Tell me what you’re building.
I help cafés, coffee shops and hospitality businesses solve the fun problems that keep operators up at night.
I’m Jai Lott. The long version is here, but the short version is, I have spent two decades in cafés at every level, including six years at Blank Street as a founding team member and VP of Innovation and five years at Bluestone Lane as Beverage Director.
Let’s Talk
You might be here because…
- You’re opening your first café or thinking about scale.
- You need to dial in your Matcha or Coffee program.
- You’re struggling to create consistency.
- You need someone to sense check some ideas.
- You want to improve something just a little bit (or a lot!)
- Your workflow needs a little TLC.
- You think you’re making things harder than they need to be.
What I can help with
Grow
Founder advisory. Multi-site operations. Systems. Leadership. Consistency.
Build
Opening cafés. Designing bars and workflow. Equipment selection. Vendor selection. Networking with the right partners.
Craft
Coffee & matcha programs. Signature beverages. Recipes. Menu architecture. Seasonal innovation. Thought partner.
Improve
Speed of service. Productivity. SOPs. Hospitality standards. Training. Operational audits.
Who I’m working with
An ultra-luxury, wellness-led hospitality group. Their first resort, Farthingstone, opens on 100 acres of English countryside in 2028.
A London artisan chocolatier. Handcrafted, clean ingredients, exquisite flavour.
The 20Fifteen Lens
Every café tells a story. You just need to know where to look. When I walk into a café, I’m usually looking at six things.
Team
Is the team engaged and having fun? Great systems usually create happy teams.
Space
Is the space clean, calm and intentional?
Flow
Is movement behind the bar linear, or are people constantly crossing paths?
Process
Are the important things being measured, or left to chance?
Execution
Is service fast, precise and consistent?
Menu
Is the menu simple, clear and deliberate?
What I believe
Great product brings people in. Great hospitality brings them back.
A great product gets attention. Great hospitality earns loyalty. The best concepts execute on both.
You can’t build exceptional outcomes on poor foundations.
Recipes, equipment and beautiful spaces only go so far. Without strong systems, clear standards and good habits, consistency will always struggle.
Simplicity > complexity.
The best cafés make difficult things feel effortless. It happens through thoughtful decisions, restraint and relentless refinement.
A great beverage is more than the sum of its parts.
Great drinks aren’t just ingredients and recipes. They should have intention and an x-factor.
About me
I’ve spent more than two decades helping cafés and hospitality businesses around the world build innovative products, thoughtful systems and better ways of working. From opening independent cafés in Australia to helping scale some of the world’s fastest-growing specialty coffee brands, my career has been built around beverage innovation, workflow, operational simplicity and genuine hospitality.
My approach has always been simple: build strong foundations, obsess over the details and never stop asking how something could be better. The best café operations look effortless, but they’re almost always the result of hundreds of thoughtful decisions behind the scenes.
Learning the craft, ground up
Started as a hospitality-hungry teen and worked every role across many cafés before founding one of my own. By the time I left Australia, I’d learned the business from the counter up.
Scaling a brand
Took a leap and moved to New York. Built the systems that helped us grow fast without losing consistency. Accountable for training, quality, wholesale, roastery, bar flow.
Building at global scale
Employee number one. Took the first Street Carts from concept drawings to working cafés, then spent five years building and being accountable for the global beverage program used in every market.
Today, I call Australia home, but spend 50% of my time in the UK and the US. Alongside a few new ventures of my own, I work with cafés and hospitality businesses through 20Fifteen, helping solve the fun problems that keep operators up at night, from beverage programs and workflow to training, systems and the small details that make service feel effortless.
When I’m not working, you’ll usually find me surfing, spending time with my wife and daughter, planning my next trip to Japan, or somewhere inside a café thinking about how it could work just a little better.
Why 20Fifteen
For me, 2015 was more than a year. It was the moment I backed myself.
After fourteen years learning hospitality from the ground up in Australia, I moved to New York City with no guarantees and a simple goal: to see if everything I’d learned could stand up on the world’s biggest stage.
20Fifteen is a reminder of that decision. It’s about staying curious, taking thoughtful risks and never assuming there’s only one way to solve a problem.
