Greetings! I am here in this forum seeking for help. I am planning on starting up a coffee shop. It has been my dream opening a coffee shop in my local city as i want people from my area to experience what I have experienced in my trips across europe esp italy. Coffee shops in my area are just a handful and most of them just serve bad coffee. Espresso shots tastes of burnt beans to a cup of flat white being like 250ml-300ml of milk + espresso shot. My country(esp my region) is not too big on the whole 3rd wave/hipster coffee shop but it is something I plan on introducing to people.

My eye was initially set on the La Marzocco Linea Classic 2-Group AV (Volumetric) as it is what i generally see across europe and i already found a supplier locally that sells the machine at the same price la marzocco generally sells it in US and EU. The only concerns i have is it might be overkill as i dont see 3rdwave coffee shops even in the capital get slammed like 10 people or more in line. Only coffee shop that gets that much customers around here is starbucks but the coffee they serve is just terrible. So my search for another machine continued luckily the supplier i met also had a linea mini and is also a distributor of Rocket! I saw an r58 and linea mini and both machines look good.

So my question is,
is it smarter for me to purchase a linea classic vs getting a linea mini first and if the number of customers grow down the line just get another linea mini or rocket r58? The only advantage I see in purchasing 2 machines vs 1 is that incase my machine goes bonkers on me, I still have a machine on deck and still continue normal operations. Target number of coffee a day is a 100 but thats a conservative estimate already. I dont think my cafe can sell 200-300 cups in a day considering the number of factor i pointed out. Also I will be saving around 1000usd if i decide to go the 2 machine route(1 linea mini + 1 r58) vs just La Marzocco Linea Classic 2-Group AV (Volumetric)

Any reply/response would be much appreciated! Thank you!

Good luck with your shop!

Having support for your espresso machine locally is paramount. If you have a LM distributor and tech to service it, that's a real reason to go that route. LM are pricey and sometimes finicky machines but they certainly perform! Any distributor should be able to give you guidance on which machine fits your usage.

Whatever you get make sure you have the proper filters, grinder and electrical supply for it.

I understand the thinking about having 2 x 1 group machines. It's a more expensive way to go and probably takes up more space but your thinking is sound. Perhaps your distributor or tech can put your mind at ease about servicing your machines, discuss with them the possibility of a loaner while your machine is being serviced (for example).

If you're buying a new machine, keep it clean and feed it good water you SHOULD be fine for years before you need anything major. Should be

Of course buy a good grinder with long burr life, make sure your roaster has a de-stoner. I sold a Compak F10 through my distributor to one of their customers that buys another roaster's coffee and they broke it in 3 days with a chunk of metal that was in their beans.

Consider also that your customer base may be used to sweet / milky drinks, so you may have to do some converting. We have that problem here in the US all the time. When people say 'coffee' they often mean 'dessert.'

jpsm wrote:The only advantage I see in purchasing 2 machines vs 1 is that incase my machine goes bonkers on me, I still have a machine on deck and still continue normal operations. Target number of coffee a day is a 100 but thats a conservative estimate already. I dont think my cafe can sell 200-300 cups in a day considering the number of factor i pointed out. Also I will be saving around 1000usd if i decide to go the 2 machine route(1 linea mini + 1 r58) vs just La Marzocco Linea Classic 2-Group AV (Volumetric)

Off the top of my head, I wouldn't do two totally different machines, unless you're going to be serving different coffees with each of them. It's likely your grind setting may need to be different to pull the same shot on the LM and R58, because of their different pressure profile - so if you're aiming for consistency in your drinks (and you should be, IMHO, for a shop), I would go with either the 2-group, or two of the same 1-group.

Beyond that, I would echo what Richard said - find a great local distributor who will do your service, and seek their advice.

Prescott CR wrote:Good luck with your shop!

Having support for your espresso machine locally is paramount. If you have a LM distributor and tech to service it, that's a real reason to go that route. LM are pricey and sometimes finicky machines but they certainly perform! Any distributor should be able to give you guidance on which machine fits your usage.

Whatever you get make sure you have the proper filters, grinder and electrical supply for it.

I understand the thinking about having 2 x 1 group machines. It's a more expensive way to go and probably takes up more space but your thinking is sound. Perhaps your distributor or tech can put your mind at ease about servicing your machines, discuss with them the possibility of a loaner while your machine is being serviced (for example).

