'Excuse me barista…there is a pachyderm in my flat white.”

'Very sorry Sir, perhaps you would prefer a little daisy, a panda, a cat?”

Tegan Poole does them all. The Mount Maunganui barista has transformed the humble latte and flat white into an art form, has turned a morning fix into an art appreciation class.

The artist at her ‘easel' – Tegan Poole. Photo: Tracy Hardy.

She's moved on from the fern and the clover and creates animal images in the crema. It takes the coffee fix to a whole new level.

'Then I invented a little lady bug. They are all as cute as each other.”

When customers look down at their coffee and an elephant wearing a bowtie stares back at them, they are enchanted.

''Oh my God', they say. ‘It's an elephant. You are amazing'.”

The barista, the artiste, is equally enchanted. 'I can make so many people smile with my coffee art –it's beautiful.” And all from a soy chai latte or the like.

The Kaimai schoolgirl went straight into the hospitality industry, straight into the kitchen – no qualifications, just a latent artistic streak.

It only manifested when she got a couple of shifts a week on the coffee machine at Pronto on Marine Parade.

'It is a very special gift she has,” says Tegan's boss and co-owner of Pronto, Fiona McKellar-White.

'We inherited her but somehow her previous employers didn't know or understand what she could do.”

When Fiona saw the magic little canvasses in a cup Tegan was given a licence to create and entertain – she was crowned head barista and assigned to the coffee machine full-time.

'She makes people really happy, they love it. They laugh, take photos and her coffees always end up on Facebook.”

But there is a downside. 'When I put a coffee down in front of a customer on Tegan's day off, there's always disappointment because there's no elephant or panda. She's a hard act to follow.”

So don't give her a day off. 'Yeah – we tried that,” laughs Fiona. 'But she got too cranky.”

It all started about four years ago with a pretty little flower, a daisy. Then she applied bowties to everything. 'It was basic, but I kept building on the idea, making things more sophisticated.”

She went to YouTube. 'No-one was doing what I was doing though. No-one can do what I can do,” says Tegan. Nothing self-effacing about this self-taught artist.

Then came pandas, followed by elephants in bowties and lady bugs. It's an evolving thing. Tegan just loves her art and her work.

Tegan is probably the benchmark. 'She's the best barista I've come across” says the boss.

But there must be other talent hiding behind a Rancilio around the Mount. If there are baristas who can compete with Tegan's coffee art, we'd like to hear from you.