A barista skills series is the rare piece of video that does two jobs at once. Inside the shop it trains new hires faster than a binder. Outside the shop it is the most watchable content a coffee brand can post, because people like watching someone who is good at something do it.
The Kansas City angle
Kansas City takes coffee seriously: Messenger in the Crossroads, PT's, Thou Mayest, Monarch on 39th, the Broadway Cafe, and the roasters and shops in Overland Park, Lenexa, Lee's Summit and the Northland that opened in their wake. Most have a staff of ten to thirty, real turnover, and a training problem that gets solved by whoever is on shift.
The local angle is the shop itself. A skills series filmed at your bar, on your machine, with your head barista, is a training tool and a brand film. Stock training footage is neither.
Six skills, one morning, before the shop opens
We would film from six to ten on a weekday before open: dialing in the grinder, dosing and tamping, steaming milk to texture, pouring three latte-art patterns, the pour-over routine, and the cleaning and close-down checklist. Head barista on a lav mic explaining as they go. Two cameras: one overhead on the bar, one at eye level.
Six short training modules for the staff, a ninety-second brand cut for the website and Google, and a month of verticals from the latte-art passes.
What to actually make
- Six training modules — two to three minutes each, for onboarding and the manual.
- A 90-second shop film — the bar, the roaster, the people, for the homepage and the wholesale accounts.
- Latte-art verticals — the pours, posted one at a time for a month.
- A wholesale piece — for the restaurants and offices that buy the beans.
What it costs in Kansas City
For most of the businesses in this post the right starting point is The Short at $2,000: a half-day shoot cut into one 60-to-90-second film plus vertical cut-downs. Every package is published on our restaurant video page, and the video production cost page explains what moves the number up or down. There is no travel fee anywhere in the metro, Overland Park to Lee's Summit to Lawrence.
How the shoot works
It is the same two people on every project, Josh and Brandon. We scope it on a call, write the shot list, show up with lights and a lav mic, and stay out of the way of your customers. A first cut lands in about two weeks with unlimited revisions after that, and you own every frame, including the raw footage on request.
If this is your business, the restaurant video page has the packages, the examples and the calendar link. If you are not sure which package fits, this is how we work and why the prices are on the site.