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ANYONE WHO HAS PARTICIPATED in or witnessed a Regional, or a United States Barista Championship (USBC), or a World Barista Championship (WBC) in the last four years, can tell you that Marcus Boni is a fixture, both onstage and off. Heck, he's practically an institution. Helping competitors track down everything from their music to a tamper to their entire competition shipment; organizing—starting with securing a date and location to tear-down months later—and keeping everything running on schedule, while at the same time keeping everyone happy—Marcus has done it, and done it well. Exceptionally well, in fact. And through it all, he never missed the chance to step up the competitor just before the push of the big red button to start the competition timer and say, "Good luck," and mean it. Because as talented as Marcus is at organizing events and running big business, Marcus is, in the end, all about people. He loves these people, these baristas. Now, however, it's a position that he's moving out of—at least full-time, as he left his work with the Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA) earlier this year. As the SCAA's Director of Community and Events, Marcus was responsible for organizing barista competitions and events around the globe—from Tacoma to Atlanta, Dubai to Vienna, and seemingly a thousand places in between. You'll still be able to find him at upcoming competitions though, as he has recently been appointed to the board of directors for the World Coffee Events (WCE), which oversees seven international coffee competitions, including the WBC. 62 barista magazine In the meantime, though, Marcus has moved to Missouri with his husband, Tony, and they've both gone to work for Kaldi's Coffee Roasting Company in St. Louis. Marcus has taken a position that brings him back to his earliest work in coffee, the one in which he gets to interact with customers and be on the frontlines of retail. And really, retail operations seem like a natural fit for Marcus because he is, at his heart, a showman. Growing up with two sisters in a suburb of industrial Toledo, Ohio, Marcus was always drawn to the stage, and made regular trips to New York to see whatever shows and musicals he could. "I've been a musical-theater queen for as long as I can remember," he says. "In high school I actually substituted an advanced, out-of-school tap and jazz program for my gym credits. I often traveled to New York City during school breaks to take in amazing shows or view different musicals being workshopped." And it's part of what made him such a natural fit with barista competitors: Understanding stage nerves and stress goes hand- in-hand with performing. Marcus himself performed in more than 50 theatrical productions between high school and college. With a small-business-owning mother, and a father who was a golf pro, Marcus' exposure to coffee was pretty typical for a Midwesterner. "The coffee growing up was awful," he says. "I have many memories of my mother reheating the coffee from the previous day in the microwave, or Grandma ordering a 'cup of Sanka.' In my teenage years, we were often at the golf course early in the morning, before tee times would begin, loading up on coffee with way too much sugar and cream. Because we would be there so early, they would ask us to the brew