Barista to Barista Q&A: Andrew Webb’s Journey From Starbucks Barista to Bindle Coffee Shop Owner
One grande iced coffee, hold the classic syrup, substitute in two pumps of “magical” white mocha instead and top it all off with a splash of half and half. That was Andrew Webb’s go-to shift order as a Starbucks barista, which he drank for nearly four years working for the company.
Today Webb’s life is still one big coffee trance. Most days he can be found slinging drinks and curating cappuccino recipes at Bindle Coffee Shop — a cafe and bean roastery that he owns and operates alongside his wife, and pastry aficionado, Jenn Webb.
During the little free time Andrew Webb carves out from his caffeine-buzzed business life, he can be found raising his two kids in the heart of Fort Collins and making sure they know their Bindle barista basics from an early age.
As a former Starbucks barista turned life-long coffee connoisseur, Andrew Webb was eager to share his insider scoop on the industry and relive Bindle’s humble beginnings with me, a novice Starbucks barista and avid coffee fanatic.
Between the two of us espresso fiends, what was meant to be a short 30-minute question-and-answer interview quickly became an hour-long conversation drenched in a shared passion for coffee.
Writer’s note: this piece was edited for length and clarity.
Kaylee: How’d you get your start in the coffee industry? Was Starbucks your first experience as a barista?
Andrew: Oh man, it’s funny, I feel like Starbucks was definitely the first real coffee thing I did, but I actually started at a place called Spotlight Music, which is a guitar shop in Fort Collins. They had a cafe set up near the front entryway of the store.
I got hired there and I was desperate to work in the guitar section, but the managers just kept sticking me in the coffee area. I was like “come on man! I just want to work with the guitars, I’m a musician!” Even though I didn’t like the whole coffee thing there, I remember wanting every drink I made to be the best it could be.
Kaylee: Wait a minute, how did you end up working at Starbucks after such a shaky introduction to the coffee business?
Andrew: I took my job at Starbucks because I really wanted to learn how to make coffee, which I felt was something Starbucks could teach me.
During my last two years there, I started training store managers around Fort Collins. That’s when I got way into coffee. I became a part of the Starbucks Coffee Master Program and district managers would send me to coffee tastings across the Front Range.
I remember on the first tasting I was sent to I decided to pair a cup of Blue Java Reserve with a homemade sage shortbread cookie. It went over great and that’s when I realized I had a passion for espresso flavors.
Kaylee: Did your managers take note of your coffee passion too?
Andrew: Yeah, after that first coffee tasting the district managers started transferring me from store to store across Fort Collins for six-month blocks. They wanted me to inspire Starbucks baristas in shops where they didn’t really care about the coffee.
They told me to “just be myself” basically and I got the baristas drinking and talking about coffee by doing coffee tastings with a French press every shift and sharing my passion.
Kaylee: When I first met you in Bindle you told me that you loved working at Starbucks. So why did you decide to leave a job you loved to pursue the bean roasting and ownership side of the coffee business instead?
Andrew: So the last Starbucks store I worked for was the reserves store we have here in Fort Collins, Scotch Pines. One day my manager there was like, “dude you’ve got to get out of here! You need to go pursue coffee because you actually care about it and nobody else here really does.”
He really encouraged me to follow coffee and to get more into specialty coffee.
I ended up leaving Starbucks to go work for a coffee roaster in Milliken, Colorado, which is no longer in business. They had a fully manual lever-operated machine and were roasting beans right behind the counter. From there I fell in love with roasting and wanted to learn even more about coffee.
Kaylee: Do you remember the last drink you made at Starbucks?
Andrew: Oh man, yeah, I do! It was a vanilla latte. I was so proud of that latte but also relieved that it was my last one.
Kaylee: I like making lattes too! Although, I’m horrible at latte art. You mentioned that after Starbucks you went to work for a coffee roaster. When did you first get the idea to open a coffee shop and roastery of your own?
Andrew: I first had the idea when I started going to local coffee shops around Fort Collins. I was experiencing this lack in that service experience you get from a Starbucks at a local level.
The thing is you will never feel dumb at a Starbucks. You can order whatever you want, and the baristas will help figure out how to make your drink exactly like you want it with speed and friendliness.
So with Bindle, we wanted to create a specialty coffee experience where the food, coffee and back-house efficiencies were all equally amazing.
Kaylee: Has your past Starbucks experience influenced how you run Bindle today?
Andrew: We want what we do at Bindle to translate into a fast and positive experience for those customers who may have mainly been to Starbucks. Like for those people who haven't been to as many specialty shops and come in asking for a “grande” drink, how are they treated?
Usually, if someone were to come in and say “caramel macchiato,” in a craft coffee shop everyone there would be like “oh you just want something super sweet, what’s wrong with you.” But at Bindle we know that we can recreate a caramel macchiato for them, anyone can if they know what it is. We just try to make the best version of that drink we can with the scratch-made ingredients we have.
Kaylee: The first time I walked into Bindle I fell in love with the nostalgic farm-like feel of the building’s welcoming design. I think that the renovated buildings of Jessup Farms are a nice homage to Fort Collins’ agricultural roots. Why did you and Jenn decide to open Bindle in a renovated garage at Jessup Farms?
Andrew: I’m from Fort Collins, I’ve been here my whole life. So there is this kind of nostalgic feel to Jessup Farms for me.
Actually, when Jessup Farms came along, we had been looking for a place to open a cafe for a long time. I was even renting roasting time from a roaster in Berthoud to make my coffee.
We ended up really connecting with the developers of Jessup Farms right from the beginning. Bindle became the first business to open in the development (today 13 local businesses take up shop there). Everything was oddly the perfect timing with it.
