Shannon Marree Lawn has spent over 16 years in coffee, working across New Zealand, Australia, and Portugal. She’s trained countless baristas, co-run community initiatives, and helped shape the coffee culture in places where it was just starting. Her work blends practical knowledge with a clear love for connection and sharing coffee moments.
After years of training and consulting, Shannon launched Coffee with Shan in Portugal’s Algarve, later evolving into the Beany Bunch project. From running festivals and community cuppings to mentoring newcomers, she built more than a business—she helped grow a scene. Now, between Portugal and New Zealand, she’s reimagining her next steps.
Shannon, what is your first memory with coffee?
My Dad, ever since I remember, brewed his espresso and poured latte art at home (abstract art), drinking like 8 coffees a day, hahah. My Mum used to love her “barista coffees” and I loved sitting with either her or Dad at a cafe drinking a hot chocolate or something while they’d have coffee from “the best place” and “the best barista in town”. Appreciating beans and baristas was part of the culture in New Zealand as long as I can remember. I loved the hustle and bustle of a vibrant cafe setting. NZ rocks for that!
What inspired you to pursue a career in the coffee industry, and how did you get started? What did you do before coffee?
I respect people from Europe who pursue a career in coffee, because there is a general misconception from the public about working in coffee, the same as working in service: as an unfortunate turn of life events or a low-level job, or “you could’ve been so much more” hahaha. For a young person growing up in New Zealand, I didn’t pursue coffee, it found me, tapped me on the shoulder and then SUCKED ME IN to the weird and wonderful world.
I feel like in New Zealand and Australia being a barista is SUCH A COOL JOB (you low-key get locally famous if you consistently make a tasty cup) and many people get excited if you tell them you work in coffee like “omg it’s my dream job, I’m going to quit my law firm and open a coffee shop”. Long answer to your short question: I never pursued it. I started as a FOH server, straight out of high school, in a locally famous cafe.
I started learning about coffee shortly after getting bored waiting tables (and very quickly became obsessed). I would force my colleagues to teach me in every moment I had spare. Eventually I got put into a formal training course by Supreme (although formal training isn’t appreciated as much down in that part of the world, as much as experience and your skill – where you’ve worked and for how long, work ethic, attitude, and attention to detail and desire to learn) and my barista career started one day when the barista was sick with no one to cover and I was thrust into our extremely busy barista service alone. They were like “oh crap, she’s aiight. Let’s put her on coffee now!” woohoo. It all kind of snowballed from there.
After working at this cafe for a bit over a year in Palmerston North, I moved to Wellington, where I studied jazz and continued working about 30-hour workweeks in coffee on the side. I continued to grow and learn, always pursuing better and better cafes as I wanted to learn everything I possibly could in coffee service. I worked in NZ cafes for about 5 years. I then moved to Melbourne, where I got a job as a barista for a famous South Melbourne cafe and realised that I essentially knew nothing. and that’s still my general attitude today. I’m only as good as the last coffee I brewed.
After working with Chez Dre, I somehow became a trainer in one of Australia’s most prestigious coffee education centres, the Australian Barista Academy, where I discovered a knack and a delight for sharing coffee education, and I’ve been travelling the world with coffee (and music!!) ever since.
Tell us a bit about all of your coffee projects.
I adore sharing knowledge and the insights and skills I’ve learned over my years of working in such incredible coffee shops. I love people. I love communication. I love how becoming adept at loving, high-quality, high-volume coffee service has made me a better, happier, deeper person, and it brings me such joy to share that with other people. All of my projects in coffee since then have been based around somehow sharing this love in one way or another. Inspiring people to consider a new (or a first-ever) career path, showing people what is possible within themselves and within this world, trying to lower the unnecessary gate-keeping we so often come across in this industry, trying to encourage participation and collaboration and sharing as best as I can.
I think of coffee as a deeply spiritual practice – one that requires us to pay attention to our centre (physical, emotional, time x space reality, creative centre, scientific rational centre) as well as pay attention to the medium with which we are working (our equipment and, of course, the coffee itself).
My largest, most recent project was a coffee education initiative, which I co-ran for the past two years as a Coffee education initiative in the Algarve. After I received a call to action from a super-cool business lady I consulted for, some years back.
