The tamp stand dates from 2005, although the 1st units were not sold until summer of 2006. I did not invent the stand, I just expanded upon something a little similiar I saw in the market. That product was from Kees van der Westen, who had and still does have a bench mounted aluminium frame that performs the same task. I wanted to have a product that was portable, stable and also rubberised so that it does not scratch the portafilter.
But first a bit of background.....
My first business was in retail, then selling Marzocco equipment. For our shops and customers we of course needed accessories. These were purchased from Espresso Supply (who now sell the Cafelat items) - in fact Laura told me that we (my former business partner Duncan and I) were one of their 1st customers @ Espresso Supply. Small world. Anyway around 2004 I decided that rather than import items all the time I would make my own. So 2004 and 2005 was research and development of the bumper products. I think the transition from ideas in my head to products in my hands deserves a blog post on it's own s I will save that for another day.
So here is my initial Tamp stand concept, here are my original basic measurements from 2005 which were then given to someone to do the technical drawings.
As you can see it is the 1st version. In fact originally I wanted it to be made from 3 pieces - a top and 2 sides. I wanted the sides to join the top with some really nice looking socket head hex nuts.
Sadly I think the side pieces are AWOL, I may have reused them as a bracket or something. Anyway the resulting look was not good, it was more meccano than industrial chic.
After than i went with a 1 piece frame. Here is the prototype complete with contact adhesive on the top - the hand cut rubber top piece is sadly mising.
At this stage I was still wondering how to stabilise the metal frame in the rubber mat at the bottom. You can see above the frame is straight at the bottom, eventually I figured out that by cutting away some of the metal from the corners it would sit nicely in the grooves of the rubber mat.
So there is the final version, complete with matching tamper and round puck.
I think we made roughly 7000 of these over 2.5 years. We still get emails to this day of people asking to see it return. All in good time.....
Finally a bit of curios, here is the cousin, the La Marzocco stand we made for them. Less than 200 were made for the launch of their webshop in 2007.
On a final note I have to say something about all the copycat products out in the market, there must be 6 companies making copies of this from China, to Italy and Germany. When I came up with this I thought it was a quirky and very geeky tool for Home Baristas, it is good to see so many in use around the world but frustrating to see people rip-off your design 100%
Oh well on the bright side, at least I must be doing something right for people to want to copy it!
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The show kicked off on the 23rd and the crowds were ready to be in at 09:30 am. An early start for all of us and a late finish as well, the dorrs were open all 3 days until 6pm.
Overnight the event staff had been in and installed the aisle carpets which were a very awful beige colour.
So here is the Marzocco GS 2 group machine in all her glory. I am often asked why we take a machine to the exhibitions as we could easily get away without one. It is really costly to send these things around the world and back again and the electrical costs for 4 day events is usually aequivalent to the cost of a new conical grinder. But for me the pride I have when displaying my restored machines far outweighs any cost and I think it is good for the company to have them on display.
Here is my lovely Comet grinder. I wanted to take this along because Marzocco have a new Vulcano model coming so it was good to have an original opposite the new version.
The new knockboxes were a great success. These exhibitions really hit home how much we need to get the products out there into the marketplace, as most people were seeing all the Cafelat products for the very first time.
Lastly a couple of shots of the entire stand. We tried to add a few retail shelves to the stand and some display tables with all the products on display.
The feedback from the buyers was superb, it was great to hear such kind words from people from all over Europe and the USA. A great bonus for me though was seeing a lot of our products being used nearby at the WBC stand, by many of the competitors. Very cool.
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We all had a great time in London for the exhibition and most importantly the Cafelat products were very well received and we had a lot of great compliments and feedback. One of the biggest moments for me is always seeing the reaction people have when they see the products - as much as we try and involve professionals in the Cafelat products, from Design, Manufacturing and Packaging, at the end of the day it is still just me stuck in my lab in Hong Kong working on these things and testing them and going through every possibility. It is why for the most part these and the old bumper products are ridiculously over-engineered, my way of compensating for not having other development staff or partners to bounce ideas off of.
So here we are in London, at the fantastic Olympia exhibition venue. The stand we had was fairly modest, but I can tell you 24 sq.m in London is still a pretty penny.
