By James Atkinson
Leading craft beer venues, The Local Taphouse in Melbourne and Sydney, have completed an Australia-first deal that will see all their current and future front-ofâ€house staff gain accreditation with the world’s leading beer training program.
The Cicerone Certification Program certifies and educates beer professionals in order to elevate the beer experience for consumers.
It has three levels: Certified Beer Server, Certified Cicerone, and Master Cicerone. Ray Daniels launched the Cicerone program in 2007 after tiring of constantly receiving poor beer service.
Local Taphouse co-founder Steve Jeffares told TheShout that about 30 of the pubs’ front of house staff are sitting the course with all future employees to follow after their initial trial period.
“We work hard on continually improving the Taphouse and this has been part of our plan for a long time. Providing training is very important to us but sometimes quite hard to execute consistently in house,” he said.
“We have had our own in-house programme for years but teaming with Cicerone now will offer our staff an even higher standard of training that we would find difficult to emulate. We are starting to put all frontof-house staff through the Certified Beer Server level but we are also planning on putting suitable key staff through the more advanced levels.”
As part of the Cicerone training, staff members will acquire competent knowledge of beer storage and service issues as well as modest knowledge of beer styles, culture and basic familiarity with beer tasting and flavours, and basic knowledge about brewing process and ingredients.
“This will enable us to achieve an excellent and consistent base level of knowledge among all of our staff. In time, we are confident that Cicerone accreditation at any level will go beyond bragging rights and provide solid industry employment opportunities for those people who have them,” said Jeffares.
"We can't chain staff to the bar but hopefully, by investing in such high quality beer education, it only adds to the compelling reasons for staff members to stay in the Taphouse team."