what are the costs/benefits?

i've been thinking about the economics of coffee production. trying to figure out whether a machine like the clover would be worth my coins. here are some of the things people have said about it:

it's unbelievable.

it's amazing.

it's the best thing to happen to coffee since, oh, ever.

it's the espresso machine of coffee and will cause the barista to need skills to adjust and work with it.

etcetera.

now that's the hype. let's talk about the economics of the machine. for $8000, what are you really getting? an h.d. holographic wificasting plasma t.v. (no such thing, of course, but go with me), or a bigger t.v. remote that has a "125" button so you don't have to press "1, 2, 5"?

and since i enjoyed the comparisons between the french press and the aeropress in some earlier posts, i figured why not swing the pendulum the (way!) other direction and compare the press to what is being marketed as the ultra high end of coffee preparation in the clover.

with so many clover dollars on the line it almost has to come down to a cost/benefit analysis. but first, a couple disclaimers. off the bat i should say that i have never used a clover, never tasted a clover cup, never seen a clover in person. (thank you, texas, for being coffee's geographic equivalent of tattooine.) second, i should note that the reason i am in this uninformed position is because the folks up there at clover have evidently been too distracted by such "major" events as "world barista championships" and "sleeping" and "eating" to bother to return any of my phone calls to ship out a free demo machine to said center of the coffee galaxy, namely, my house. [i make joke. me no askee clover persons for demo machine.] thirdly, and maybe lastly, i haven't thought this through exhaustively. you can think of this post along the lines of talk radio hosts, who come up with these outrageous positions on anything from jfk conspiracies to going cold turkey being good for the e.u's future economic expansion eastward just to get the phone lines filled up.

enough. on with the post.

what are the factors? everything here has to be compared to how clover would stand up versus its next "overall best" competitor. i say "overall best" because each of the major brewing systems present their own upsides and drawbacks. you have to choose one to best represent the competition. and because, to my mind, taste is king, we have to go with the coffee press. (though some would argue for vac pot; some for pour over; and so forth. not the point. just go with me.)

okay, yes, factors. cost per cup. time per cup brewed. generally expected lifetime of equipment. coolness factor. reliability of equipment (especially worthy of consideration in high volume coffee locations, versus high volume espresso locations and also because of their devastation to your operation if one goes down). is the clover necessary? indispensible? merely helpful? a good prop to have on the back counter to impress your friends? hopefully this smattering of factors can represent the lion's share for an accurate comparison.

if your initial price tag is $8000 how many cups do you have to sell at, say, $1.50, to even pay off the thing? or is that it? do you have to start charging $2 now? $2.50? just for a baseline, i'll use some numbers from my old sbux store. we averaged barely 17 uph on the "drip coffee" line. so on 100 transactions, only 17 actual units were coffee. compare that to some days when my espresso uph (any espresso beverage) was into the mid 90's and on some extra-hectic days during holiday season could peak up over 100. so let's say a generous 20 uph on 5000 transactions/week. if my calculations are correct (remember me hating math in school?) that's roughly $1500/week gross. at a stellar 50% flow through percentage it's about three months to pay the thing off. okay, not bad. not bad at all, assuming those killer numbers i posited. there again, using those figures, how much quicker would you have paid off your arsenal of presses and airpots (think stumptown) and been riding the gravy train?

time is definitely a big win for clover versus a press. less than one minute versus about four? total prep time from a dead start has got to be maybe an additional minute (pulling the beans, grinding, prepping them, cleanup).

lifetime of equipment? who knows with clover. already it's gotten an upgrade. not because of deficiencies, i don't think. just improvements on the design. if you've got the bucks to drop on a first gen clover how long will it likely be before you start getting upgrade lust? not long, i trow. compare to the press. the press wins. get yourself a classic press design and you're in business for a long, long time. i think of bodum's chambord line or the cafe paris design. uber classic. uber chic. uber sophisticate. and, relative to the electric coffee box named for a weed, uber cheap.

you gotta hand it to the folks up there at clover hq. they pretty much got 'em right where they want 'em in terms of fans and buyers. even at that price, they are probably picking up enough sales to keep them in caviar and dom perignon. is it marketing? is this new product deemed indispensible by those in the know? or is it just the must have new toy that will eventually be just like the eight track or the cassette player or the home camcorder that you had to have someone help you strap onto your back like you were atlas?

can you be "old school" and still use a clover? (is that a stupid, irrelevant question?)

seriously, is it really that much cooler? better? evidently, these will only ever be rhetorical questions, as my pleas for a free machine have fallen on deaf ears. the nerve.

the phone lines are starting to come alive. discuss.