I don't see a sensible use case where a Ceado E37z would replace a Mythos or Peak in a busy cafe. However, it is possible for one to work along side a Mythos or Peak for specialty brews.

One example of this is a well known cafe in my neck of the woods. Their flagship roastery/cafe has 4 Mythos and a EKK43. The EKK43 is used for both brew as well as limited/specialty roasts like Geshas that are, comparitively speaking to the standard offerings, low volume. It doesn't mean that the cafe as a whole is low volume, just specific roasts that the cafe wants to show case. Without an EKK43 or equivalent, it would not be economically feasible to offer these special and much more expensive roasts.

You may be wondering then, why an expensive grinder to offer rare roasts that few people will buy/order? Sometimes, the point of offering a rare/expensive roast is not necessarily to make money. It could simply drive word of mouth advertising as a talking piece, or it can showcase certain roasts the the cafe wants to sell to home baristas that would like to at least try out a sample before committing $30 for a half pound. A Ceado E37z or any other titan class single-dosing grinder offers a tool for cafes to do this and present the beans at its best. Otherwise, trying to purge a Mythos each time someone orders a rare Gesha would be cost prohibitive.

lagoon wrote:Honestly, yeah that's pretty low volume. Some cafes near me do 200 an hour during the morning peak and around 1000 for the whole day.

Typically they use a Mythos, PEAK or similar. They are often banging them out so fast, they have an upturned 2kg bag of beans sitting on top of the beans in the hopper. There's no way they are going to employ a bunch of hipsters to weigh beans and fill test tubes at that rate

My point was that a $6500 grinder that can only single dose can never "earn its keep" to the same extent as a more flexible machine that can be easily used to grind hundreds of shots a day - with a commercially realistic workflow. As others have noted, retention is not an issue when you are grinding another shot every 30 seconds.

For another comparison, the EK43 is less than half the financial commitment for a busy cafe and is flexible enough to be a bag grinder, single doser or do on demand as requirements dictate. This is probably why you see them spring up in so many good cafes.

That's one way of looking at it. I personally have been to places that 1) Pre-weight all the espresso shots and 2) Have a really high volume. Visit G&B coffee at the Los Angeles Central Market and you'll see Charles Babinsky and his guys doing just that. As long as you put a solid process in place, it can be done. Add to the hipsters a hipster machine like the Acaia Orion and it can be done.

As for changing the grind settings for different beans, I agree that can be a challenge. Anyway - again - a good process can overcome that challenge. To me the main point about this grinder is not about flexibility, but the quality in the cup. Yes, it won't be for the average good cafe. And there's no mass market for this either.

Beewee wrote: Without an EKK43 or equivalent, it would not be economically feasible to offer these special and much more expensive roasts.

Sure, but very much the point I was making, an EK43 is not limited to single dosing. It is half the price and therefore half the payback time for the business.

The EK's greater utility and flexibility means that its payback period is likely to be better still. Add to that, almost certainly the EK would have better availability of parts and trained service technicians (or a loaner). All amounts to a pretty tough business case for the Ceado.

One could make an argument that an EK43, once setup for espresso with espresso burrs, is essentially a single-dosing grinder. If you want to do brew, you'll need an EKK43 with two hoppers and burrs, or two separate grinders. An EKK43 would still be about $3k cheaper than the Ceado but at this point, it's less about value and more about impressing the customer. For example, given the choice, if you were running a cafe with a minimalist look having using ModBar, would you prefer to take up the counter space with a towering EK43 or a much more compact E37z or EG-1 where you can potentially hide the controller box under the counter or in a recessed location? It would give a more clean look to the cafe.

In no ways am I trying to defend or justify the MSRP of the Ceado E37z. It would be equally hard to justify the cost difference between a 3 group Linea MP vs FB80 MP which is roughly the same difference as a E37z. Yet the fact that the FB80 MP, being $6k more is still offered by LM suggests there are people who value its aesthetics. Same can be said about KvdW machines.

For starters, I'm not sure anyone can really defend this price point...that said, I just love the looks of this machine and on paper what it's capable of doing. Ceado produced a single dose, zero retention, flat burr, variable rpm grinder to show-off their technological skills. Surely, if I had that kind of money to throw around, it would be sitting on my counter for all my coffee friends to see with me saying, "nothing but the best for you guys...and please leave a tip because I can barely buy beans after this expenditure!"

My feeling about Ceado and their R&D has greatly increased with the development of this grinder...and I think that is exactly what they were after. Matter of fact, I think the 37z Hero costs more than the selling price from design to production, but it's cutting edge, and that's the trick pony.
I'm hoping it shows up at the next WBC so the world's best baristas can use their frozen or heated beans and now vary the rpm of the grind to produce some really incredible espresso.

It seems a few years too late to me to be considered cutting edge. Is it not a design that has been done very well already and for half the cost?

What is the grinder you had in mind?

Thanks,
Frank

Monolith Flat
EG-1

Versalab

Versalab is a completely different design