If you're buying a new machine, keep it clean and feed it good water you SHOULD be fine for years before you need anything major. Should be

Of course buy a good grinder with long burr life, make sure your roaster has a de-stoner. I sold a Compak F10 through my distributor to one of their customers that buys another roaster's coffee and they broke it in 3 days with a chunk of metal that was in their beans.

Consider also that your customer base may be used to sweet / milky drinks, so you may have to do some converting. We have that problem here in the US all the time. When people say 'coffee' they often mean 'dessert.'

Thank you for the response! The distributor is an hour away by plane so I think thats a small issue(?). Actually the distributor where I am getting the lm/rocket from also distribute their own coffee blends and is competitively priced like 20usd for a kilo of coffee and they can wave the shipping fees if i order like 3-5kg of coffee. I like the blend that taste chocolatey and i think most if not all my customers will appreciate it(Filipinos in general love to put sugar in their coffee) . Awesome idea about the whole loaner thing as thats probably the only scenario i could put my mind at ease when i purchase a 2 group machine instead of having 2 machines.

You do have a unique position there, well, maybe not unique but different than what I have to deal with in Arizona!

The incentive for the roaster to lend / rent (inexpensively) a machine while they fix yours is- you can continue to sell coffee that you buy from them while you're also paying them to fix your machine. Being an hour by plane might change things a bit, unless that's an everyday trip for the plane. If it's a once-a-week plane then you may want to have a back up!

In some ways your roaster is a business partner, if you do well they do well. Hopefully that roaster sees things as you do. However, they're not an investor in your business, so in that way they are not a partner. It's a balance! When a shop wants me to supply equipment I point out that doing so would make me an investor in their business and I'm fussy. I'll demand you do things right, down to folding napkins.

gr2020 wrote:Off the top of my head, I wouldn't do two totally different machines, unless you're going to be serving different coffees with each of them. It's likely your grind setting may need to be different to pull the same shot on the LM and R58, because of their different pressure profile - so if you're aiming for consistency in your drinks (and you should be, IMHO, for a shop), I would go with either the 2-group, or two of the same 1-group.

Beyond that, I would echo what Richard said - find a great local distributor who will do your service, and seek their advice.

I did not know that I might need another grinder for the other machine! Thank you for that information. If that is the case then I might have to shell out more capital for having the 2 machines vs the 1 machine 2 group. I might just start with getting a linea mini and then adding on another mini if the need arises. Its just so hard to justify getting a 2 group machine when I myself am not sure if the whole idea of a 3rd wave coffee shop will "click".

Prescott CR wrote:You do have a unique position there, well, maybe not unique but different than what I have to deal with in Arizona!

The incentive for the roaster to lend / rent (inexpensively) a machine while they fix yours is- you can continue to sell coffee that you buy from them while you're also paying them to fix your machine. Being an hour by plane might change things a bit, unless that's an everyday trip for the plane. If it's a once-a-week plane then you may want to have a back up!

In some ways your roaster is a business partner, if you do well they do well. Hopefully that roaster sees things as you do. However, they're not an investor in your business, so in that way they are not a partner. It's a balance! When a shop wants me to supply equipment I point out that doing so would make me an investor in their business and I'm fussy. I'll demand you do things right, down to folding napkins.

Its an hour by plane and we have like 3-5 flights in a day to the capital and back to my small city. I understand the whole partner thing being a business owner myself of a construction company. I guess the fair thing to do in case my machine needs repair is to ask for a machine and pay like a daily rent on it. Hopefully if my machine gets destroyed at that point i would have enough money from my proceeds to purchase another one instead of reaching in my pocket again LOL. Do you think I would need another grinder incase i decide to go for 2 different machines like the mini and r58 as pointed out by the previous guy? Or is it possible to only have 1 grinder whilst having 2 diff machines on deck.

My guess would be that one grind setting is unlikely to work for two different machines. I haven't tried it, but that's my guess. That is if you're using them both at the same time of course. If you had one as a back up and only pulled it out for use when there was a problem with the first one you'd be fine.

Anytime you make adjustments with a grinder you should be running it to get out the old coffee. If you had two machines that required moving the grind setting that would get old pretty quickly.