As many resorts to cutting their daily expenses in every possible way. We found an unusual trend of offices and households spending thousands of dollars on getting their coffee machines. The best coffee machines’ sales have tripled yearly in the past three years!
Is it worth buying a coffee machine for you? Read to find out.
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The increasing price of coffee
Inflation hits everywhere, including the cost of daily coffee. With the increasing taxes and hikes in water pricing, many hawkers and cafes will increase the cost of their coffee. Gone are the days when a local cup of Kopi could cost $1, it’s expected that the prices should soon approach $2. As for western coffee, if we use Starbucks as an index, retailing lattes at $7.10 at the moment, it won’t come as a surprise that prices will rise above $8 with many cafes following suit.
What makes buying a coffee machine worth it?
The increase in coffee’s retailing price will influence careful consumers if it’s worth to purchase their coffee outside or to make their own. A cup of espresso made with 7.5g of dark roast, like our Arcaffe Margo could cost only less than 23c. Even if we give it a sumptuous double shot and some milk, it still cost below $1 a cup. If the household drinks merely 2 cups of latte a day, that could potentially save more than $400 a month. That said, the monies spent on the coffee equipment will recover by using.
But i don’t have time or the skill to make coffee.
It’s a misconception that making coffee takes a lot of skills. The higher end espresso machines that are used in cafes are designed to make coffee quickly, that’s why it’s called “espressos”. Cleaning is a lot easier than most would expect. In most cases, it takes less than a minute to clean up the machine before you switch it off. For more information, you can take a quick look at our Coffee Guide for Baristas.
Good coffees versus good equipment, which is more important?
Good coffees can only be articulated well with proper pressure, temperature and flow rate control. You can obtain the best specialty coffee beans, but you cannot capture all the flavours fully without extracting at the correct parameters. Instead, you could bring out more unpleasant astringents that can overwhelm the aromatic profiles.
On the other hand, if your coffee is stale or bad, you can’t produce a decent coffee with any method or machines. So they are equally important.
Some machines may appear to make an espresso or be able to froth a latte. But you can’t determine how well the flow or temperature was controlled until you taste and realise it’s very different from what you would expect from a cafe.
With the proper equipment and everything right, you can make coffee costing 10 cents to taste like $10. If things are incorrect, your $10 specialty coffee can taste 10 cents. That explains why many users who have visited our showroom are users who had once purchased a domestic range espresso machine from brands like Breville, Krups, Delonghi, Gaggia, etc. Those machines are often not capable enough to produce a cafe quality cup.
Types of coffee drinkers
There are two main types of coffee drinkers.
The first will prefer an exquisite cup of the highest possible quality through definitive controls on every parameter. The temperature, pressure and duration of extraction are all controlled accurately. This is only possible through the use of very specialized espresso machines. Given that coffee has almost a thousand aromatic molecules, one of the few that has the most in common ingredients. Coffee can come out differently when extracted in different ways. The concentrated espresso can be made into other beverages such as latte or cappuccino.
The second types of drinker are those who practically take coffee to replace water and are less fussy over their cup of joe. They prefer the coffee in a bigger cup with quantity. They are normally known as filtered coffee. Given this low barrier of entry, more cultures have been accustomed to filtered coffee drinks than espresso based. Quality can be improved by controlling the duration of extraction and temperature control. The coffee is usually prepared using simple apparatus with filtration or diffusion methods.
However, even if the drinker is a accustomed kopi drinker, a good espresso machine could produce a much better kopi by reducing the amount of astringent and broadening the aromatic profiles from the same coffee.
Recommended coffee machine for home use?
If you are looking for filtered coffee, you only need a kettle that boils water to the correct temperature. A specialised pot that can hold the coffee powder for diffusing to release the aroma while keeping the remnants from getting into the drink.
If you are going for a properly made espresso, you will need a specialised espresso machine that controls the required parameters very well. Many domestic machines claim to be doing the job, but they can rarely do it well. More can be known from this article. The Expert’s Guide To Buying Coffee Machines
Recommended office coffee machine?
In summary, more premium espresso machines are usually better in quality in extraction, last better and are easier to clean or use.
It’s found that offices with coffee solutions offer better efficiency in their staff, so it’s no wonder that coffee stations are always a part of big offices. After all, Luigi Bezzera invented his first espresso machine to keep his staff from going for coffee breaks too frequently.
The three most common coffee solutions used in Singapore, the USA and most parts of Europe.
- Vending machines
- Automatic coffee machines
- Coffee capsules machine.
Vending and automatic machines can be very filthy and require thorough cleaning of the milk dispensers. They also have a high start-up cost, almost equivalent to professional machines. The coffee produced is always deemed inferior to cafe quality. That’s why you still see that staffs go out to get their coffee rather than take the free coffee from the pantry.
