Starting a Coffee Cart
Turn your passion for specialty coffee into a nimble, profitable mobile business. Learn to dial in exceptional espresso on the go, engineer your cart setup, and master permits, taxes, and pricing.
Like Duolingo, but for Starting a Coffee Cart. Tomo turns the whole topic into a game you play five minutes a day, until it actually sticks.
A short one: 12 levels across 2 sections, about 24 minutes end to end, roughly 5 days at five minutes a day. It moves through Dialing In and Setting Up and Permits, Taxes, and Making Money. It starts from scratch.
Free forever · No credit card · iPhone & Android
Key ideas in Starting a Coffee Cart
- Keeping coffee weight in and liquid espresso out fixed establishes your base brew ratio
- Changing grind size while liquid yield is drifting makes it impossible to isolate flavor problems on a cart
- A consistent brew ratio ensures drinks taste uniform from the first morning customer to the last
- Shots that pour too quickly under-extract, tasting sour and weak, requiring a finer grind to slow the water down
- Shots that choke the machine over-extract, tasting dry and bitter, requiring a coarser grind
- Shot duration provides an immediate visual cue for cart baristas during a busy line
- Outdoor air temperature and moisture shifts cause coffee beans in the hopper to swell or dry out
- A morning setting on an outdoor cart will often run too fast or choke by midday as the weather warms up
- Mobile cart baristas must make subtle micro-adjustments to the grinder throughout outdoor service
- Weighing a fixed dose in the portafilter comes before pulling water through the coffee
- Stopping the shot at target liquid weight reveals the actual flow time
- Tasting confirms the shot is ready to serve paying cart customers before opening the window
- Batch brewers and pour-overs use coarser grinds because gravity water contact takes minutes rather than 30 seconds of high-pressure espresso
- Drip coffee that drains too fast produces under-extracted, sour cups just like fast espresso
- Finely ground coffee will choke a batch filter basket and extract harsh, bitter flavors
- Keeping the grinder, group head, and knockbox within an arm's reach triangle lets the barista work without taking foot steps
You've tried the other tabs
Thirty open tabs. Four facts you actually kept.
You watched. You nodded. By Sunday it was gone.
One answer, then back to scrolling.
Eight weeks. You meant to finish. You didn't.
Tomo gives Starting a Coffee Cart the Duolingo treatment: levels, streaks, and quick quizzes that test what you just learned. That game loop is what the tabs above never had, so it's the one you actually finish.
Here's what playing it feels like
A real question from this course. Take your best guess.
What happens if you change your grind size while your liquid espresso weight is still drifting?
Get it right to open this lesson and 11 more in the app.
Where Starting a Coffee Cart takes you
- 1
Dialing In and Setting Up
- Dialing In Great Espresso Anywhere
- Building a Fast Cart Workflow
- 2
Permits, Taxes, and Making Money
- Navigating Permits, Health Codes, and Taxes
- Cart Economics and Pricing for Profit
2 sections · 4 units · 12 levels. Built to play, not to enroll.
You pick the voice
Starting a Coffee Cart is taught in the The Bestie style: your friend who just gets it. Want a different feel? In the app you can spin up the same topic in any of Tomo's teaching styles. Same facts, totally different vibe.
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Start Starting a Coffee Cart today.
Download Tomo, search Starting a Coffee Cart, and play your first lesson in under a minute.