canteen considerations

Having already decided that you want to operate a canteen outlet you should consider the following carefully:

• Build Quality (Cups required per hour)
  
  

• Size of cups (Are you going to serve large drinks?)
  
  

• If self-serve or operator is required
  
  
  

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• Build Quality (Cups required per hour)

Correctly assessing the required output of a machine is an important factor in your buying decision. If you need hundreds of cups per day you will require a machine that is robust and able to withstand the punishment that it will be expected to soak up. Generally speaking, the premium Italian brands are built to ‘a standard’ rather than a price. Machines from elsewhere in the world are more often built with a cheap price as the priority.

The rule "you get what you pay for" holds true in this case. If you are happy to replace your espresso machine every 18 months because it has fallen to pieces then go ahead and buy on price. If, however, you want a life expectancy exceeding 3 years then you will need to spend a little more.

It is important that you remember that most manufacturers specify the potential drink output of equipment. Few specify the recommended daily throughput relative to the build quality. This can be misleading because if a manufacturer says the machine can produce 200 coffee per hour, this does not necessarily mean that the build quality is sufficient to withstand 200 cups per hour for 8 hours per day, 7 days per week!

• Size of cups (Are you going to serve large drinks?)

This has only become an issue within the last five years. Following the trend started by American Coffee Shop retailers, consumers now demand huge drinks. (16oz Cappuccinos and Lattes are not unusual).

The first thing to ensure is that your machine provides enough clearance between the drip tray and group filter spout for you to introduce the size of disposable cup that you intend to use.

The second ‘cup size’ issue is the capacity of the heat exchangers within the boilers. (A heat exchanger is like a large pipe going through the centre of the boiler. Cold water is pumped into it at one end and as this flows through the exchanger. The temperature in the boiler around the exchanger heats the water up before the hot water passes through the coffee and into the cup).

With small heat exchangers, if you are drawing out large volumes of coffee for gigantic coffees, cold water will constantly be pumped into the exchanger which will cause the temperature of the water already in the exchanger to drop. In turn this will cause the temperature of the coffee to cool a little until the water temperature in the exchanger has ‘recovered’. The larger the heat exchanger the less displacement of hot water with cold and the faster the recovery time.

We would suggest that you use no more than three cup sizes. Preferably only two. The key drinks you need will be Latte, Cappuccino, Café Au Lait, Black Coffee and Espresso. You may then wish to add decaffeinated alternatives for all of these if your machine has this feature. 

The variety of different beverages you can programme into Super-Automatic systems varies widely between manufacturers. The thing to remember is that you have a finite number of options which are determined by the number of selection buttons. Some systems have dozens of selection and pre-selection buttons, grinder selection options etc. But remember the more buttons you have the more confusing it becomes. Our recommendation is to keep the selections to a minimum. Decide what drinks you need as core products and then possibly add a few fancy options.

Clearly the programmable parameters on a Super-Automatic machine would need to be endless to cover every possible drink combination and size. So the best advice is to check out how many options the machine gives you and then work out how many you really need to program.

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