Visit at Prufrock

A couple of days ago I returned from London where, apart from wandering around the city I had an internship at Prufrock. And it was great! If you enjoy your work and have the opportunity definitely go try doing it somewhere else. I’m sure it will be a priceless experience you’ll learn a lot of new things and get a new impulses. For example I’ve found that when a Scotsman asks you “what kind of pour-overs do you have?” you don’t know if he’s asking about mixers or if he’s asking about anything at all. That wine is quite expensive in England and how important it is to pay attention to even seemingly unimportant details.

I believe most of you know Prufrock thanks to the fact that Petra started her career in it. For those who don’t it’s a London cafe, operating since 2011 and one of the founders Gwilym Davies later founded and runs the Naughty Dog roastery. To this day Prufrock is one of the cafes shaping the London coffee scene and if you want great coffee in London this is not to be missed.

Even though I arrived on a quiet week (local baristas claimed) it was pretty busy! The doors don’t crack and 9-12kg of Red Brick, their house espresso is ground daily. Because of this it was a school for me especially in efficiency. How to effectively organize a bar, the distribution of forces around it and most importantly yourself in it. I learned very quickly what good habits are and how important it was to give them space and attention, even if they seemed like trivialities in a smaller volume. Conversely, I also discovered which moves I was doing extra or badly. Because of the rush I didn’t have much time to think and pretty quickly got into the process and. The good thing is that there are enough people on shift so that everyone is busy but not too busy. That way everyone has enough time for their tasks and everything works smoothly as a whole. Plus, because of the rotation of positions throughout the day the work is not boring or draining. If you’re starting a business where is likely a high volume of guests, go see a similarly well-run business like Prufrock right now!

What I also really liked and all cafes should take inspiration from is the absolute “no problem” approach. This works both between colleagues. You simply don’t cry over spilled milk and when something goes wrong it gets fixed. And it works mainly towards the guests – everyone tries to make their time in the shop as pleasant as possible.

One day I also went to the Square Mile roastery which owns Prufrock and primarily their coffee is served there. They have recently added space for a green coffee warehouse so there is plenty of room for everything and everything is beautifully organized. They showed us everything and we sampled some pre-production coffee. If you want a sneak peek before the latest expansion, James Hoffmann filmed a roastery tour on his YouTube channel.

There is time for work and time for fun!

I’ve managed to check out some other places in London so I’ll give you some tips 🙂

There’s a Colona not far from Prufrock, good filters brewed at Aeropress. If you’ll have espresso better have it as a lungo. They do shots from a Mahlkönig EK43 grinder so longer shots will definitely taste better. Also behind the corner is Catalyst which is supposedly good, I apparently had bad luck on a bad shift but maybe you’ll have better experience. And the new Dark Arts shop in Soho is worth a visit too.

Jolene’s is an awesome bakery! Definitely go, ideally take more people with you to try more of their tasty stuff. Not far from one of their branches is Batch Baby, which is a very cool hipster place with a lot of culture going on besides the awesome coffee.

A really nice, fresh place with kraft beers is Mikkeller (also just down the street from Prufrock). Plus, it’s on a busy street so I believe there’s some good food nearby too.

And if you have a free afternoon – or three make sure you go to the Barbican centre! It’s got everything and it’s awesome!!

If you’re no stranger to a bike, rent one and ride it. It’s super chaotic and really good fun! Plus it’s a pretty efficient way to get around the centre. Well if you don’t get lost…

I got a bunch of other tips from locals about food, wine bars, cafes, etc that I didn’t get a chance to try, so I won’t post them here but if you’re interested, let me know I’ll be happy to share.

Finally, all that’s left to say is thank you. It was great, thanks a lot for that! Biggest thanks goes to Petra and Adam, the whole Prufrock team, especially Šárka and Jan for making it possible. If you can, go try something like this!

Bye, Tom