She told me at the time, after the consultation had finished, that they would have LOVED someone like me to help them open their shop in the beginning. Years later, when I decided I’d love to try to challenge myself and open up my own coffee education business, I started by doing some market research, and I phoned her. We struck a deal where I would train her staff, implement systems, and I could start my business from her cafe.
So I moved to the Algarve and started Coffee with Shan, which ended up merging with my previous business partner and operated as Beany Bunch for two years – but will continue today under my own thing, across the two countries I live in.
That love of coffee I was talking about earlier was SOOO COOL to share with Nick (my previous business partner) and the locals!! The Algarve has a lot of foreign people, so the demand for a quality cup of coffee is really high, and there was a severe barista shortage every summer season, so I essentially set up a business to make myself redundant and set off immediately to train as many people as I can.
We worked to build community and make a coffee scene with fun events like the Algarve Coffee Festival (it’s SO MUCH WORK I’ll never do something like that alone again hahaha) and frequent barista meet-ups and competitions, and events like super accessible monthly community cupping events. It was honestly such a sweet, crazy, exhausting ride.
Although I had a sweet time in the Algarve, I sorely missed the rest of Portugal (I’m certainly a more northern girl at heart) and am currently moving back home to New Zealand for at least half of the time – where I’ve run a latte art training course to gauge interest over there, withsuccess, and will continue to run coffee education initiatives wherever I am. Let’s see how this all develops.
Regarding other projects right now, I’m living off-grid in a Log cabin in a 94,000km² forest in New Zealand, so I have been getting deep into permaculture and regeneration (there will be no coffee if there’s no Earth, right?), super excited to learn more about this.
I’m getting back into music again and am currently sitting in the Pyrenees in my music studio after completing an intensive 5-day music production workshop with the amazing Actress.
And for the rest, my hands are kept busy as I transition through some pretty major life changes, and once everything settles, I look forward to starting up some more coffee community/ coffee education type stuff. Still offering support, of course, if any individuals or businesses need it!
What is your favourite part of the day at work, and why? What responsibilities do you enjoy the most?
My favourite scenario is this: During busy service, you’ve recently tasted your brews, so you know that the coffee is tasting good, and then I adore being in a flow state! Fast paced enough for consistency from the grinder, paying attention and pouring love into every cup, moving quickly but calmly, and your nonstop, precise movements feel like a dance. People are transfixed and love to just watch you work because it’s so beautiful hehehe. and then seeing people’s faces as they take a sip of your hand-crafted little gift to them. It’s one of the best feelings in the world. Even my posture improves. There’s such a loving pride to the job that I try to share with my students and, equally importantly, the customer.
How do you stay motivated and inspired to keep improving your coffee-making skills?
I currently have some health difficulties which stop me from being able to take any stimulants, so unfortunately, drinking coffee is out for me too, right now! When I’m in a place where I’m training often, I find that the people inspire me; the questions they ask, pulling the process apart and tasting and smelling. Slowing down and going deep inside.
Honestly, just coffee itself is such a fascinating medium to work with, I can’t see how there could ever be a lack of inspiration if we are paying attention! Working the odd barista shift occasionally and teaching require me to refresh my knowledge and keep up to date with current industry best practices, which is a lot of fun, too.
I also just think it’s important when sharing knowledge as a trainer to be as accurate and correct as we possibly can be, which means studying and caring about what we are teaching. Again, I’m passionate about communication, so being accurate and up to date is really important for me, as a responsibility to the people I work with, and coffee is just so much fun!
What are some common misconceptions about our industry that you’ve encountered, and how do you address them?
1) “Coffee people are snobbish”. Sometimes we coffee humans can be a little gate-keepy and almost be mean to each other and/or our customers, even. I would consider this a misconception, even though it is an accurate representation of how many coffee people act, especially those who may be new to the world or haven’t yet understood that the learning journey will never end. I address this by doing my best to be true to myself, I try to invite people in and have conversations, to share my excitement, rather than shaming someone for not knowing as much as me or thinking the same way as me. I try to impart this attitude when I teach; if any of my students were ever rude to someone, it’d feel like a huge failure to ME. I try to lead by example.
2) ”Working in coffee is not a real job”. heheh I mentioned this above, but I find this general European attitude so crazy! It’s so different from NZ/Australia attitudes. Again, I try to address this through how I teach. Coffee is such a big industry, there are jobs everywhere in any direction you are interested in, and also my life is kind of an example of this – travelling around the world with coffee and living a pretty cool life, I’d say. Even baristaing- You literally get paid to make delicious sciency/art for a job, continue learning, be active and not sitting on your bum all day, and meet cool and interesting like-minded people.
