Latte Art Workshop: Course Details and Accredited Coffee Pathways

Our Latte Art workshop runs for two hours and leads to a non-accredited Certificate of Participation. We expect existing coffee-making and milk-steaming skills: our entry options include previous accredited coffee training, our Barista Master Class, or relevant work experience. The accredited espresso unit discussed below is a separate credential.

View our official course details and booking information. Course details checked 2 October 2026.

Course background and related accredited requirements

Latte art is not, on its own, a nationally accredited unit of competency, and it is not separately assessed in the accredited espresso unit either. It is a skill that develops alongside milk texturing, which the unit does require.

That distinction is worth understanding before you book anything, because it determines whether you walk away with a nationally recognised Statement of Attainment or a certificate of attendance.

The accredited anchor: SITHFAB025

The unit that covers espresso coffee is SITHFAB025 Prepare and serve espresso coffee, from the SIT Tourism, Travel and Hospitality Training Package.

What the unit actually requires

A candidate must prepare and present each of the following on three different occasions, within commercial timeframes:

• Caffe latte
• Cappuccino
• Espresso (short black)
• Flat white
• Long black
• Piccolo latte
• Mocha
• Ristretto
• Short macchiato
• Long macchiato

Ten beverages, three occasions each — a minimum of thirty preparations. The candidate must also monitor quality indicators for extraction during preparation and make adjustments to restore extraction to the required standard. The unit names the five variables adjusted to do that: dose, grind, tamping technique, water flow and water pressure. Among the quality factors it names is steam pressure, which is the one that bears directly on milk.

The knowledge evidence includes different types of milk, their characteristics and uses for different types of coffee beverages, along with bean, blend and roast characteristics, mise en place, and methods and techniques for preparing and serving espresso beverages. Milk texturing is named among those techniques.

One thing the unit does not impose is a service-period count. SITHFAB024 requires three service periods including one peak, SITHFAB027 five and SITHFAB034 twelve. SITHFAB025 requires none; its whole volume is beverages and occasions.

Where latte art fits

Read that list again and note what is there and what is not.

Present: milk types and their characteristics for different beverages, and milk texturing among the named techniques. Texture is genuinely part of the unit.

Not present: any requirement to pour a rosetta, a heart, a tulip or any other pattern. Free-pour latte art is in neither the performance evidence nor the knowledge evidence, and a candidate is not assessed on decorative pouring.

So latte art sits adjacent to the unit. Good latte art depends on the same milk texturing skill the unit requires, which is why the two are commonly taught together and why a barista course will often cover both. But the accredited outcome attaches to SITHFAB025, not to the art.

This is not a reason to avoid latte art training. It is a reason to be clear about which part of a course produces a nationally recognised credential.

How much of the unit is actually milk: seven of ten

This is the number that matters most on this page, and it is higher than people assume. Both macchiatos take milk, and so does the mocha. That leaves only three milk-free beverages on the list — espresso (short black), long black and ristretto — and seven that cannot be produced to standard without competently textured milk:

Each of those seven must be produced on three occasions, so 21 of the 30 minimum preparations involve texturing milk. Seven-tenths of the assessment depends on the jug.

That is the strongest available argument for taking milk seriously, and it does not require latte art to make it. A candidate who cannot texture reliably does not fail one beverage, they fail seven, three times over. Conversely, anyone who can already pour recognisable art has necessarily solved the part of the unit that carries the most weight. See milk texturing 101.

Why the boundary sits exactly there

Worth a moment, because it explains the whole page rather than just stating the rule.

A unit of competency describes what an employer needs a worker to be able to do reliably. A cafe needs every flat white to arrive with correctly textured milk at the right temperature, within service pace, consistently. It does not need a rosetta, and a venue that does want one treats it as house style rather than as a competency.

So the training package assesses the thing that has to be right every time — texture, temperature, consistency, pace — and leaves the decorative finish to the venue. The art is downstream of the assessed skill: you cannot pour a clean pattern without microfoam, which is why latte art works as a visible signal of milk control even though nobody certifies it.

That also means the honest sequence is texture first, art second. A course that leads with patterns before the milk is right is teaching the symptom.

The one place the register does assess how a coffee looks

There is a genuine exception worth knowing, and almost no latte art course mentions it. Appearance is assessed in the training package — just not in SITHFAB025, and not as art.

