Job Description

Overview

If you’ve been looking to get into a coffee roastery with a career path for roasting coffee, this might be the opportunity for you. We’re looking for a full time production assistant with the opportunity to learn to roast coffee. You’ll start off at the ground floor learning everything about what we do, mastering our production processes, quality controls, fulfillment and delivery. We’ll also train you to produce our bulk cold brew, as well participate in delivering our products to local cafes and restaurants.

Our ideal candidate understands that details are important! You should be self motivated, possess a great work ethic, and have the ability to easily work with varying roles and personalities. At Whirlwind we believe our actions should do all the talking -- we hope you believe this too.

The following are core responsibilities this role will be involved in over the course of your first year. Additional training will be provided depending on existing experience.

Key Responsibilities:

General Production

• Product Packaging/Stickering: Label, bag, and grind coffee, maintaining a high standard of quality and accuracy, following guidelines for each bag style.
• Orders and Prep: Prepare orders for shipment and/or local delivery, keeping orders organized and meeting each order's needs.
• Greens Prep: Blend and prepare green coffee batches following blend recipes, making an effort to be efficient and making a note of anything out of place or stock.
• Inventory Management/Communication: Restock and keep an eye on inventory levels (bags, stickers, beans) and alert management of low stock.
• Equipment and Tools: Own the BOH and garage, keeping the area clean (and keeping the equipment in the packaging areas clean, including scales, grinders, and other equipment after use.
• Work Area Maintenance: Maintain a clean, orderly, and safe packaging area, adhering to health and safety protocols.
• Collaboration: Work closely with the production team to meet packaging deadlines, share updates, uphold quality standards, taste coffees, and give your honest notes no notes are “wrong.”
• Drive our delivery van dropping off orders (coffee and kegs) to various wholesale accounts as needed.

Cold brew

• Grinding and preparing coffee for cold brew. Following our recipe guides, the grind size may change depending on what is being brewed.
• Programming a Brew Bomb to get the correct extraction and TDS.
• Filling 5 gallon kegs, sealing and purging each keg with nitrogen.
• Performing QC/QA, ensuring all kegs have no leaks and each keg is clean and properly labeled, including (branding and labeling with a date sticker, etc.)
• Assist in cleaning all keg equipment, keg lines, taps, and other equipment as needed and participate in seasonal maintenance.
• Tasting every batch for quality and ensuring there are no defects (off flavors). Reporting all issues in flavor or consistency to production management.

Roasting Apprenticeship

It is our intention to train this candidate to eventually grow into a capable production roaster. Once our ideal candidate has demonstrated success in the production role and has passed all success criteria (laid out at the start of this position), they will be eligible for our roaster training program. Please note,   you must demonstrate success as a production team member in order to join this program. The right candidates will be evaluated as early as 60 days but will have up to 120 days to demonstrate they are ready to join this program.

Minimum Requirements to be eligible for this position:

• Experience working in the coffee industry in any capacity
• Strong desire for previous production and/or roasting or cold brew experience
• Must be willing and comfortable occasionally driving a small delivery van, and have a license.
• Must be able to lift up to 40lbs (think 5 gallon kegs).

What we’re looking for:

• A great human! Someone with a passion for coffee and more importantly, a desire to contribute more good in this world.
• Great organizational and people skills. Strong, clear communication is necessary.
• Must be a problem solver, someone with a natural passion for solving challenges,   listening   and thoughtfully sharing with others the solutions they’ve come up with.
• Should exude confidence, positivity, motivation and empathy; someone who brings the best out in people naturally and the room is better because they are in it.
• Must be willing and enthusiastic to learn/operate a large spectrum of equipment, machinery, and tools related to coffee and/or brewing.
• An innovative soul that isn’t scared of continually trying or learning new things in the name of progress.
• MUST have a “No job is too small” attitude and be capable of helping others lift heavy objects from time to time (think coffee beans).
• Raw leadership and coaching talents looking for further leadership growth and grooming.

More About Whirlwind Coffee

Whirlwind Coffee Co., is a coffee roastery and cafe in Oak Park IL,, with the mission of giving all net profits back to charities and communities in need. We are looking to hire a motivated super human with a ton of moxie and love for coffee. This hybrid operational role will be hands-on running our cafe and retail store as well as being cross trained in our roastery operations.

Founded on a love for coffee and desire to do more, our mission is simple:

• Roast damn good coffee;
• Sell it to good humans at a fair price;
• Give back 100% of all net profits to support charities and communities.

Job Type: Full-time

Benefits:

• 401(k)
• Dental insurance
• Employee discount
• Flexible schedule
• Health insurance
• On-the-job training
• Paid sick time
• Paid time off
• Parental leave
• Vision insurance

Application Question(s):

• Tells us why your interested in coffee or this industry, and what stood out to you about this post.

Ability to Commute:

• Oak Park, IL 60302 (Required)

Job Tags

Full time, Apprenticeship, Seasonal work, Local area, Flexible hours,

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