Interview with Fraser Singleton, La Marzocco Home Service Specialist, Queensland.
Can you tell something that you’d love about the technician?
I love the constant problem solving and opportunities to learn something new. I love the versatility of the technician role and I found that my specialty coffee career was sort of plateauing. Short of getting into roasting or opening my own cafe or competing more heavily. I’d kind of reached the point where I’d done everything I wanted to and was just looking for something a bit more challenging. Another technical company reached out and asked me to come on as an apprentice, and for a company through a tech that I’d met, they remembered how enthusiastic I’d been about what they were doing. It came at the perfect time of my life. At the time, my daughter was six months old. It was a breath of fresh air every day, something new to learn, new techniques and new machines. I’d wake up every day excited, what am I going to learn today? Any barista will tell you; you spend five to six days a week in the same cafe, not very many of us wanted to go and spend our day off in another café. Because of this, I’d never see these new cafes, and now I see all of them, or I’m installing them. I see more cafes in a week than I would see in a year!
How could someone else go about getting into the coffee machine technician industry?
That is something we get asked all the time. The first thing I like to tell people is that you do need a restricted electrical license to work on equipment in certain Australian states. But the best way to do it is, like a lot of a lot of our techs, you work in a roastery. You might be on the bar, then you might move into helping one of the sales reps with cleaning grinders, and then suddenly, get some experience behind you in the industry. That goes a long way. For me, I was always looking at new ways of extracting. The next step for me was asking ‘how does my grinder work? How does my coffee machine work? Have I read the manual?
What do you find is the most rewarding part of working with the La Marzocco Home Service customers?
One of the joys of servicing any coffee machine, especially with La Marzocco, is solving problems and guaranteeing that customer satisfaction. Even if it’s just a service and they say ‘Hey, my machine is fantastic, I love it.’ I love having the opportunity to show them that we care. They’ve gone so far as to buy the best possible equipment for their home coffee setup and we’re there to make sure it’s running smoothly. And you know, they’re obviously fans, and you’re a huge fan, you know! This is a dream come true for me working with La Marzocco. I love being able to nerd out and share a little bit of knowledge. I love inspiring the home user to get out there and try different coffe, check out different roasters and support their local cafes. Any opportunity to educate someone and to share a passion is always rewarding, I think.
That’s really touching, thank you so much for chatting today!
No worries at all.
