Marcelnl wrote: PS, forgot to add I like Natto, but have no clue what you mean with poi...you mean taro?

Poi is taro root purée. Best I had was at Helena's in Honolulu.

AssafL wrote:I think the point of James Hoffmann is how to get more people into the hobby. I guess his Stake in the game a is if he has more people taking up coffee as a hobby he'll have more customers for his roast.

His point is actually the opposite, and he has been saying it for a long time. If machine designers don't come up with equipment for freshly ground espresso that is easier for consumers (and cafes) to succeed with, then Nespresso will eat their lunch.

Like a Jura or a Saeco? I have never had a great espresso from one of these. Admittedly, they have all been at hotels or cafeterias or at job sites, and these may have been incorrectly adjusted or used stale coffee, worn out burrs, etc. I'd take a GC over any of these any day...

Also, they tend to sound like HP inkjet printers. One clunk away from a broken plastic cog tooth...

That is why I flung the suggestion of a grinder-compacter combo in the air....sort of a Saeco minus the espresso making capabilities...see it like a fresh made ESE pad.
Accomodating all different basket sizes would be a major pain, but the already existing ESE standard pods might help.

Most espresso machines, well the lower end gear, can handle ESE pads and I'm sure that fresh roasted beans ground in a decent grinder (which I seriously doubt to be present inside a saeco and other types)
Decent grounds automatically compacted into something like an ESE pad will taste better than an espresso from a Saeco any day.

If people want to 'take up a hobby' they won't need this sort of gear, but the main issue as I see it is to get a good grinder and process the grounds to the espresso liking masses that are now sipping nespresso or Saeco coffee. If you automate that step for them they have fewer steps left where they can mess up, their biggest factor for failure should be the coffee they buy...
Tamping is some 20 kg, which sounds doable in a small form factor....

Somehow I think that the market for disposable is so much more interesting for manufacturers than the market for machines, so I think it's much more likely that we"ll see many generations of Pods than equipment. Selling coffee at 70€ per kilo pays off...

Marshall wrote:His point is actually the opposite, and he has been saying it for a long time. If machine designers don't come up with equipment for freshly ground espresso that is easier for consumers (and cafes) to succeed with, then Nespresso will eat their lunch.

Nestle has already devoured lunch, at least in the European Community, they're now working on eating dinner as well. My post earlier this month illustrated this clearly, see A look at the future, commercial Nespresso . The machine lives in a busy, trendy bar. It offers acceptable, consistent espresso and milk drinks with a minimum of training, cleaning and ritual, and it sees a lot of use. It has a lot less moving parts than a "conventional superauto", leading to less maintenance. There is zero coffee wastage due to grind and freshness issues.

I seriously expect to see several major espresso machine manufacturers merge or go out of business in the next 10 years. You only have to look at the "entry level" consumer machine market to see that there are no new options being produced. Even the superauto space has been severely impacted by capsule machines. Yes, there will always be a place for the high end beans/machine/grinder/barista setup, but in the mass market convenience and ease of use rules.

Alan

With all due respect, I beg to differ...in my opinion there always will be a place for several market segments between the no brain one size fits all and ultra high end boutique tailor made stuff. In the end it is quality that speaks and makes people vote with their feet or wallet.
I think that is why the super autos are being replaced, the result in the cup is not that good and they need a lot of TLC and frequent repairs.

I think we are looking at a time capsule (pun intended), people are more and more interested in growing and preparing their own food, manufacturers like N have a hefty R&D process that prohibits them from quickly following trends and the investment that is stuck in production facilities is making them even slower. In my view these changes come and go much like waves, and we're currently moving towards more human involved cooking (slow food, home grown food, home smoking, home curing food, home making beer etc) whereas manufacturers are trying to smoothen that wave with a bit (or a lot) of marketing hot air...eeeh...oil until their next product line hits the market.

