Premier Training Campus Spotlight: Matthew Algie
Matthew Algie is an independent coffee roaster founded in Glasgow, Scotland in 1864.
Premier Training Campuses (PTC) are Specialty Coffee Association (SCA) member companies or organizations whose facilities have been inspected and certified by the SCA. The program recognizes that these facilities offer an exceptional education setting for coffee education.
This week, GOSIA LENDZIOSZEK, Coffee Excellence Manager, tells us about Matthew Algie’s Premier Training Campuses.
Gosia Lenszioszek teaching a group of students at one of Matthew Algie’s training campuses
The company’s founder, Matthew Algie, was originally a grocer by trade, selling tea that arrived on the famous Clyde Clipper ships, but he soon set up his own tea blending and wholesale business. Following the second world war, as coffee became more popular in the UK, Matthew Algie also began to stock coffee. Within 30 years, in line with the growing demand for coffee in the UK, the company’s primary focus became coffee, and it later became one of the first companies to cater to the burgeoning specialty coffee movement in the United Kingdom. In fact, in 2018, Matthew Algie was the first UK coffee roastery with SCA-accredited Premier Training Campuses.
Alongside roasting coffee for thousands of cafés and hospitality businesses across the UK and Ireland, Matthew Algie offers barista training. Coffee professionals and enthusiastic consumers can take the SCA’s Coffee Skills Program certification courses in Barista Skills and Brewing with Matthew Algie at one of the company’s three training facilities located in Glasgow, London, and Dublin, each achieving the SCA’s Premiere Training Campus status. Each campus has a dedicated Authorized Specialty Coffee Trainer (AST) delivering the SCA courses.
Gosia Lendzioszek, a trainer at the London site, tells us why Matthew Algie decided to become a PTC: “Matthew Algie has long been known for its exceptional training support to our café customers. Our three facilities and team of trainers on the ground are an invaluable resource. SCA campus certification evidences the value we place on coffee training and enhances our pursuit of coffee excellence. Our motto is 'we are more than coffee roasters, we are coffee masters.' We aim to empower baristas to become masters of their trade. And in doing so, we can achieve our ultimate ambition, which is to help cafés thrive.” Now more than ever, the team is working together with this shared mission.
For Gosia and Matthew Algie, the PTC accreditation is evidence of the value they place on coffee training, “and enhances our pursuit of coffee excellence.” The accreditation helps bring specialty coffee awareness to the local coffee community and encourages professional growth. “Seeing how passionate people can become as they learn—and how much more skilled and confident they are by the end of the sessions” is a real motivator for the team, shares Gosia. With campuses covering the UK and Ireland, Matthew Algie works with a diverse coffee scene. Gosia loves “interacting with a broad variety of people, from skilled coffee professionals to enthusiastic coffee lovers who want to enhance their home brewing skills. From my own experience here in London, we have become spoilt for choice in recent years when it comes to speciality coffee. It has been great to see so many new and diverse coffee businesses opening up.”
Gosia has seen the effect COVID-19 continues to have on businesses and the local community, one she says may be lasting. “Where we may have had thriving city centre based coffee shops for commuters, these are now struggling as people continue to work from home. It is coffee shops in suburbs and residential areas that have the biggest opportunities now.”
The pandemic has been tough on many of us, but Gosia remains positive and motivated to continue teaching: “Having the ability to share my knowledge with other people, helping them develop a new skill, whether in person or remotely continues to drive me. Creating new ways of coffee teaching such as developing e-learning modules, is also motivating.”
Matthew Algie have implemented changes to their facilities to ensure staff, customer, and learner safety for their in-person courses. Ahead of taking a course, learners are required to complete a health questionnaire and asked to bring and wear a mask. Temperature checks, hand sanitation, and recording all site visitors are just the starting point when it comes to ensuring classes can be offered safely. To ensure that a social distance of two meters is maintained, class sizes have been reduced from eight to five. Learners are given their own coffee samples during the practical sensory elements of courses such as cuppings and pulling espressos.
For those who are unable to travel or would rather attend courses virtually, Matthew Algie plans to launch virtual classes at the start of 2021; learners will be able to take an SCA Coffee Skills Program course in Barista Foundation.
Achieving SCA Campus certification offers global recognition of a company’s dedication to make coffee better. Learn more about how to get your own training facility certified here.
If you want to find a Campus near you, visit our Campus Map.
Photos from Matthew Algie Training Campuses in UK and Ireland