Here are a few images from the set-up day. The London exhibition was unlike nothing I had done before, the paperwork and form-filling that needed to be done was astronomical. The UK is Health and Safety mad! Having said that it all went very well and the organisors from my point of view did a great job.
The furniture for the exhibition was all hand-made by myself and I painted each and everyone of those stripes on the sides of the cabinets to match the boxes. They turned out very well.
We were opposite our good friends at Marzocco again, you can just make out a bit of their stand here. They went for an urban street look, in honour of the Strada machine.
By far the biggest drama on set-up day was the coffee grinder. I sent along a vintage Marzocco Vulcano but sent my 3 phase one by mistake. So Antonio at Macap did me a deal on a wonderful chrome finish M5. It will stay with me and is a great match for my Speedster.
More to come over the next few days...
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I was never a big fan of wood handled tampers, I always preferred aluminium and the rubber ones. It was just the idea of a lacquered handle that put me off. That all changed back in 2008 when I visited Kontra coffee in Copenhagen and I saw the Caffe Kultur tampers on display. It was love at first sight, the finish on the handles was superb and not a drop of lacquer in sight.
As it happened I was in Copenhagen working on the new Cafelat products. As soon as I got back to the design meeting I made it clear that we must have a wooden handled tamper, but only if we can get it to a very high standard.
We originally specified a natural finish on the handles, but over time the finish dulls, so I have been experimenting with different finioshes and have come up with these.
I think most will agree that the highly polished finish is quite superb. This is all natural and no lacquer has been used at all. It is a little difficult to do and I have been researching this for a few months now, but the results speak for themselves.
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First off I want to thank Henk at ESW in Holland for making this possible!
My hot streak of recent machine finds continues with this rarity, and what a machine she is. Described by many as one of the most stunning machines ever made, it is undoubtedly a modern classic.
For those who don't know about this there is a bit up on the official website here
The Original Speedster
I have known Kees for several years and it is hard to believe that this is the first of his machines I have owned, I have a feeling though that I have just broken my duck and more are soon to follow.
So here she is...
Since the previous owner had custom side panels made, with a very fetching Illy logo, the original Speedster panels were unpainted. I just quckly did this paint job yesterday but will eventually go back to the original Yellow / Red colours once I can find a suitable yellow.
Under the hood is pretty much two 1 group GS marzocco boilers, albeit slightly modified. Kees told me that he built these 6 machines as a bit of fun and in a rush and that I shouldn't read much into the internals - what utter rubbish! I can tell you that he is very modest, it is great inside there given the small space he had to work with and there are so many nice touches everwhere. The construction of the frame and the body panels is just superb.
I shall continue to play with this over the next week and test her out. The GS paddle group has been rebuilt by me and I have also done a very quick descale of the boilers and the pipes. She is in great condition.
Last image for now, a really great view of the GS group body and you can really see how Kees exposed as much of the group neck as possible. Very cleverly done by moving a few internal components sp the body panel could follow the boiler as closely as possible.
Oh and if you haven't already done so, check out Mark's very detailed new Speedster first look on Coffeegeek. If the new Speedster is not in my immediate future I think the 2 group Idro will be.
Coffeegeek Speedster First Look
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One of our must-do stops in Los Angeles was to visit the well known and respected LA MILL Coffee boutique. Earlier in the week we had paid a very brief visit to Intelligentsia in Venice and the coffee was great, the 20 minute queue was not so great. But the coffee really made it worthwhile.
On a personal level for me going to La Mill was something of a pilgrimage, maybe pilgrimage is the wrong word but it held the promise of seeing not only a great coffee shop but also seeing something a bit extra special. It is a well kept secret that in 2007 I made a very special FB80 for La Marzocco's 80th Birthday. I also gave them back a wonderful 4 group EE Linea with brass body. Anyway the FB80 was on display at the Milan trade show and it was then sold to LA MIll.
Here is the machine in La Mill alongside Keiko and Liz.
I lived with the brass FB80 for around 6 months as it took shape. At one stage I told Marzocco that it couldn't be done as I was runnig out of time. My original look of the machine was that it had some chrome Fleur de Lis on the front corners, that is the symbol of Firenze and also featured on one of their old machines. In the end they were taken off.
I wish I had made a 2nd machine now.
Needless to say La Mill was quite a shop, the coffee was superb and the whole atmosphere was just great.
I am now pleased to say that La Mill stocks Cafelat products.
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