SITHFAB038 Plan and monitor espresso coffee service is the senior espresso unit, current on our scope as RTO 3722 at deliver and assess to 30 June 2032. Its third element is monitoring the quality of coffee beverages, and its performance evidence requires the candidate to monitor the consistency and quality of eight named characteristics throughout service:

Appearance and presentation are both on that list, as is colour. So the register does care how the cup looks — at the level of the person monitoring a whole service, judging consistency across every cup that leaves the bench, rather than at the level of the individual pour. That is a meaningfully different skill from producing one photogenic rosetta, and it is the accredited home of "does our coffee look right".

SITHFAB038 requires coordinating an outlet's coffee operation across at least six service periods, maintaining commercial grade machines and grinders throughout, and it also covers developing coffee menus, selecting suppliers and roasters, and providing specialist advice. Notably it has no prerequisite units at all, not even SITHFAB025, so an experienced head barista can be assessed in it directly.

If presentation consistency is what you actually care about, that unit is a better target than a pattern class.

Accredited or not: how to tell

Accredited means a Statement of Attainment issued by a registered training organisation, naming the unit code. It appears on your national training transcript against your Unique Student Identifier, can be verified by an employer through the RTO, and never expires.

Non-accredited means a certificate of attendance, completion, participation or achievement. Latte art masterclasses are frequently non-accredited, and that is not a criticism — a well-run masterclass can be exactly what an experienced barista needs. It simply is not a national credential.

The check: look for the unit code and the RTO number. If neither appears, the course is not producing a Statement of Attainment.

The brand check, with the actual names

An RTO may trade under several registered business names, so the RTO code identifies the issuer, not the brand. Verify the code on training.gov.au rather than recognising a logo.

That matters concretely in coffee training. The Australian Business Register records seven current registered business names for the legal entity COMPLETE HOSPITALITY TRAINING (VIC.) PTY. LTD., ABN 27 006 947 262, and three of them are coffee names:

So "The Coffee School", "Coffee School by CHT" and "Melbourne Barista" are names of the same legal entity as Complete Hospitality Training, and accredited training delivered under any of them is delivered by RTO 3722. "Complete Hospitality Training" is itself a registered business name; the legal entity name carries "(VIC.)" and "PTY. LTD.". The dates are business-name registration dates from the register and nothing more — not statements about when any course began.

What an employer is actually looking for

For a cafe role, two different things matter and they are easy to conflate.

The credential answers whether you have been assessed against a national standard. That is SITHFAB025, and it is what appears on your transcript.

The demonstrated skill answers whether you can work a busy machine at pace. Latte art is a visible proxy for milk control, which is why it gets attention in hiring even though it is not assessed. A trial shift usually settles it faster than any certificate.

The two are complementary. The unit gives you the recognised outcome and the systematic coverage — including extraction diagnosis, which most self-taught baristas never learn formally. The art gives you the finish.

One note on trial shifts, since they are how cafe hiring usually works: Fair Work guidance permits an unpaid trial or brief skills demonstration only under strict conditions — keep it short, define the tasks in advance, supervise closely. If it stretches beyond a brief check, or becomes productive work across multiple shifts, the person should be paid. A two-to-three-hour window is generally enough to assess greeting, service style, speed and composure.

The prerequisite catches people out

SITHFAB025 requires SITXFSA005 Use hygienic practices for food safety first. It has to be completed or already held, which matters when planning a short course.

Three ways to satisfy it:

1. Take the skill set. SITSS00080 Espresso Machine Operation is on our scope and packages SITHFAB025 with SITXFSA005, SITXCCS014 Provide service to customers and SITXFIN007 Process financial transactions — the espresso unit plus its prerequisite plus the service and cash-handling units a cafe worker actually uses. Its target group is espresso machine operators in cafes, restaurants, bars, clubs, and function and event venues, and it provides credit towards SIT Training Package qualifications. No occupational licensing, certification or legislative requirement applies to it — there is no licence to make coffee in Australia, and none to pour latte art either.
2. Clear it in advance through food handling or virtual food handling.
3. Already hold it. SITXFSA005 is core in SIT30722 Certificate III in Hospitality (Restaurant Front of House), and one of two options in the compulsory Group A of SIT30622 and SIT40422.

SITXFSA005 is the gateway unit for nine units in the current food and beverage stream: SITHFAB022 Clean and tidy bar areas, SITHFAB023 Operate a bar, SITHFAB024 Prepare and serve non-alcoholic beverages, SITHFAB025 espresso coffee, SITHFAB026 Provide room service, SITHFAB027 Serve food and beverage, SITHFAB030 Prepare and serve cocktails, SITHFAB034 Provide table service of food and beverage and SITHFAB035 Provide silver service. Clearing it once opens all nine, which is why sequencing it first is the efficient move. SITHFAB038 is not among them, because it has no prerequisite at all. Keep that figure scoped to the food and beverage stream: across the wider SIT package SITXFSA005 also gates cookery, patisserie and kitchen units, so a total for the whole package would be a different number about a different set.

