Way back in 2006 I started as a part time barista working in my local Starbucks store in Leicester, where I grew up. This was my first proper job and I did a couple of shifts a week whilst studying for my A-Levels. I picked Starbucks because I had a friend that worked there who said it’s pretty cool working here. It’s nice and flexible and the people are really great, fancy coming along? And I said, yes.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body>\n\n
Never, ever did I imagine that, 18 years later, I’d still be a partner and doing what I do now \u2013 it\u2019s been a whirlwind!\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body>\n\n
What does your role of group manager of beverage development in EMEA look like?<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body>\n\n The simplest way I describe my role to my friends and family is, we are the team that creates What is a standout career highlight from for your 18 years at Starbucks?<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body>\n\n The big life changing moment in my career came in 2015 when I won the Starbucks UK Barista Championship, a competition which runs each year where all baristas in our stores across the world have the opportunity to showcase their expertise and passion for coffee. This was the moment everything changed, I stopped working in store and for a year, I said yes to everything that came my way. Being the British Champion opened doors and opportunities I could never imagine.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body>\n\n Can you give us a little more detail on the process of creating new drinks?<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body>\n\n Working with the category team, we will receive a brief with lots of market and customer insight that highlights a potential new opportunity for us to meet customer needs. We then ask ourselves, what is the problem to solve here? Who are the customers we are trying to engage? What do they want from us which they are not already getting? And so on\u2026\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body>\n\n From there, we can come up with over 100 different paper concepts, with limitless creativity and imagination which we then work through and discover what is actually feasible, what best solves the problem we\u2019ve identified. Whittling down to around 50 ideas we conduct rapid consumer testing tools to figure out what spikes interest, what resonates.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body>\n\n This stage is purely about flavour and what the initial customer sentiment is to our proposals. We get those 50 down to around 10 ideas which we then take forward, working with our supply base to create the components. This is where the intricacies come in and we get into the nitty gritty elements. More sweetness, less floral notes, or whatever we are looking for.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body>\n\n Then comes lots of tasting, lots of making, and periodically through this time, we sit down and reassess, we put it back out to consumers to see if it’s still of interest, as the idea goes from just single flavour to concept. Eventually we’ll sit down as a business and decide, okay, this is what we’re going to launch for this time of year. This is what it’s going to be. This is the new beverage.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body>\n\n\n What is the most challenging aspect of this process?<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body>\n\n A big part of the challenge is making sure that you can deliver this flavour and this concept in a repeatable manner, so we spend a lot of time making sure that the flavour delivery method fits into our store rhythms.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body>\n\n Do you have any tips on how to make great coffee at home?<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body>\n\n There are a couple of top tips I can share. Firstly, if you’re making an espresso, make sure you weigh your coffee. It makes such a difference to have the correct coffee to water ratio.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body>\n\n Secondly, make sure you clean your machine and if you have a grinder, make sure that is also crystal clean. As soon as the coffee starts to go stale, it will leave a taint, and you always taste it. It\u2019ll make it taste a bit bitter, even though it isn’t.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body>\n\n Then finally, it is all about the milk. Spend a bit of time on your milk. The secret to steaming great milk is looking for a paper tearing sound. It should never scream at you. I always think if you ever hear milk and it’s really loud, that’s the milk telling you it’s in pain. It should be kind of like a nice shushing sound as you go, and then you should be good to go.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body>\n\n And of course, practice. The more you make, the better you get.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body>\n\n\n Finally, <\/strong>if you were allowed one dream perk, what would it be?\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body>\n\n Being able to visit our coffee farmers in Costa Rica, Indonesia and Rwanda again as part of the Origin Experience.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body>\n\n I had the privilege of participating in the Origin Experience in 2016, an annual trip where 1,000 employees have the opportunity to visit one of Starbucks\u2019 farms to learn more about the bean-to-cup journey.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body>\n\n Seeing how any agricultural product is produced and stewarded and the people that create it is very powerful, and coffee is no different.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Starbucks was founded on a love for high quality coffee, and no one embodies this ethos more than our very own partner, Sam Henderson. As group manager of beverage development here in EMEA, Sam is the mastermind behind the products you\u2019ll find available across Europe, the Middle East and Africa.\u00a0 From a Green Apron Partner […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":67761,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"starbucks_cheetahmail_notify_on_publish":false,"starbucks_aep_notified_at":0,"sbux_color_theme":"default","sbux_typography_theme":"default","byline":"","sbux_is_featured":false,"featured_image_focal_point_x":0,"featured_image_focal_point_y":0,"hide_related_posts":false,"downloadable_assets":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[2137,2141],"class_list":["post-67753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-partner-interview","tag-sam-henderson"],"yoast_head":"\n\u00a0<\/s>the drinks that you see in our Starbucks stores across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. From the initial ideas for the drinks themselves to then working with our manufacturing partners and many other departments within Starbucks to deliver the drink to our stores where our in store partners then bring them to life –\u00a0basically just eat and drink all day!\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body>\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/stories.starbucks.com\/uploads\/sites\/17\/2025\/01\/twobytwo_Starbucks_Limitless_2023-859.jpg\")
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