasa says, is important. But you also need to have the drive and dedication to make your business a success. For him, participating in barista competitions kept his knowledge up to speed and helped him perfect his brewing skills.
The story of the OCD (Ona Coffee Distributor) is a story of learning from failure. At a barista tournament in Singapore, Sasa’s unnecessarily lost points from the technical judges. The reason? The coffee brewing baskets could only hold 15 grams’ worth of coffee – a smaller capacity than his coffee’s usual 20 grams. As a result, the distribution of coffee was noted as uneven. Afterwards, Sasa devised a tool to distribute the coffee evenly for a better brew, no matter the size of the basket. Thus, the OCD was born, and he has been perfecting it ever since. The fifth iteration seems to have perfected the process, and the OCD is now available to consumers worldwide.
Sasa’s OCD Distribution and Tamping Tool
Being a good barista consists of much more than customer service, or brewing the best cup of coffee. It’s more of a mix of the two. Half of the skills required for a good barista are hospitality, Sasa says. Customers won’t want to drink the coffee, even if it’s the best in the world, if the baristas are cold and uncommunicative. However, technical skills and some degree of expertise in the coffee growing and roasting process are important. While only a head barista, as it were, should have an encyclopaedic knowledge of the origin and particularities of coffee, some basic knowledge of brewing and a palate developed enough to tell the difference are all essential.
Seeing Double – Two world champions
When it comes to coffee, it’s best practice to know as much about the bean as possible, from where it’s grown to how it should be best roasted. This is where Project Origin, established by Sasa in 2011, comes in. Project Origin goes to farms and in some cases has actually purchased them, to ensure the best possible quality coffee is produced there. On the Project Origin website, you can find information about Ona’s coffee producing partners, the varietals grown, and details about the growing process there.
One of the people Sasa most admires is a farmer at one of these coffee producers, Don Fabio of Honduras. Sasa credits Don Fabio as giving him one of the best pieces of advice that he’s ever gotten: “When you pick a coffee cherry, it comes perfect from the tree. It’s only up to us farmers, roaster, and baristas how much damage we’re gonna give to that coffee.” To this day, Sasa says, that piece of advice has been a driving force of his career in coffee.
His sports past has fuelled his healthy appetite for competition, which continues to thrive to this day, evidenced by his participation in barista competitions and tournaments. Though it wasn’t always easy, Sasa preserved, which he says is another important component to success.
Sasa’s Ten Takeaways
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Passion is important, but knowledge, skill, and dedication will get you far in the coffee industry.
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There’s nothing wrong with a healthy sense of competition – and paired with perseverance, even if you don’t win the first time, you may win sometime down the line.
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When opening a café, first know what does the company stand for? What is the role you play in the community? Match the café atmosphere to those answers.
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Baristas should not just be coffee experts, but customer service experts, as well.
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Good managers are also important, to carry out the vision of the café owner.
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Take moments of failure as opportunities – they may lead you to your next success.
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You can find the OCD machine here: https://onacoffee.com.au/shop/ocd-ona-coffee-distributor/
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Read this book by W. Clement Stone:
http://www.amazon.com/Success-System-That-Never-Fails/dp/1604599316
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Google Maps is something he just can’t live without
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Humility and living a simple life not so obsessed with money and things is virtuous in our materialistic era – Sasa certainly thinks so.
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For more info on what Sasa and his team are up to visit:
https://www.facebook.com/onacoffee
https://www.facebook.com/sasa.sestic/
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