What kind of community do you hope to build around your activities, and how do you plan to foster that sense of community?
Kind. Collaborative. Curious. Fun. Creative. Adventurous. Inquisitive. Inclusive. I need to reground and establish my life setup again, but how I’ve done this in the past was through leading by example. Making fun things happen, like little coffee events and barista hangouts. Being open with knowledge to whoever wants to know. Continuing to learn. Being humble. Not gatekeeping.
Do you plan to make the next edition of the Algarve Coffee Festival?
Hehe, that would be adorable, but unfortunately not. Moving away from the Algarve, it just wouldn’t make sense for me. if anyone else wanted to run such an event, I’d be happy to pass on all the info I have to keep this thing rolling!
What are the current trends in cafes in your region? Are there any trends you promote yourself and would like to see more often in other places?
Hmm, I find with a lot of NZ cafes and roasteries, they’ve kind of been stuck in their ways ever since I started learning all those years ago. Things haven’t changed much. There’s a new trend which is happening at home and I also see in Europe and on my travels, which is award-winning or super interesting, quality coffees, brewed in a slow brewing method, but espresso is still available generally, a more open and collaborative/communicative service where all staff are super knowledgeable about the coffee.
I have recently visited Koyo’s new shop in Lagos and it blew me away – Cat served us ceremonial matcha, hot chocolate, teas and pour-over coffees (they don’t offer espresso), and the service was so beautiful and meticulous it made me feel so honoured as a guest!! The style of service was reminiscent of Chinese tea-houses. Slow and ritualistic. Beautiful. Eloquent.
A lot of information was given on beautiful printed cards about any product you would consume – BUT the cards were the MINIMUM info that Cat had. If you’d ask a question, he would talk for a very long time on each product, and it was such a rich experience, I highly recommend it. The first thing I’d like to see more of in cafes is a focus on FOH service. For example, if your customer-facing staff don’t know about your coffees, it’s an immediate sign that your business doesn’t put an emphasis on coffee. I then assume the coffee won’t be good, and often I am right with that assumption.
On the same note: If a staff member is rude or dismissive towards customers, we as an industry have lost an opportunity to educate and elevate that person’s coffee drinking habit. Our entire industry loses. We don’t need to prove we are better than others – we should be kind and humble and use all of our energy to get that elusive bean tasting good, to then let the coffee speak for itself.
If there were one piece of knowledge about coffee you’d like everyone to know, what would that be?
Your espresso preparation technique has THE GREATEST impact on the quality and consistency of your brews. I’m not even referring to adjustables/variables like grind setting or dose here. I’m talking about the mundane, super boring, puck preparation. Be meticulous. Don’t bang your portafilter, not at all, after tamping – especially when putting it into the group head. Take your time to distribute as perfectly and consistently as you can – train your muscle memory and continue to self-evaluate every coffee of every day, as how we are feeling will change our movements. Throw away those distributors which do nothing but make the top surface of your coffee look flat.
What are your passions and hobbies apart from coffee?
Yoga, movement and the nature of my body. Meditation and the nature of my mind. Music and the nature of my little creative spirit. Plants and regeneration, and the nature of our fragile, wonderful planetary ecosystem. Cooking and ferments – turning delicious ingredients into delicious food and drink. Travel and staying put, but talking to strangers and learning to remove prejudice towards other people/ cultures that I do not understand. Life is my one true love – As Ram Dass said: “I would like my life to be a statement of love and compassion–and where it isn’t, that’s where my work lies.”
What coffee challenges are you looking forward to? Any new projects or collaborations?
Setting up a new business in New Zealand. Clarifying my vision of what I want to build and being more true to myself with the educational products I create.
Quick Fire Questions for Shannon Marree Lawn:
Filter coffee or espresso-based?
Mostly Filter coffee.
Milk coffee or black coffee?
Mostly Black.
The most underrated coffee drink?
By the public: hand-brewed filter coffee. By EU baristas: Espresso.
Favourite piece of barista equipment?
Grind sieve.
The number one place in Europe that every coffee geek should visit?
KOYO in Lagos.
Favourite city outside your own for a coffee tour?
Haven’t been to enough. London, perhaps because I’ve heard things.