To me, when you walk into Bindle it feels like you’ve entered a different time. From the moment we opened our doors it felt like Bindle had always been there because of the historic nature of the location.
Kaylee: Yeah, the Bindle setup reminds me of my family’s farm down in Sterling, so the nostalgic experience truly shines through. You went from barista, to bean roaster, to coffee shop owner, so you’ve followed your coffee passion for a long time. Why did you stay in the coffee industry all these years?
Andrew: Coffee is the one job I never got tired of. And trust me, I’ve worked lots of jobs. I would stay at most jobs for a year top before I found coffee.
I think it’s because of the seasonal changes. And when you get into roasting there is this excitement around new flavor arrivals and getting to have relationships with the farmers.
There is just so much there that you could spend your whole life pursuing coffee, improving your craft and chasing the relationships. I think that’s why it’s so fun and important to me.
Kaylee: The relationships you build working in a coffee shop are my favorite part of the experience too! I will never get tired of waking up at 5:30 a.m. to work a shift. I just love seeing regulars and meeting new people. What’s your favorite customer experience you’ve had at Bindle so far?
Andrew: The regulars that come into our shop are just so awesome, I’m sure you can relate. You might think you’re just making coffee for them, but you’re actually becoming a big part of their lives.
Our shop has been open long enough now that we’ve seen people meet each other for awkward first dates at Bindle, and now those same people are married and have a 2-year-old kid.
We’ve even attended two or three customer weddings and during the ceremonies, they bring up how they first met at Bindle.
Kaylee: I also think Bindle is so beloved in Fort Collins because of the authentic flavors you offer customers. Your pastry and drink menus keep them coming back for more. How do you come up with your unique seasonal flavors like the Spiced Fig Latte?
Andrew: When Bindle first opened, we tried to make so many crazy creations. During our six years of business, we’ve learned that you need a nostalgic, stable component to your menu. You need something customers will come back looking for each year.
So what we’ve done from the beginning is set certain pastries in the case that will never change, but we also have a certain part of our menu that is always changing. Bindle has this living menu.
The spiced fig latte has all the spices from a pumpkin spice latte, but instead of the pumpkin element, we boil a pot of fresh spiced figs to make the syrup.
With that one, we wanted to do a fall spiced drink in a way that wasn’t just “pumpkin spice.” We highlight that classic fall pumpkin flavor in our seasonal pastries like our pumpkin pop tart.
My wife has a pastry degree. She is the baking manager for Bindle and the one behind those recipes.
Kaylee: Ok, now I feel like I need to know…what’s one of the craziest drinks you’ve ever offered at Bindle?
Andrew: We used to do a latte inspired by crème brûlée! We would even torch the top of it with this crème brûlée torch. This drink looked great, but it took way too long to make.
How would you make a “Bindle” caramel macchiato for a customer?
Andrew: We take this approach where we try to make everything from scratch at Bindle. So we get these Madagascar vanilla beans and cut up the vanilla pods into our syrup. For the caramel, we melt sugar, butter and cream together every day.
We also use half the sweetener that Starbucks uses and double the espresso in all our drinks. Our macchiato is a more coffee-forward version because it highlights the coffee and has the sweetness support it, not overpower it.
I’ll still put it all together in the Starbucks way, which I think is just a part of my programming at this point. But it’s fun to know that you are making something that visually looks like what the customer is used to but will taste a lot better, in my opinion.
Kaylee: Yeah, I feel like once you know the basic recipes of staple coffee drinks, it is pretty easy to make drinks unique for customers. What’s the biggest thing you’ve learned working in the coffee industry?
Andrew: At the end of the day, coffee is just the vehicle for connecting with people. That’s the biggest thing I’ve learned from coffee.
I used to be locked into this mindset that our job as coffee professionals was to educate the customers on the single-origin of each coffee we brewed, to teach them what goes into good coffee.
But when you’re working, and you look out into the cafe from the bar you realize that most likely people are not talking about the coffee itself. They come to a cafe to meet up with friends, work on homework or as a quick stop before work.
You want your best coffee to be alongside your customers. You want it to be the thing that customers are doing not the thing they are actively discussing.
Kaylee: When I first started at Starbucks, I had no idea what to expect. It was my first time working as a barista. Everything in the coffee world felt so unfamiliar to me. I clung to any words of wisdom my crew members gave me. What advice do you have for the aspiring baristas and want-to-be coffee shop owners out there?
Andrew: Don’t be fooled by what you see on Instagram! Coffee is not this glamorous or easy thing to pull off. There’s so much work behind the scenes of a cafe that customers don’t see. Equipment needs to be repaired, so many dishes have to be washed and there is an unglamorous side to coffee that I think needs to be talked about more.
You also need to make sure that you really like people before you get into the coffee business. That’s pretty much all it is, coffee is a business of people.
I think working at a place like Starbucks is the perfect way to get a feel for the business because you can experience things very similar to how we run our daily operations at Bindle.
The Final Scoop
A few days after our interview I returned to the Bindle Coffee House to meet up with Andrew Webb and bring him a bag of Starbucks’ Guatemala Casi Cielo seasonal roast. During our conversation, he had mentioned that this was his “all-time favorite” Starbucks seasonal coffee to brew when he worked for the company.
Together we recreated my go-to Starbucks barista order using Bindle’s authentic ingredients — one grande Iced Brown Sugar Oatmilk Shaken Espresso, which he made with an extra dash of cinnamon and, my favorite part, four shots of Bindle’s freshly roasted Sidekick Espresso!
Experiencing Andrew Webb’s deep passion for coffee is a uniquely Fort Collins coffee experience you won’t want to miss out on while living in or visiting the city.