Coffee capsules cost from $0.76 for a shot of approximately 5g to 6g coffee from Nespresso. It is a solution for convenience and was very popular with heavy marketing. Most offices did not continue the subscription for long, given that the cost is great. And they still taste far from a cafe cup.
Coffee solutions using coffee beans are always the most preferred. They give not only the best quality but also the best value. A bag of a popular coffee used for Caffè, like Arcaffè Margo is $29.50 for a kg. If you were to use a professional espresso machine, you could produce an Italiano cafe quality with 7g of coffee, that’s approximately 20 cents a cup.
To use coffee beans, the best solution in terms of convenience is to use automatic coffee machines. Brands like Jura and Delonghi were very popular for this purpose, but more are going to professional machines like the Bezzera. The problem with using professional machines is some basic training is required, but once the staff can handle them, there’s no going back to automatic. The cost of running and the quality of extraction make the machines irreplaceable.
It’s not surprising that many executives find making espressos from a proper espresso machine enjoyable. A small break of therapeutic moments or to engage with their co-workers for a tighter bond. The benefits are definitely not anticipated for most initially, but they could reach deeper than expected.
This explains why some offices with large consumption levels even hire a barista to manage their coffee stations, and this trend is gaining traction. The impression from your clients to see a cafe’s quality coffee served to them these details do etch a memorable impression.
Even in small offices, users usually start to drink more cups. Slowly but surely, their cost will usually break even in a few years.
Why are more offices and homes buying expensive espresso machines?
Contrary to what most people believed, it’s easier to handle and make an espresso with a professional espresso machine.
Three main results. For convenience, quality and price saving
With a professional espresso machine, the time to grind the coffee and pull an espresso can be as fast as less than 1 minute. Daily cleaning also takes less than a minute and involves flushing the brewing chamber, known as the grouphead. If you need to make a latte, it will probably take another minute to froth the milk.
Most of the time required is waiting for the machine to warm up, which doesn’t need attention or preparation. And what you can get is always absolute quality, comparable to the coffee you pay many bucks at your favourite cafe.
Many users prefer to start with making filtered coffee. The start-up cost is little, and users usually assume that making coffee can’t be more difficult than pouring hot water over the coffee. It’s simply not so simple. The temperature of the water, how much and how fast to pour. Each of the variables can have a direct impact on the result. One wrong step and you will be pulling fewer flavours and more undesirable astringents.
The actual cost people spend is time and quality. Filtered coffee needs a lot of manual control and attention from the user, with more room for error. The water temperature must be measured accurately for consistently pouring onto a bed of coffee. Cleaning may involve separating the dispensed coffee remnants from the filters, which is cumbersome.
If one is for an office, requiring many consistent cups simultaneously. Or a family going for a good cup of coffee to start their day, a professional espresso machine will bring greater delights and many memorable moments.
What other extra cost saving with the best espresso machine?
If you thought that buying a good expression machine only offers an improvement in quality and reduced cost per cup. That’s not all.
The best coffee machines in the market are the same machines used in cafes but downsized to tabletop size. Such as the Bezzera, as seen on our webstore. Bezzera was the inventor of modern espresso machines and has been around since 1901.
These premium coffee machines could be installed in any environment using normal home plugs without any special requirement for power or water connections. The machines have an internal water tank, so you do not need to plumb them in. It’s plug-and-play and easier to set up than a traditional commercial machine requiring plumbing and electrical work.
Such professional machines are mostly made with solid metal, easily weighing 20kg and above. The espresso machine is made of mainly pure copper, brass or material of the finest quality that qualifies them to be food safe. Using the same professional components that are used in cafe machines. This tells you one thing. They are made to go through a lot of rough work and are likely made to last. They are also very serviceable to keep them working for as long as you need.
And this also tells you that these machines could be resold when you no longer need them and could always retain a certain value. The demand for these machines never ends with seemingly no lack of buyers. It could be sold to a restaurant, an office or anyone in the market for an espresso machine.
Given that the machines are made with so much metal and are handmade, the prices of these Italian gear are adjusted once or twice annually. Most users could recover 50 to 70% of the price of their working units, selling them off after 5 years. This together with the savings you obtain from making coffee on your own. Could easily translate to thousands of dollars in saving accumulated in years.
Some users or office managers deem the coffee machines are only temporarily rented. The cost and quality they received paid back the cost by itself.
Summary
The trend for premium espresso machines, like the Bezzera, has increased from higher user expectations. Users no longer contend with the run-off-the-mill quality from vending, capsules or automatic machines.
Users start to recognize the actual cost of value and see that the upfront cost for a professional machine can be recovered with usage and they could retain a higher resale value when they upgrade or no longer need them. Co-workers also find making coffee in professional machines a pleasurable experience and an opportunity for better communication and engagement.
WANT TO KNOW MORE?
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