If you hold SITXFSA005 from any Australian RTO, that is credit transfer under Standard 1.7 — no reassessment, your Statement of Attainment is the evidence. Raise it at the pre-training review, required under Standard 2.2 of the Outcome Standards for RTOs. We first verify the evidence and equivalence, check that the units fit your training product, and check for licensing or regulatory restrictions before granting credit. See ASQA’s credit-transfer guidance.

Cafe work makes you a food handler

Which is why the prerequisite is there. Handling milk, cutting fruit, plating a pastry or handling ice is handling food, and that brings you inside Standard 3.2.2A of the Food Standards Code, in force since 8 December 2023.

That obligation is lighter than most people assume: the training must cover safe food handling, food contamination, cleaning and sanitising, and personal hygiene — or you must possess skills and knowledge commensurate with the activity. It does not have to be nationally accredited, mandates no refresher period, and the business is not required to keep records of it. The five-year clock belongs to the separate Food Safety Supervisor certificate. See Food Safety Supervisor.

On milk substitutes and allergen cross-contact this page states no legal duty, because there is none in the material behind it, and inventing one would be worse than the gap. Using a separate jug and cleaning properly where a dairy allergy rather than an intolerance is involved is sound practice. For the legal requirement, your state or territory food regulator is the authority.

Where the unit fits in a qualification

SITHFAB025 is an elective, not a core unit, in SIT30622, SIT30722 and SIT40422 Certificate IV in Hospitality. It is not core in any of our qualifications.

Completing it standalone produces a Statement of Attainment that can be credit-transferred into a full qualification later, so short-course study is not wasted if you go on to enrol.

We hold 81 current skill sets and 17 current qualifications — see about us and all courses. Most skill sets are not advertised as courses, so name the code if one fits your situation. The other coffee-relevant one is SITSS00075 Beverage Advice, aimed at the advisory side rather than the machine.

For nationally recognised training, a USI is generally required before a qualification or Statement of Attainment can be issued, unless an applicable exemption has been granted. This requirement does not apply to the non-accredited workshop described at the top of this page. See the official USI exemption guidance.

What the credential is worth for pay

A single unit does not move your award classification. A completed Certificate III, relevant to your work and used at work, sets a minimum classification of Level 4 under three of the four awards covering hospitality premises — MA000009 (cl 18.1), MA000119 (cl 18.1) and MA000058 (cl 18.3). The fast food award, MA000003, has no equivalent provision.

For cafe work: a standalone cafe is MA000119, so the qualification argument works. A food-court coffee counter is MA000003, so it does not. MA000003 covers food and beverages sold primarily to be consumed away from the point of sale and expressly excludes cafes providing primarily a sit-down service — the test is sit-down service, not the menu. Same person, same machine, same latte art, different instrument.

Under MA000119, Schedule A defines Level 4 as Food and beverage attendant grade 4 (tradesperson), and the award's own "standard rate" is the Level 4 rate.

No pay rates are published here — award rates re-set every 1 July, so use the Fair Work Ombudsman's Pay and Conditions Tool with your award code.

Related pages

Coffee appreciation and the accredited alternative compares SITHFAB025 with SITHFAB024 Prepare and serve non-alcoholic beverages, which covers the wider cafe drinks range.

Barista master class covers what extra machine time actually buys, barista coffee course the standard format, and milk texturing 101 the seven milk beverages in detail.

About us

We are Complete Hospitality Training, RTO 3722, CRICOS 04242E, Level 3, 28 Elizabeth Street, Melbourne VIC 3000, and 410 Elizabeth Street, Surry Hills NSW 2010. Contact melbourne@cht.edu.au or +61 3 9654 1554. See about us and all courses.

The legal entity is COMPLETE HOSPITALITY TRAINING (VIC.) PTY. LTD., ABN 27 006 947 262, ACN 006 947 262.

SITHFAB025, SITHFAB038 and the SITSS00080 Espresso Machine Operation and SITSS00075 Beverage Advice skill sets are on our scope of registration as deliver and assess. Completing any of them produces a nationally recognised Statement of Attainment.

We link to the relevant course and regulatory sources in this guide. Check those sources for current requirements, and confirm course availability, delivery, fees and entry requirements with us before enrolling.