My wife and I are preparing our business plan for an espresso catering company and are not sure what machine to select.
SIDE NOTE: A little about 'us'. We're coming into this with "eye's-wide-open" having ran coffeehouse/drive-thru's before.. though catering poses it's own unique set of challenges, we feel confident that we have the support, knowledge and resources to make it successful. We are somewhat experienced in coffee having owned/operated a successful coffeehouse and roastery (in the saturated PNW, of all places), a drive through/micro roastery and have consulted on a couple of other coffee shops.
Back to the machine selection.
My thoughts: we buy one or two La Marzocco GS/3's, a couple Super Jolly's and call it a day. Now the fun part: a close friend owns a fairly good sized espresso tech business - repairing and serving many of the larger accounts in our area. He said, to my hearts dismay, that the GS/3 is NOT recommended for commercial use (By LM) and would be nothing but trouble. He believes them, unlike the GS/2 and original GS it replaces, to be entirely junk. He said he replaces the brains in them, "All the time".
Our goal: have 1 or 2 single group espresso machines running at 110v via a commercial extension cord at the event we're catering. Now that I'm questioning the purchase of the GS/3's... it might look more like 2 machines running at 220v off a generator (located in the trailer).. ugh.
So, I hope there are some espresso catering veterans here that can shed some light on what might best fit our needs. Our needs being: ability to consistently produce milk based drinks (8 to 12oz) for up to 200 people, within a 4 hour period, or so. We'll have separate carts for blended drinks, so the espresso cart only needs the ability to produce properly steamed, milk based drinks.. one after the other.. all day long, if needed.
There it is. The dilemma .. is the GS/3 something we should consider? If so, will it keep up? Wear out? Should we consider a 2 group, 220v machine instead? I'm cool with running a generator, if that's what it takes to deliver on quality and consistency.
As far as price.. under 10k for the machine, would be ideal and I'd prefer a dual boiler (I know, I know, HX fans unite and flame this post, but I've used both and prefer the added stability and ease of use in a DB :D)
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