People’s passion for coffee is real! Most coffee lovers are strong loyalists who have their favourite place to get their caffeine fix at. After all, to get a cuppa that helps you power through the day, you would only trust people who understand and can distinguish between a good and a great coffee.
There goes the secret of the ever growing love for McCafé.
At McCafé, we have Q Graders like Bhushan Pagdhare who obsess over the quality of coffee from farm to cup – right from the time of bean picking to brewing to pouring – to make sure you only get the best tasting coffee.
But who exactly is a Q Grader?
To put things simply, a Q Grader is a certified professional who can grade coffees based on standards developed by the Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA). To become a Q Grader, one must be aware of the grading and cupping protocols from around the world, and keep up with the latest coffee trends.
According to Bhushan, being a certified Q Grader means being someone who knows and understands coffee to its very bean. “The journey of a great cup of coffee starts right from the beans. We have this internal audits where every quarter, the McCafé team visits coffee graders and suppliers, and evaluates coffee beans on various parameters,” Bhushan says.
To elaborate, the McCafé team begins with evaluating the moisture content of the coffee beans before they are roasted. They then move on to evaluating the roasted coffee samples. “We use 100% certified Arabica beans for the McCafé blend. Arabica is the most premium form of coffee and we source our beans from Chikmagalur, Karnataka, where the finest coffee in India is grown,” he says.
And then, we have our baristas
It’s just not the beans that make the best cup of coffee. The person who makes that cup of perfectly brewed hot coffee also plays an equally important role. At McCafé, we have the best baristas on-board. Every McCafé barista goes through 100 hours of rigorous training before they can hit the floor. Those hours of training cover the entire coffee-making process- from grinding coffee, tamping, milk-frothing, to learning latte art. As a result, we have a team of experts who know coffee,” Bhushan adds.
So next time you have coffee at McCafé, we hope you think about all these experts who make the art of making real good coffee possible. From our Q Graders to baristas, they all play a very significant role behind the handcrafted coffee we are so proud of.
