Christchurch barista serves up top coffees | Canterbury News | Local News in Canterbury

Melissa Hawker loves to wake up and smell the coffee. The Bush Inn Muffin Break manager was the overall winner of the franchise's national barista competition, held at the Convention Centre recently.

"I didn't want to enter; I've never entered a competition in my life," said 25 year old Hawker. "But I know I make good coffees, and Muffin Break encourages franchisees to enter."

The competition involved setting up, making coffees and cleaning up within a certain time limit.

"You have five minutes to set your area up, to set the grinder to the right grind, then in 15 minutes you have to make three lots of four different coffees," Hawker explained.

To confuse matters, the coffees had to be made set by set, for example all the lattes could not be made at the same time.

"It's harder than you think. Then you have five minutes to clean up," she said.

Hawker had had a few training nights in preparation for the competition. However, after the competition she felt that she hadn't done her best.

"I thought I'd completely buggered it up, then there was a phone call the next night to say I've got through to the finals," Hawker said.

Hawker said she was very happy to win, and received an i-pod as part of her prize, although she was slightly embarrassed receiving it, as she wasn't quite sure how to use it.

"They handed it to me, and it was like 'So what do I do with this thing?'" she said.

Two things drove Hawker to make great coffee ? the 'warm fuzzies' she got when pleased customers complimented staff on their work, and her own passion for coffee.

"I love making coffee, everything about it, I love it ? the taste, creaminess, beautiful patterns," Hawker said. "I'm passionate about it."