Latte art battles have all the right ingredients for a great coffee event. Coffee. Competition. A cheering crowd. Baristas showing off skills they normally perform on the job is now pure fun. And a bit of prestige.
Best thing? You don't need a huge coffee festival to organise one.
A coffee shop, roastery, showroom or local event space is enough. Add baristas, judges, good equipment and a crowd and things can get surprisingly competitive surprisingly quickly.
Want to organise your own? Here are 10 things worth getting right.
1. Make it easy to join
Free entrance is your friend.
You want baristas to bring colleagues, friends and coffee people along. Open registration beforehand through an event page or simple registration form, but keep the event itself accessible to spectators.
2. Get the coffee community involved
Don't organise for the coffee community. Organise with it.
Invite local coffee shops, roasters, baristas and other coffee businesses. Ask people to spread the word through their own networks. Think funky invitation posters and flyers in friendly coffeebars.
Milk and plant-based drink brands can be great partners too. Latte art is the perfect opportunity to demonstrate what their products can do when properly steamed.
And why not start the event with a coffee run? Meet at the venue, head out together and come back for coffee and competition. Running clubs and coffee shops have become rather good friends lately.
3. Pick a place people actually want to hang out
A coffee shop after closing hours can be perfect. So can a roastery, showroom or warehouse.
The important bit is atmosphere and enough room around the competition area for people to see what's happening.
If you're an equipment supplier, neutral territory can help. A latte art battle should feel like a coffee community event, not a sales demo with prizes.
4. Find a good host. A microphone. An experienced jury.
Do not underestimate this one.
A good host keeps the competition moving, introduces the baristas, explains what is happening and gets the crowd involved.
Then find three knowledgeable judges. (Local) latte art champions, experienced baristas or respected coffee professionals all work.
Three judges is also the fair way to go when voting for the nicest tulip, swan or rosetta.
5. Decide how the battle works
Keep the rules understandable. Work with knock-out rounds, use a spinning wheel or latte art dice to decide which latte art patterns contestants need to pour. Apart from the classics like heart, tulip, rosetta or swan... do a free pour round and let creativity go wild.
Put variation in the pouring rounds. At Perfect Moose Cappuccino Clashes for example, baristas start off steaming manually. In the next round, they steam automated with the Perfect Moose. Identical milk foam quality to start with, means more focus on the pour itself.
6. Free coffees for the crowd, zero waste, max taste
All those great cappuccinos and irrestistible flat whites? Hand them out for free to the crowd.
Make people happy with free top-notch coffee while coffee, milk and equipment suppliers get their products tasted and seen. Nothing but good vibes and no waste whatsoever.
7. Build a proper competition bar
Treat your latte art stations like small professional coffee bars.
You'll need fresh coffee, an espresso machine, grinder, (automated) tamper, milk fridge, pitchers, cups, knock box, pitcher rinser, cleaning cloths and somewhere for dirty cups and waste to disappear.
2 pouring stations are ideal. Talk to suppliers to help you out with machinery, milk, beans... win-win for all.
Think about workflow before people arrive.
Where does the next contestant wait? Where is milk stored? Where does the finished cup go? Where are the judges? Who will be cleaning the cups.
Good coffee bar workflow matters during normal service.
Put 30 competitive baristas around it and you'll be able to inspire them with the advantages of a smart coffee workflow.
8. Give people something worth battling for
A prize adds some healthy tension.
It doesn't necessarily have to be enormous. Coffee equipment, beans, barista tools and goodies (never underestimate a good coffee sticker) from participating brands can make a great prize package.
But if you're expecting experienced competitors, make the main prize worth getting nervous about.
9. Make it photogenic
People will take pictures. Help them take good ones, or even better: get a photographer who knows the coffee scene. Share the pictures on your socials... people will reconnect and share the vibes with you.
Create a clear competition area, give the poured cup a dedicated judging spot and make sure partners and organisers are visible without covering every available surface in logos.
One of our favourite tricks is a Polaroid wall: photograph every contestant, write their name underneath and build the battle board as the evening progresses.
They get to take the picture home afterwards.
Your event gets a face.
10. Remember why you're doing it
Of course a latte art battle can introduce people to a coffee shop, equipment brand, roastery or new product.
But don't make that the evening.
Give baristas somewhere to meet. Let people try things out. Encourage conversations between competitors, judges, suppliers and the crowd.
Have a coffee. Make some noise.
Pour questionable swans and magnificent tulips.
Because the best coffee events do something rather simple: they get coffee people out from behind their own bars and bring them together.
And we think that's beautiful.
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Follow the Moose events page to see when Perfect Moose Cappuccino Clashes are going down. Are you organizing a latte art battle involving a Perfect Moose? Let us know. We'll share.
