From Refugee to Business Owner: How Coffee Training Changes Lives

When Sana Pishgoo fled Iran as a refugee in 2015, she left behind everything—her cafe, her home city of Shiraz, and years spent as the first woman to ever apply for a cafe license in her community. What she carried forward was her skill, her resilience, and a daughter she’d fought a brutal custody battle to keep. A decade later, she’s rebuilt that dream on the other side of the world.

Her path back to cafe ownership wasn’t straightforward. After arriving in the U.K., Pishgoo accessed free training courses that gave her formal qualifications in pastry work, cake decorating, and sourdough baking. She landed a job at an east London bakery—until the pandemic wiped that away in 2020. When her boss suggested she enroll in barista training at Well Grounded, a social enterprise focused on getting unemployed people into the coffee industry, Pishgoo took the leap. She’d picked up coffee skills on the job, but never learned them formally. The course wasn’t just about espresso machines and milk foam; it was about confidence, business acumen, and the possibility that dreams deferred don’t have to stay that way.

Today, Shiraz Patisserie in north London is a neighborhood staple and the go-to spot for the city’s Iranian community. Customers line up for her authentic Persian sweets—nokodchi chickpea cookies, kolompeh date and walnut cookies, pistachio creations—alongside her inventive fusion cakes: black sesame tahini, barberry and saffron, pistachio and chocolate ganache. Her daughter, the girl she risked everything to protect, is now studying at Oxford University.“I may not have the perfect decor, but I know my cakes—and my coffee—are good,”Pishgoo says.

Well Grounded’s impact extends far beyond one success story. Since launching a decade ago from an east London cafe, the organization has trained 1,200 people and now operates academies in London, Bristol, and Leeds. Seventy-seven percent of graduates move into sustained work or further training. Founder and CEO Eve Wagg built the model on a simple insight: specialty coffee—beans scoring 80 or higher on a 100-point quality scale—requires serious skill, and there’s massive demand for trained baristas. Yet entry-level hiring often demands unrealistic experience. Well Grounded closes that gap with free courses (funded by corporate and government support), real cafe shifts, and placement within a network of partner employers.

The timing couldn’t be sharper. The U.K.’s unemployment rate has been climbing since 2022, hitting a five-year high of around five percent last December. Abdul Hasib, 25, spent years as his mother’s carer while she battled thyroid cancer, sacrificing his own education and career prospects. After sending out roughly 100 unsuccessful job applications, his brother spotted a Well Grounded flyer on WhatsApp. Hasib completed the program and now works three days a week at The Exchange Hub, a community cafe in northwest London, balancing employment with continued support for his mom.“I’ve been running the coffee bar on my own,”he reflects.“It’s so community-focused here, and everyone is included.”

These aren’t feel-good sidelines. They’re evidence of what happens when practical skills training meets genuine career pathways and genuine community. In an economy where specialty coffee demand has surged—46 percent of American adults had specialty coffee in the past day according to the National Coffee Association, up 84 percent since 2011—the bottleneck isn’t interest. It’s access. Well Grounded proved that removing barriers and building trust can unlock potential that was always there, waiting.