I applied online. I interviewed at Blue Bottle Coffee (Los Angeles, CA) in May 2018
Interview
I had an initial phone interview where they were very unenthusiastic... but I think that person is no longer there. When I met with them in person, they were great! I then had a group interview in person and it was all about team-building and not pretending you know more than the next guy. Just learning and being open to new skills. If I could give one point of advice, family and community are very big at Blue Bottle so make sure to speak about that a lot and what that means to you!
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
How have you been challenged in past positions? How did you overcome those challenges?
I interviewed at Blue Bottle Coffee (San Francisco, CA)
Interview
Not difficult at all was very friendly. They asked about past experiences and availability but mainly about different senarios. Overall if you are able to answer those senario based questions you will be good
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Past barista experiences and how you would deal with difficult coworkers
The interview was ghosted. They reached out to me through email about the location and set the phone call interview. But I was waiting for an hour and no call has been come and no follow up email.
I applied online. I interviewed at Blue Bottle Coffee (Chicago, IL) in Mar 2026
Interview
Relatively simple, spoke to a corporate worker over email and discussed employment options. Second interview was in person with the leader of the cafe and we discussed customer service and coffee expertise.
Barista applicants have rated the interview process at Blue Bottle Coffee with 2.5 out of 5 (where 5 is the highest level of difficulty) and assessed their interview experience as 70% positive. To compare, the company-average is 61.1% positive. This is according to Glassdoor user ratings.
Candidates applying for Barista roles take an average of 13 days to get hired, when considering 77 user submitted interviews for this role. To compare, the hiring process at Blue Bottle Coffee overall takes an average of 20 days.
Common stages of the interview process at Blue Bottle Coffee as a Barista according to 77 Glassdoor interviews include:
One on one interview: 35%
Phone interview: 29%
Group panel interview: 9%
Skills test: 6%
Presentation: 5%
Background check: 4%
Personality test: 4%
IQ intelligence test: 3%
Other: 3%
Drug test: 2%
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