How much is bad quality coffee costing you as a business?

It is not the first time I have read articles like this one: High quality coffee at the office – Would you still go the Cafe?

Here it is summarized and applied to South Africa

Do your employees love their coffee fix? If so they normally are quire fussy about the fact that it has to be a good quality coffee and consistently good. But the coffee at work just does not make the grade.

So as a result what do they do? A few times a day they make the trip down to the cafe or local coffee spot to grab their favourite brew. An employee normally does not consider how valuable the time away from their schedule is. But as an employer this down time is costing you a fortune.

What if you could have consistently great coffee at your workplace without leaving the office. A fully automatic coffee machine using real fresh roasted quality coffee beans, ground to perfection with a high quality conical grinder will produce that perfect blend every time at the touch of a button. Not only are you saving time out of busy schedules but now have the convenience of grabbing a great coffee right at your workplace.

Having a fully automatic real bean to cup coffee machine in the office also looks very healthy on the bottom line.
Lets have a look at some calculations. How much would it cost an employer with say 30 staff over the space of a year to pay for time away from the desk for Coffee.

• Number of Employees – 30
• Coffee Breaks per day – 2
• Average Coffee Break time – 10 minutes
• Average hourly rate – R50.00
This calculates out at a cost to the employer of R2,500.00 per week and R130,000 per year. That’s an expensive coffee break!

Espresso machine?

I have found it strange what people define as an espresso machine. A machine that uses the espresso concept does not necessarily make an espresso in my book. But here is how is what I have found:

• mocha pot or stove pot, this is probably the original espresso device, but in todays term I would not consider in an espresso, the pressure is good, but the grinds are not very fine, and there is normally no crema
• Aeropress coffee maker - once again not an espresso, it produces the best coffee using course grinds
• Domestic espresso machines - I do not class these as espresso but rather espresso like. The grind is fine but not as fine as it could get, the machines do not have enough punch, perhaps I can be proved wrong
• Automatic espresso machines - Also an espresso like machine, with the Jura, probably the pick of the lot

So what is an espresso maker then. Well to me it has to have the following:

• The grind can be so fine that it clumps, i.e. it start to attach itself to other fine grinds
• The filter head MUST be metal, with out that it cannot produce enough backward pressure
• The tamp has to be manual, unless a tamp of 25kgs is guarnateed
• The machine must have accurate temperature control, so that the water is never hotter than 95 degrees.

So that is why I have found the definition espresso machine is too vague.

Coffee Machines and Makers – Choose by Cost

There are almost 3,000 patented ways to make coffee, and there are new ones each month. So here is a summary of what to look at depending on budget and need.

What is NOT Coffee!

Before we start let me first start that if you want to drink coffee you should know what some may call coffee but to me is not.

• Any thing that comes in a bottle or tin, that requires you measuring by teaspoon and adding water is not coffee! It is not even coffee essence, which the concept of powder is based on it is as far removed from coffee as grapes are removed from raisins
  
• Instantly dispose of it, if there is any thing any where that says instant, that is not coffee that is a convenience drink
  
• The best place for it is the bin, if it has some fancy marketing name that is based on some city or areas name then it is not coffee
  
• Waste of money scream at me, if it is pre-ground, then it is not coffee, it is something that smells similar but cannot compare like a weed cannot be compared to a rose.
  
• If the words vacuum appear anywhere on the packaging then toss it
  
• A pod is something we will one day take to work, and is not a place to keep coffee
  
• If the beans have a glistening look, then the compost is the best place for them
  

So what is coffee?

• Must be in bean form
  
• Should have a roasting date on it
  
• Should tell you where it is from, and not just a country name either. A Brazilian is not a type of coffee
  

Assumptions

The person who wants a good coffee maker, loves coffee so has found a good source of buying fresh roasted coffee bean. So all the coffee brewing solutions below will assume that, and will either include a grinder or recommend a minimum.

So the basic assumption is that you have found your beans and they are of a high enough standard.

