Come spend the day with me as a coffee shop owner while I prepare for our upcoming menu launch! ☕️💗
In this behind-the-scenes vlog, I’m taking you through the full creative process—from making our specialty syrups from scratch to building each drink, taste-testing the recipes, and making final adjustments before launch day.
On today’s prep list: ✨ House-made fig syrup 🥥 Toasted coconut syrup 🍮 Toasted caramel syrup 🍁 Maple syrup ☕ New seasonal drink creations
Creating a menu is so much more than choosing flavors. It takes experimenting, adjusting recipes, and making sure every drink is something I’m genuinely excited to serve. This is what building a coffee brand looks like behind the pretty drinks—and I’m so excited to bring you along!
Which drink would you try first? Tell me in the comments! 💕
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A coffee shop owner in Orlando shares a behind-the-scenes look at preparing a pre-fall transitional menu. The process involves crafting homemade syrups and compotes, testing flavor profiles with coffee, and gathering critical feedback from baristas to ensure the new specialty drinks appeal to a wide range of customer tastes before the official launch.
Day in the life of a coffee shop owner. I want to take you along what I'm going to be doing today.
Sometimes it's very different from my day to day. Sometimes I come, I work, the bar, I work, I help.
But today I have to get ready for the pre-fall menu that we're launching tomorrow. So I'm going
to be working on creating some of the syrup. I love creating syrups at home. It just makes it
more authentic and more homemade and more real. So I'm going to be working on my transitional menu
from fall to from summer to fall. We're not doing pumpkin just yet. I'm going to be adding
a few things to the menu before it actually starts feeling like fall here in Florida
as I prep for that menu and what it takes to prep for a menu. We just don't launch it and that's it.
So I'm going to take you along so you guys can see exactly what I do. Okay so I'm going to be
testing out three different syrup recipes. We're going to be doing thick syrup, toasted caramel,
and toasted coconut. I have my nut milk here with all the ingredients I need and how to cook it.
And then obviously before we launch anything, we give it to my baristas to taste and if they
approve, then we launch. If not, we go back to the store and work. I couldn't find dry syrup
or fig so I found this whole fig syrup. So I think they will work. I love fig. Fig is so delicious.
It's so sweet on its own. I'm gonna leave it as a sort of like a like a fig um compost sort of.
This is what it came out right over here. You feel the whole jar of it. It's so hot.
It's like a fake jelly consistency. We usually do um strawberry compote, banana compote,
raspberry compote, mango compote. So we were used to putting these on our drinks and people love
them. So instead of being an actual syrup that we're going to pump in there, we're probably
going to just go ahead and use it as a compote on the bottom of the drink. So first syrup is done.
Okay so here is the toasted coconut syrup. Delicious. Now obviously we have to taste it
with the drink because sometimes when you do the syrups and you mix it with the coffee,
the coffee just pretty much takes over the syrup and doesn't really taste good. So
I'm going to do a step further and the remainings of the toasted coconut um like shredded,
we're going to go ahead and lay them out in a um cooking sheet, baking sheet, and we're
going to dry them in the oven so we can use that as garnish. So I'm going to go ahead and do that
Sometimes I have to hop in the line because we get a little busy and either my
sunbursts are in the bathroom or they're a break so I don't have to. Coconut wafer could be that.
Okay so I finally got done with the syrups after literally so long and some help because I would
have probably burned the kitchen down if I would have left it to myself. Toasted caramel, toasted
coconut, fig compote, and maple syrup. Now we're gonna do the drinks and see how they taste. Go
ahead and start and we're gonna start brown sugar fig latte. Latte. So we're gonna add
homemade brown syrup ahead and add our fig espresso. I'm gonna go with whole milk. This
is a simple brown sugar fig ice latte. Our next one is gonna be a maple banana bread
ice latte. Maple banana bread ice latte. No yoga. So we're doing our banana compote on the bottom.
Housemade banana compote for the drink. Two shot of espresso. Mix it well. Our maple syrup made
in-house. We're gonna do a squirt in there. Maple maple top. Here is our maple banana bread.
All right so now we're gonna do a chai. Obviously fall scrimped chai so we're gonna do chai.
About four ounces of that. Two ounces of our toasted caramel syrup. So here it is.
This is your toasted caramel coconut chai. We're gonna finish with our coconut top.
And there you have it. Our toasted caramel coconut chai.
Wait actually it's toasted caramel coconut chai.
No it just has yeah it has caramel in there as well. Okay so that one you like?
Very subtle? Yeah. Okay caramel.
Okay it's toasted. We're having the baristas taste test our drinks. It's the bottom.
Have you tasted the bottom? So I have all my notes that I know. All my syrups have the notes. All four
drinks have the notes. All most of my baristas are if they tasted my drinks and I got notes
and I like to get their feedback. This is not what I like and I just put it in the menu. I like
to really get feedback from my baristas because not everybody has same taste buds and I can't
expect all my customers to have the same taste buds. So that is why I like to bring in some other
people to taste the drinks. So I think that we're gonna go ahead and wrap this up for today. Today
was more like making sure that I had everything ready to launch my free fall menu drink tomorrow
and this is pretty much what I did. Today I didn't work the bar. Today I didn't have anything to do
in the bar. I have my team to take care of the front of the house and back of the house and I
just worked on creating and crafting drinks which is why I love doing here at my coffee shop. So if
you're ever in the Orlando area and you want something that is unique, homemade, specialty
coffee that is made with love, care, and attention, I invite you to come see us at Fifth First Coffee
shop here in Orlando. So thank you guys so much for watching and I'll catch you guys on my next
video.
