This topic Where coffee shops will invest to: barista trainings or automatic coffee machines? will be discussed during the round table in the frame of the 3rd Moscow International Coffee Forum. Among participants: - Gleb Neveykin, director of barista department, coffee-shop chain Coffeemania; - Anna Tsfasman, managing director of coffee-shop chain Koffein; - Nicholay Gotko, chief technologist of coffee-shop chain Ideal Cup; - Denis Yakhno, CEO of consulting company catering Yakhno Project and other experts. The fight for coffee oriented customer is pushing coffee shops to a constant search for new and original ways to attract attention of visitors. The owners buy elite coffee from the best suppliers, roast it on their own equipment - sometimes directly in coffee shops to be able to prepare drinks from freshly roasted coffee. Almost every coffee shop now sells its own branded packaged coffee or finds a partner which ensures the coffee it needs. One of the most popular ways of self-identification is presence in a company a coffee guru - barista. Coffee shops hire a professional famous barista. Often, the barista is a key person in a store, he well understands in various sorts of coffee beans, knows all about how to roast and prepare a variety of drinks from coffee. Obviously, the coffee master must have excellent skills in the use of not only a grinder or a shaker, but should deal with a complicated professional coffee machine. There are not so many free professionals on the market, so coffee shops need to educate newcomers. However, the preparation of high quality barista is a long-term process, requiring considerable investment. To improve the skills of new employees, a company is spending energy, time and money, often recruiting even a whole department dealing with baristas training. But will not the efforts be in vain? Perhaps it’s easier and more profitable to equip the facility with fully automatic coffee machines? Because there is no guarantee that the trained staff decides one day to move to another company. At the same time, the development of modern technology makes automatic preparation of any products, including coffee, more and more perfect. It's not a secret that automatic coffee machines which prepare coffee drinks quickly and of high quality are getting very popular among today’s consumers.  Such equipment is used both at home and in offices and more recently - and in some catering establishments. The use of these machines looks more attractive due to their high efficiency and simplicity in operation, and there is no danger of a transition of such called super automatic barista to another company. For the preparation of tasty and aroma drink it’s just necessary to press one button. This is of course very attractive for a number of coffee houses. The main purpose of the round table is to discuss the most likely routes of coffee institutions development in view of automatic technology improving  and prospects for barista profession. The round table will bring together representatives of coffee shops and independent experts. Source: http://coffeetea.ru/en/coffee-forum/