"I Don't Really Drink Coffee": Viktor of Cadu Barista Essentials

The question was whether the first sip of coffee in the morning is work or pleasure. The answer went straight past it.

"I don't really drink coffee, I drink hot water, so I would say work."

VIKTOR, CADU BARISTA ESSENTIALS

Viktor works on the distribution side of Cadu Barista Essentials and has no venue of his own. Cadu was among the participants at Good Coffee Festival 2026 in front of NDK. What follows comes from a Slow Made City conversation around the festival - short questions, none of them about turnover or locations.

Someone in the coffee business who does not drink coffee only sounds like a paradox from the outside. In distribution the product is not consumed, it moves: range, stock, delivery, and a phone call when something is wrong. What happens in the cup is the customer's work.

Milk is not a consumable

Since his range includes several kinds of milk, the question was when milk is a friend and when it is a traitor. Viktor declines the second half.

"It is always a friend. 90% of every drink in every coffee shop in the world is milk based. 90% of the drinks are milk based, so when there is no milk it is the exception."

VIKTOR, CADU BARISTA ESSENTIALS

The number is his estimate from practice rather than a statistic, but the direction is hard to argue with for anyone who has worked a bar. The menu looks like a list of coffees and the till shows a list of milk drinks: cappuccino, latte, flat white, ice latte, matcha latte.

The consequence is practical and usually underrated. If nine out of ten cups pass through a pitcher, milk is the second most important ingredient behind the bar. The difference between two batches shows up in the foam: protein holds the bubbles, fat decides the body and how long the foam stands before it separates. Barista versions of plant drinks exist for exactly that reason - the added protein and fat imitate the behaviour the machine and the hand are already used to.

Whoever sells milk to cafes hears about the problem first. Not because the milk got it wrong, but because foam is the only thing in the cup a customer sees before tasting.

The aroma he would keep

Which aroma from his work would he keep forever? It was not coffee.

"The aroma of matcha."

VIKTOR, CADU BARISTA ESSENTIALS

Tomorrow morning, in someone else's coffee shop, the order is matcha too. Two answers, one choice, no hesitation in between.

Matcha has grounds to be that recognisable. The bushes are shaded for several weeks before harvest, which keeps chlorophyll and amino acids in the leaf and gives the deep green colour and the sweet, grassy, faintly marine note. The leaf is then dried, stripped of its veins and stone ground to powder. The aroma Viktor is talking about belongs to a green tea that is whisked into water rather than steeped - and nine times out of ten topped up with milk afterwards.

What the barista knows about the neighbourhood

The answer was short.

"The barista probably knows who is seeing whom."

VIKTOR, CADU BARISTA ESSENTIALS

The "probably" there is caution rather than doubt. The bar is the one place in a neighbourhood where the same people turn up at the same hour, separately and together, and nobody thinks they are reporting anything. The information collects itself.

The customer who calls

Is there a customer he worries about when they do not come in? The question was written for a cafe, so it came back inverted.

"Since I personally don't have a venue, there are customers I worry about when I speak to them and they have problems. I worry when a customer calls me."

VIKTOR, CADU BARISTA ESSENTIALS

In distribution, absence is good news. Silence means the delivery arrived, the machine is running and the milk is what it was last week. A call almost always means the opposite.

The same logic sits behind what the most difficult customer taught him: patience. A word that appears once in this conversation and gets no explanation.

Hot water in the morning

That leaves the first answer, the most unusual one in the whole series. The man who supplies bars starts the day with hot water.

The roles are divided all the way through: his work ends where somebody else's cup begins. Cadu was on the square in front of NDK from 11 to 13 September. Tomorrow morning Viktor will order a matcha.