Chris McAuley Wants To Give You Things [136] - a podcast by Boss Barista

Let’s say you’re trying to get good at playing the guitar. Maybe you’re taking a class, or you have a tutor. How do you get improve? You practice—and a lot of that practice involves going home, sitting alone with your instrument, and taking time to work through every new skill or small snag: a couple of chords, finger placements, some tricky pieces of music.

Now imagine you don’t have a guitar at home. When would you practice? Would you get as good if you were only able to play at school, or with your teacher? It’s possible—but it’s not likely.

Now let’s apply this example to the service industry. How do you get better at cooking, or making pastries, or making coffee? You practice. And in an ideal world, you’d have everything you need within reach—the space, the equipment, the resources—in order to improve day by day.

Chris McAuley is the founder of getchusomegear, an organization that gives away free coffee equipment to marginalized baristas. The idea first dawned on Chris when he noticed a pattern: He knew plenty of baristas who were eager to learn, but who—despite their enthusiasm—were slower to gain new skills, simply because they didn’t have anything to brew with at home.

Since its inception, getchusomegear has shipped hundreds of boxes across the United States, expanded to Canada, and started a secondary shipping hub in Los Angeles. He and his team have worked with coffee businesses to fund grants, have helped folks with their resumes, and have created a system that normalizes mutual aid and redistribution of resources.

Perhaps what’s most telling about Chris and his mission for getchusomegear is that there is no expectation of reciprocity. You don’t have to give anything back, or commit to loan repayments. You simply state your need, and Chris and the getchusomegear team—which has expanded to educators and organizers across the country—will do their best to get you a box.

In addition to addressing the gap in equipment needs, getchusomegear also confronts the information gap. As Chris says in this episode, many have a tendency, across domains and disciplines, to hold information back, to hoard knowledge and not share it with others. In our hyper-competitive society, knowledge is often treated as its own commodity, an entity that can grant power and which must be protected. But when information is guarded, people—often people of marginalized groups—are left to scale the impossible barriers built by these gatekeepers. It’s unfair, and Chris is doing his best to break down those walls.

Just a quick note before we begin: I noticed a factual error on my part. About seven minutes into the conversation, Chris and I are talking about our early coffee jobs and I mentioned that my first job had a Mazzer Super Jolly—the source of those clack clack clack sounds you’ll hear Chris and I make later. I was misremembering: It was at my second job that we had a Swift grinder and a Super Jolly. At my first job, we had a Mahlkönig that I think was K30, which we were not allowed to change the dial-in on. Now, on to the show.

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