We train unemployed youth to become coffee barristers, equipping them with a globally recognised skill and the potential of a better future.

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90%

Employment rate

Red Band Barista Academy holds the outstretched hands of the unemployed  and teaches  those same hands to pour outstanding coffee and grasp opportunity.

1 Skill unlocks a world
of potential

The Red Band project educates and empowers. Our young graduates emerge with a new sense of confidence in themselves, their potential and their purpose. Acquiring  the  skill  to  make  global standard coffee fosters a desire to develop and showcase  other  innate  talents,  and  instills  a  belief  that they can not only better their own life, but that of their families and communities as well.

300
Graduates
06
Academies

2 Clear routes to employment

Coffee baristers are in massive demand both locally and globally. We have the the potential to place x amount of Red Band graduates throughout Africa every year via our two well established routes to employment.

Route 1

INDUSTRY PLACEMENT

We place our trained baristas with industry icons such as Seattle Coffee Company, add name, add name. Our goal is to ensure all graduates are employed and valued long-term, consistently achieve managerial positions, and further expand their responsibilities and abilities.

Route 2

RED BAND SKILLS BAR

Outstanding graduates are offered a year’s placement at a Red Band Skills Bar as a result of special relationships with corporate partners willing to invest in their community. These companies launch an bar on premises coffee bar which our graduate baristas both manage and operate.

5 Weeks of training

Week 1-2
JOB READINESS COURSE
Week 2-4
HISTORY OF COFFEE MACHINE MAINTENANCE
ESPRESSO EXTRACTION
MILK TEXTURING
Week 4-5
WEEK-LONG WORK SHADOW
graduation

Celebrating achievement

Graduation day is something we consciously celebrate with our new baristas. On this special day the coffee flows (sometimes tears do too) and the smiles are endless.”

A symbol of excellence

Each barista receives what has become iconic in our culture – a red band, representing ubuntu and our ‘band of baristas.’

How the brand started

1 SIMPLE VISION

Combine a passion for coffee and a love for humanity

3 CLOSE FRIENDS

Shaun, Ryan and Jo

A DEFINED GOAL

Provides excellent coffee training and real job opportunities for youths

THE RESULT

Combine a passion for coffee and a love for humanity

Coffee for Heroes

Front-line workers were unarguably the heroes of the COVID-19 pandemic. In support of their efforts, Redband set up mobile coffee counters at hospitals and offered community-sponsored coffees to medical professionals made by our very own baristas. 10 hospitals were served over 3000 cups of coffee in Nelson Mandela Bay, Cape Town and Jinga, Uganda.

Our global partners

Press Release

Heading

November 10, 2022

Gqe­berha’s Red Band Barista Academy recently received one of the highest accol­ades of suc­cess in the national cof­fee industry.

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Milk hearts and a bubbly barista: Gqeberha’s coffee dynamo relishes the sweet aroma of success

November 15, 2021

Barista Babsie Mtya went from being an unemployed graduate to owning her own coffee shop, fulfilling a dream and putting a kick in Gqeberha’s coffee scene.

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How Do you Tackle Youth Unemployment? A Barista Academy

October 8, 2015

Taking the Red Band Barista Academy from a dream to a feasible business plan wasn’t easy. There were so many questions we had to answer: How long should the course be? How in-depth should we go?

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