The Coffee Machine

Trying to open a cafe or Restaurant and now faced with the choice of which coffee machine too choose. There are probably 20+ brands sold in the u.k. These range from Visacrem, Faema, Cimbali, La Mazocco, Ranchillio to name but a few.

Each sales contact will pour scorn over the competition and the prices vary widely.A two group espresso machine can cost anything from £2500 to £5000 +

For the non expert the choice can be confusing -do you pay the high price because the cheap models must be made cheaply or do you go to the lower prices reasoning that you can buy 2+ in comparison to the top priced choices.

Perhaps the way to approach this problem is too see if you can try out an espresso machine for a few months- you can then test out how reliable the coffee machine is or if you have a problem how good the the engineering support - the length of time to respond, the knowledge of the engineer and how quickly everything is sorted out.

The technology is common to nearly all brands and has been around for about thirty years so it mostly comes down to quality of production and how much you like the design. Some of the new features  recently introduced are well worth avoiding- for example the automatic steamer. 

This works perfectly for anything from one month to three - then you start to have problems because UK milk has more fat and is not UHT. The milk therefore leaves solids on the steam wand and the sensor which sets like cement -it then ceases to function!

I would though recomend choosing an electronic as opposed to the semi-automatic, ie you have electronic portion control. Electrics are now stable and not expensive and very rarely fail.

One scheme worth considering is the espresso machine rental option from Verde Coffee - rent on a one months notice contract.