April Athlete: Niall Curran

I started working in coffee roughly 5 years ago after developing an interest in it while completing my Master's Degree in English Literature. During this period I was also managing an Irish Whiskey bar, so I was already developing my palate and understanding of flavour. After this, I began working in the Freiburg's only specialty coffee shop, Cafe Marcel, in an attempt to learn as much as I could at the time. Soon I moved to Berlin and began working in Röststätte Berlin, home to Victoria Arduino.

Seeing the passion in both my co-worker Nicole Battlefield and in the city around me I began to become more and more invested in the product itself, and in competing, in particular, brewing which is why I entered my first competition under the Irish Brewer's Cup. At the end of 2017, I decided to take my passion elsewhere and moved to Toronto where I started working at Boxcar Social, where I now operate as Lead Barista and Coffee Program Manager for our 4 locations. Coffee has been a strange experience for me, I never tire of it, never lose interest in learning and improving and look at every day as a new challenge. This is why I continue to want to compete and learn and search for mentors to improve work and challenge myself in new ways.