As many consumers, I will vote with my feet...and my wallet usually follows me around
If a place has this N machine and the espresso is great I'll come back, if not then not (which I expect reading it produces acceptable espresso).
I have recently had a double at two different places in my town, on both occasions I was magically drawn in by my internal drool mechanism as I noticed a Kees van der Westen Mirage and that is synonym for great espresso since I discovered a barista of trust near my previous workplace....well, the espresso was a disappointment on both occasions, one was thin and made from too dark a roast (suspect there was robusta in the blend) and the second was made from very old beans and acidic from a boiler that was likely already switched off...after leaving my feedback I left and have yet to return and I have little doubt more people doing the same gets noticed.

I think it is time to open up a tiny coffeeshop with two or three refurbed la Pavoni Lusso's or something similar, a great grind on demand grinder and a roaster, not selling any fancy stuff such as those dreaded syrups and espresso will cost a euro per single...just to see how it goes

In my case, Nespresso was a gateway drug. After a European honeymoon 9 years ago -- with some of that time in Italy -- I bought a Nespresso machine. For a while I thought it was the bees knees, to borrow a British expression. Since my benchmark at home was Starbucks.

Then I bought a Moka pot.
Then a Bodum.
Then a Mypressi Twist and a Hario Slim modded to stepless.
Than a Vario to pair with my Twist.
Then a Bezzera Magica and K10PB.
Then an Espro press for work.
Then a Pharos just for work.

Now I want a Speedster, Slayer or LM Mini.

All this to say, yes, Nespresso does what it does very well. It makes consistently barely adequate espresso without a lick of fuss. For many people, this is all they want or need. People who want more will explore the world we inhabit. People who don't, will keep pouring money into Nestlé's coffers.

The real scare, as Hoffmann writes, is when Nestlé overcomes its in-the-cup quality barrier through technological advancements. If they succeed, and I'm skeptical they can replicate what we do with something idiot proof, that's when specialty coffee gets turned on its head.

But when I look around Toronto where I work, I see more and more specialty cafes popping up everywhere. And the good ones are very busy and people seem to like what they're getting. I see what we do growing, not disappearing.

My journey was similar, N was just a waypoint at the early start...
Also agree with you on the ever expanding number of specialty coffe shops, not all of them will make it but I'm pretty sure the good ones will survive and their number will slowly grow.

No matter what N does, it is very doubtful imo that they will crack the espresso code in such a way that they can make it into an idiot-proof system.

Just tell people that making espresso on a Nessy and recycling the capsules instead of making it the real way is like eating with plastic forks and recycling them because you don't want to do the dishes. Now, who wants lunch?

Marshall wrote:His point is actually the opposite, and he has been saying it for a long time. If machine designers don't come up with equipment for freshly ground espresso that is easier for consumers (and cafes) to succeed with, then Nespresso will eat their lunch.

Easier is a relative term, right? We're comparing our espresso prep to the push-button prep of a N machine. That's an enormous gap to make up. Can it be made up enough to take any material amount of market share from the N's of the world? Sounds like an insurmountable task.

Convenience tends to trump quality. It's the reason why fast food is huge. I would argue that most, if not all, third wave cafes benefit more from their location and lack of competition than the painstaking process of passionately procuring and creating coffees to sell to their customers.

N doesn't have to be great, they've proved it. It just needed to be easy and much cheaper than super autos. It's barely better than what most people are used to calling 'blech.' But, it's better, fairly cheap to acquire and it's incredibly easy? Sign me up!

I started out drinking folgers with more than enough cream and sugar to mask the terrible flavour. I wouldn't have touched espresso with a ten foot pole at the time. I needed to be passionate about coffee to get to where I am. If I didn't then there is no way I'd currently have over $3k of equipment in my house just to push water through a puck of coffee grinds.

In the foreseeable future, 'easier' will still require passion/obsession. Maybe I'm being too short-sighted here. But, condensing what we do with our shots into a button press sounds like a pipe dream.