- Coffee businesses are increasingly prioritising experience, reliability, and operational competence as labour pressures intensify.
- 89% of Gen Z workers consider work-life balance important when choosing an employer.
- As coffee becomes more mainstream, employers and younger workers are renegotiating workplace expectations.
As labour challenges intensify across the coffee sector, businesses are becoming more selective about who they hire.
Rising costs, tighter margins, and staffing pressures are colliding with changing workforce expectations, particularly among Gen Z workers, who often place greater emphasis on flexibility, wellbeing, and career progression. While many of these changes have improved workplace standards, they can also create friction in an industry built around shift work, customer service, and operational consistency.
As younger workers such as Gen Z become an increasingly important part of the coffee workforce, businesses are having to balance these workers’ expectations around flexibility, wellbeing, and career development against the industry’s growing need for experience, reliability, and immediate contribution.
Coffee no longer attracts workers in the same way
For years, the industry attracted younger workers drawn to coffee’s culture, creativity, and sense of community. Passion, curiosity, and a willingness to learn were often considered just as important as experience. Today, however, operators face a very different environment.
Part of the challenge stems from how much the coffee sector itself has changed. For much of its early growth, third wave and specialty coffee attracted workers who were drawn to the industry itself. Many employees arrived with pre-existing knowledge and a desire to contribute to the industry’s development.
Colin Harmon is the Founder of 3fe Coffee in Dublin, Ireland. He believes the dynamic across the coffee industry has shifted considerably over the past decade.
“There was a time in specialty coffee when it was brand new and everything felt super fresh that you wouldn’t even have to advertise for a job and if you did, you’d get hundreds of people [applying],” he says.
“…People were super keen and arrived with enthusiasm, context, knowledge and the desire to learn, to grow and to try and experiment and develop the businesses that they were going to work for.”
Now, as coffee has become more mainstream, many Gen Z workers are discovering it more as a career option rather than a movement they actively sought to join.
“The people who apply for jobs now are people who are looking for a job, whereas before they wanted to get involved in coffee,” Colin says.
According to the National Restaurant Association’s 2025 State of the Restaurant Industry report, labour remains one of the most significant operational challenges facing hospitality businesses, with recruitment and retention continuing to rank among operators’ top concerns.
However, Colin does not attribute this solely to generational change – instead, he argues it reflects the industry’s success and wider adoption.
“People already use specialty coffee now and especially in Dublin, it’s everywhere,” he says.
“They’ve got some choice of where they go and it definitely doesn’t seem as easy to find people who are driven towards wanting to drive the coffee industry forward, as it used to be.”
However, the outcome for employers is still significant. Businesses can no longer assume that new hires will arrive with coffee knowledge, industry enthusiasm, or a long-term commitment to the sector.
“They definitely don’t have a vocational drive that people used to have,” Colin says.
A growing mismatch between worker expectations and hospitality realities
The challenge is not simply that younger workers want different things. It is that hospitality remains a uniquely demanding industry.
According to Deloitte’s 2025 Gen Z and Millennial Survey, work-life balance remains one of the most important factors influencing career decisions among younger workers, with more than 89% considering this when choosing an employer, alongside mental health support, flexibility, meaningful work, and personal wellbeing.
These expectations can sit uneasily alongside the realities of coffee and hospitality, which often require early starts, weekend shifts, public holiday work, and customer-facing roles that leave limited room for flexibility.
In contrast, Gen Z’s stronger emphasis on work-life balance and personal wellbeing are much more difficult to reconcile with the realities of running cafés and hospitality businesses. For some operators, this creates friction, as qualities that previous generations may have viewed as standard parts of hospitality work are increasingly being questioned by younger employees.
However, Colin argues that many of these changing expectations are ultimately pushing coffee businesses to become fairer employers.
“I think, and I should be very clear when I say this, that that is absolutely a good thing,” he says. “I believe that all workers should be paid for their time and everything should be done in a fair and equitable way.”
He argues that parts of the industry historically relied on workers accepting lower pay, unpaid labour, or poor working conditions in exchange for learning opportunities and exposure.
“There’s definitely been an element I’ve seen over the years where you have, say, business owners who hold the knowledge, taking advantage of staff that don’t have the knowledge on the basis that, well, you’re learning something from us, so we can get a few extra hours early for free, or maybe not pay you what you’re worth, or that kind of thing,” he says.
Social media and online communities have also increased accountability, making it more difficult for employers to rely on practices that may once have been accepted.
“There was a time when you got away with that kind of stuff,” Colin says. “But these days with Reddit and X and Instagram, accountability comes fast and clean.”
This presents a challenge for coffee businesses. While many operators acknowledge that fairer employment practices are positive, implementing them can be difficult in an industry already facing rising costs and narrow margins.
Why experience is commanding a premium
As these pressures intensify, some coffee businesses are reassessing what they value most in employees.
While enthusiasm remains important, employers are increasingly looking for candidates who can contribute quickly, communicate effectively, manage pressure, and operate independently. This is particularly true as labour costs rise and staff turnover remains high.
The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 identifies resilience, adaptability, leadership, communication, and problem-solving among the most valuable skills employers are seeking in an increasingly complex labour market.
As a result, some operators are increasingly placing a premium on candidates with proven experience. Older workers or those with broader professional backgrounds may be perceived as more reliable, easier to onboard, and better equipped to navigate the operational pressures of hospitality than younger candidates who are entering the workforce for the first time.
This also means that many employers are now required to invest significantly more time into developing enthusiasm and knowledge internally than they did previously.
“I think it puts the onus back on the business to then first of all just find people who are enthusiastic and want to do a good job and then you have to teach them,” Colin says.
“We definitely have to do a bit more onboarding with them in terms of trying to get them to be more enthusiastic about coffee.”
Technology has also changed the equation. Modern grinders, espresso machines, and automated workflows have reduced the technical barriers to producing quality coffee, making practical workplace skills increasingly valuable.
“A person that doesn’t know an awful lot about coffee can make you a great coffee,” Colin says. “That’s definitely far more achievable than it used to be.”
This creates an interesting shift. Coffee businesses may need less technical obsession from entry-level employees than they once did, but more reliability, professionalism, and operational competence.
Whether this reflects generational change, the mainstreaming of specialty coffee, or a combination of both remains open to debate. What appears clearer is that Gen Z is entering a very different coffee industry from the one that previous generations helped build.
As businesses become more focused on profitability, retention, and operational resilience, hiring decisions are increasingly shaped by experience, reliability, and long-term value rather than enthusiasm alone.
This does not mean Gen Z workers are being pushed out of coffee. But as younger workers reshape workplace expectations, many employers are placing a growing premium on experience, reliability, and operational competence – redefining what success looks like on both sides of the hiring equation.
