The Datum Report

Occupation 9266 · Elementary occupations

Coffee shop workers

Half of full-time coffee shop workers in the UK earn more than £21,598 a year, and half earn less.

Coffee shop workers make and serve coffee, food and other beverages in coffee shops and cafés, and perform various cleaning, fetching and carrying tasks.

How people enter it

There are no formal academic entry requirements. Training is typically received on-the-job. Qualifications to become a barista are available.

What the work involves

• takes customer orders, makes and serves coffee and other refreshments
• receives payment for drinks and gives change
• cleans and tidies service area, kitchen surfaces, crockery, cutlery, glassware, kitchen utensils and disposes of rubbish
• keeps service area well stocked

Also called

Barista · Coffee shop assistant

What it pays

How pay has changed

Median gross annual pay for coffee shop workers, full-time employees, 2023 to 2025. Each point is that year's ASHE April snapshot as published — revisions are not backfilled into earlier years, and a year ONS withheld is a gap rather than a joined line.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Year-on-year change

The change from each year to the next, in per cent, computed from the figures in the chart above — so the two cannot disagree.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Pay by region

Median gross annual pay for full-time employees, ranked, against the UK figure. 3 of 11 regions are published: ONS withholds a cell where the survey sample cannot support it, and those are shown as gaps rather than dropped — an absent region is not a region without the work in it.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Period 2025. Table

Every regional figure

ONS does not publish occupational pay below region. Cells the survey could not support are shown as withheld, with its reason — adding a region split to a specific occupation leaves roughly a tenth of cells publishable.

Common questions

Classified alongside this

Bar and catering supervisors · Bar staff · Hospital porters · Kitchen and catering assistants · Leisure and theme park attendants · Other elementary services occupations n.e.c. · Waiters and waitresses