The Recommended Coffee Machine List

For those not from SA, the rand (R) to US $ rate is about R7 to $1. You will see that there is a big jump in the prices between the budget and domestic automatic machine, the reason is that the machines between those two are really fashion statements, they make no better coffee, and not more convenience than the coffee makers in the price range up to R1,350.00.

I have had some good coffees out of the decent domestic machines that hover around R11,000 with a good grinder, but for that price I think the Juras are a more logical choice, since they consistently make a great cup of coffee. What other make is missing here probably WMF and Schearer, but neither of these offer a great support base in South Africa.

At the 35k mark you need real skill to consistently beat the Z7, and if you made 10 cups you would fine in a blind taste the average Joe would probably prefer the Z7.

Need	Solution	Price Range	Coffee Quality (10 is best)
Bare necessity Coffee Maker	Plunger with blade grinder	R120 – R300 (with grinder)	5
Budget Coffee Maker for 1 or 2	Aeropress with burr grinder	R375 – R895 (with grinder)	7-8 (depending on the brew technique)
Espresso Maker for 1 or 2	Mocha pot with burr grinder	R450 – R950 (with grinder)	7
Budget Coffee Maker for up to 10	Mocha pot with burr grinder	R300 – R1,350 (with grinder)	6 - 7 (with a high quality gold filter)
Fashion Coffee Maker	I do not recommend these, but the normally are in the guise of a domestic espresso machine, may even have double barrelled names	R1,350 – R18,000 (with grinder)	5-8 (depending on skill level)
Domestic Automatic Coffee Machine	Jura Ena 3, if you like cappuccino the add different frothing attachment or even stand alone milk frother	R7,900 – R8,800 (with milk frother)	8
Small office Super Automatic Coffee Machine	Jura Impressa F50, if you like cappuccino the add different frothing attachment or even stand alone milk frother	R10,602 – R11,500 (with milk frother)	8.5
Medium office Super Automatic	Jura Impressa XF50, if you like cappuccino the add different frothing attachment or even stand alone milk frother	R10,602 – R11,500 (with milk frother)	8.5
Executive Office or Home Automatic	Jura Impressa Z7, the best coffee a super automatic can produce at the moment.	R24,500 – R26,200 (chrome finish)	9
The I am mad about coffee maker	A single group machine like the La Pavoni, must have a 54 cm head and A Ditting doserless grinder	R35,000 (est)	9.5 (with a well trained person do the magic)
The I am king of the world machine	A clover machine (have to source them second hand, and they are as scarce as hens teeth) and a Ditting doserless grinder.	SQ	9.75 - 10

This table has been status quo for about 2 years now, so we wait with baited breath.

Footnote

We have found that each brewing system changes the taste on the coffee significantly, so you may need to change your coffee if you change your preferred brewing method.

Search Help?

Here are a few searches that may help:

Looking for Jura Coffee Machines South Africa, then click here: jura coffee machines south africa,
Or perhaps in Cape Town then click here: coffee machines cape town, which will give you a list of Jura coffee machines, if you are looking for other coffee equipment then click here: coffee equipment cape town.
You looking for the most successful one-button the Jura Impressa f50, then click here: jura f50, which has information of the new relaunch Jura F50.

Looking for a comparison summary of juras, then click here: jura coffee range comparison.

That's a quick post with a few goodies

Coffee glorious coffee

It is amazing how coffee can be the base of so many wonderful goodies, coffee liquor, coffee cake, cappuccino muffins, and cappuccino sweets. And in today's society coffee has a love hate relationship with everyone. We all love it but hate it because we are told by all that is it bad for you.

The irony is that good quality coffee is good for you, but the stuff used in the items above is a hydrated blend of some of the worst coffees you can find. The leading instant coffee manufacturer is the largest user of a coffee filler, based on a tree found in the Congo basin originally. We they found it no one ate it, a few animals had adapted to consume it, but it was far from their favourite food, and now that tree is grouped in the coffee genius even though it had 50% less chromosomes. I never under stood planet biology but that sounds wrong.

So you love all these things and want to make them yourselves then make coffee fresh from a great super automatic coffee machine and use only high quality specialty grade coffee, shade grown of course, and you can have you cake and eat it