Let’s just get one thing straight, especially for all you internationals. Batch is drip coffee in Australia.

You’ve heard a lot about cafes and restaurants from the perspective of the customer. But what about the realities of working behind the bench?

I’m Jayden—a copywriter and barista. I was five when I got my first job at a cafe. It was my parents’. I dried glasses behind the counter in exchange for a slice of carrot cake. It was either that or beetroot cake, or banana cake, or any other fruit or vegetable themed dessert my mum could muster.

Twenty-one years later I’m still behind the bench, only now I’m making coffees (still choose to get paid in cake, though) and have done so for the last eight years, around Australia. Three of those years, I’ve also worked as a part-time journalist, critiquing hospitality venues.

Over that time I’ve observed a lot of change in cafe culture and culture at large. In a lot of ways, the two go hand in hand. Cafe’s have become a sort of cultural euphemism, a microcosm of society where the beautiful and the ugly play out.

Life’s a Batch is a source of weekly stories from the other side of the bench, an insight into a world that many are so familiar with and yet know very little about. I promise, you won’t walk into a cafe the same again.