MERCED, Calif. — At 6 a.m. on a recent summer morning, as the rest of the world slept, Alex Alba Jimenez brewed what many would soon drink — a special blend of coffee beans with notes of tropical fruit.
“It's very summer, like beachy, because it has floral, passion fruit, and guava,” the 18-year-old barista said.
He works at the Sensory Lab, an independent coffee shop in the heart of Merced, where he crafts all kinds of fun flavors.
For instance, there’s the Morocco mint, a cold brew coffee with sprigs of mint and brown sugar that’s freshly ground and mingled with ice in a cocktail shaker. Curiously, Alba Jimenez doesn’t actually like coffee, but if he did, he said he’d drink that.
He also makes Ichigo matcha – bright green matcha powder whisked together with water and milk along with saccharine strawberry puree – as well as other menu items like the Coco Loco matcha, Golden Monkey and Mexican mocha.
The skills – including wielding a blow torch for some drinks – are all a part of his job as a barista, which he started in July. But before that, he was paid to learn the job as an intern. The Sensory Lab offers internships through an employment program with the city of Merced and the Merced County Department of Workforce Investment.
The program lasts for a few months and works like a skills crash course many typical barista jobs don’t offer. For instance, interns can attend a class on latte art, the designs that are poured from steamed milk – Alba Jimenez is still working on his blooming tulips – and they also learn coffee history and how to roast coffee beans.
Alba Jimenez said the experience widened his perspective.
“[I am] understanding the true meaning behind it and the work that’s behind every single cup,” Alba Jimenez said.
What is specialty coffee and why is it popular?
According to Peter Giuliano, the chief research officer at the Specialty Coffee Association, “specialty coffee” has some sort of attribute that makes it unique beyond the mass-produced coffee beans that can be bought at a grocery store and brewed in a drip coffee machine at home.
But within that realm, there’s a lot of variation. For instance, specialty coffee can include drinks that have added syrups or milk, such as a latte or a caramel macchiato.
“Starbucks is a specialty coffee company, and so is [The Sensory Lab],” Giuliano said. “But those are very different spaces from one another…. we've gotten very diverse within our 50% of the market.”
According to Jonathan Morris, a coffee historian at the University of Hertfordshire in the United Kingdom and author of the book “Coffee: A global history,” coffee as a beverage gained popularity in the United States in the late 19th century as emigration from Europe grew.
But it wasn’t until the 1990s that specialty coffee began to increase in popularity, with drinks like the cappuccino and the latte. Coffee shops also started selling a specific experience.
Morris said by the late ‘90s and early 21st century, people started to form another definition of specialty coffee: coffee defined by where the coffee beans originated.
“They kind of move coffee into a much more traceable, identifiable thing with much more flavor characteristic,” Morris said. “The sort of stuff that you see now on the bag says ‘notes of Jasmine tea’ and all the rest of it. And it will say exactly where it came from.”
According to a 2024 report by the Specialty Coffee Association, 45% of American adults reported drinking specialty coffee in the past day, which represents an increase of 80% since 2011. Visits to independent coffee shops have also grown in recent years, compared to corporate coffee chains such as Starbucks and Dunkin’. According to data from location analytics website Placer.ai that tracked foot traffic at coffee shops, about 4% of visits were to small coffee chains in 2024, up from 3% in 2019.
Young people have been driving this popularity, Morris said. Indeed, the report found those under the age of 40 made up more than half of the specialty coffee consumption.
Internship could be a door to the coffee world
The Sensory Lab’s owner, Justin Shen, wants young people to know all there is to specialty coffee. He also wants to build the specialty coffee workforce in Merced.
“That's No. 1, is basically, build this community so we have a more experienced barista at their young age,” he said.
Shen thinks it’s only natural to introduce people to career opportunities when they’re young. He also thinks the specialty coffee industry can be a worthwhile career in the long run, like it became for him.
“Age doesn’t matter. But at the same time, I feel like if I could’ve learned coffee when I was a high schooler, and by a professional specialty coffee shop owner instead of fast food or a franchise coffee training, it would’ve helped to shape my view and my knowledge of coffee at a very young age,” Shen said.
Robert Theurer came upon the idea to offer the barista internship after a visit to The Sensory Lab. Thuerer, who works for Merced County, was trying to find small businesses willing to hire interns ages 16 through 24 for his Merced Youth Jobs program.
The city-sponsored program pays for The Sensory Lab and other companies to provide internships in hospitality, fast food, and food service industries, as well as supportive services like rental assistance and clothing. The point of the program is to land Merced’s young people a job in a specific business or industry after completing 200 hours of work. Theurer said he wishes this internship program had been available when he was growing up in Merced.
“This did not exist, and honestly, I would have loved that,” Theurer said. “Just to give me a foot in the door, especially straight out of high school.”
Shen hired Alba Jimenez as his first intern in March, and since then, Theurer said he’s received a flurry of youth applications interested in working at the shop.
Giuliano and Morris, the coffee experts, said they think the internship is a great way to enter the coffee industry, which has a lot more to offer than entry-level barista jobs.
“It can also be the beginning of a really kind of amazing career in the coffee world,” Guiliano said.
Guiliano started as a barista when he was young, so he wasn’t surprised young people would love it. For one, he said young people like making their coffee order part of their identity.
“Young people are starting to experiment with their own tastes,” Guiliano said. “They are much much more highly motivated by customization.”
He and Morris said young people are also drawn to safe, welcoming, and Instagrammable spaces.
“We used to think, students – they’re easy. You go send them into the nearest bar,” Morris said. “Now, you know, we can't get them in the bars. You've got to provide the coffee shops.”
Morris explained that beyond the cafe and the customization, many young people also see drinking specialty coffee as a form of bucking large corporations.
“It's the rebellion against the big, canned coffee companies, the Folgers, it's all those people,” Morris said.
He also said the explosion of specialty coffee on social media furthered the interest in visually-appealing drinks and spaces.
“You have to design the shop so that it looks good on Instagram,” Morris said. “So obviously, the people who are influencers…. who are micro influencers among their own little peer group, can get their shots, and you've got to make your coffee look really nice.”
Indeed, Alba Jimenez said he’s persuaded his peers to visit The Sensory Lab through his own pictures and videos of his creations that he posts on social media.
“Most of the time, you would pay more for something that looks pretty and that is aesthetically pleasing,” Alba Jimenez said.
Finding community, artistry in coffee
Alba Jimenez’s favorite part of the job is the environment because he said it’s nostalgic. He grew up in Jalisco, Mexico, where his parents would sip and connect at the local coffee shop.
“They used to joke that they would take three hours drinking it because they wanted to really enjoy it,” Alba Jimenez said.
His dad always appreciated the flavor profiles that came with different beans, and now he makes his own espresso at home. His mom enjoyed drinks with added flavor. In college, the coffee shop was the place she met with her friends to hash out their latest life updates. She recently told Alba Jimenez the Sensory Lab reminds her of those memories.
Today, Alba Jimenez’s favorite drink to express himself is the Apple Pie matcha, which two customers ordered at the end of a recent shift. Alba Jimenez whisked bright green matcha powder with hot water and milk. Then he added an apple sauce cold foam and topped the drink with little crumbles of graham cracker.
Finally, he planted an apple slice, blanketed it with brown sugar, and grabbed a blow torch. The apple sizzled as it was brûléed to a crisp. The aroma of apple pie steamed out of it.
Alba Jimenez calls The Sensory Lab his playhouse — and a community.
“I had experience with coffee shops since I was little, but working, it's different,” he said. “It feels like home, or more like a hangout place where you can be yourself, you can express yourself as you are.”
