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Coffee has become a part of our daily routine. While having many health benefits such as lowering your risk of type 2 diabetes, it’s OK to admit that most of us just drink it keep us awake during class or work. This is why maintaining a café’s espresso coffee machine is important to both the café and the energy starved customers.

Espresso coffee machines are an expensive investment that need to be cared for and maintained in order to provide the best tasting, and safe coffee. Using your machine to its full potential will be of interest to you, you can’t do this if your machine is not regularly maintained. Here is why maintaining your espresso coffee machine is of importance to your café:

Cleanliness

I have heard some horror stories from a friend who works at a well-known coffee chain. They told me that they barely ever clean their machine, when they do there is all sorts of disgusting build-up that nobody wants anywhere near their morning coffee, nevermind inside their body.

If coffee machines are not maintained with regular cleaning and services, a build up of limescale is imminent. This can cause blockages in your machine, but more importantly it’s just disgusting. Imaging waking up at 6am and pulling up to your local café to grab a quick cup of energy, only to find out that you’re drinking a 90% coffee and 10% limescale. Limescale build-up in your machine can cause an unpleasant after-taste that coffee lovers and energy addicts will not appreciate. If you want happy customers and a smooth running machine, you need to maintain it. Otherwise it’s ‘order up espresso with a shot of limescale’.

To make matters worse, limescale is a breeding ground for bacteria that can be potentially harmful to your body. Nobody goes into a café asking for an espresso with a sore tummy on the side. Ensuring that your machine is maintained will make sure that potentially harmful bacteria do not grow within it, and it will make your coffee taste better.

Extending the life of your machine

Espresso coffee machines need to be regularly maintained in order to extend the life of your machine. As briefly mentioned before, if a machine is not looked after properly then blockages can occur which can lead to the machine breaking. In turn, this means bye bye money and hello unhappy, sleep deprived customers.

Maintenance of your machine can make sure that all the parts are in order by checking their efficiency. This helps to extend the life of the machine, and save you money by allowing you to prevent problems occurring, but also allowing you to buy new parts. Buying new parts for a coffee machine is much cheaper than buying a whole new coffee machine for what can be thousands of pounds. Don’t you agree? I know I would much rather buy a new seal for five pound, rather than spend over a thousand pounds fixing a machine that could have had much more life in it if only I had maintained it properly.

Upkeep of your machine will reduce the risk of problems that may occur and it will save you money.

Cost reducing

Maintaining your machine is going to save you money longterm. It will help to keep your machine running for longer, and it will also earn you more customers by keeping your coffee tasting good rather than limescale.

Running a coffee shop can be busy, it’s often hard to find a spare moment, nevermind to organise maintenance for your machine. However, it is a necessary task than can save you a lot of money and time in the long run.

Efficiency

If your machine is not maintained then its performance will decrease. Coffees may start to take longer to brew due to the limescale blockages and/or other problems with your machine. Investing so much money into a machine seems like a dumb idea unless you are going to make sure that it is working at its full capacity. You can’t ensure that it is, unless you regularly maintain your machine.

Calibration

Coffee calibration is an important daily task that needs to be done in order to maintain your machine, and your coffee. Calibrating your coffee grinder along with your espresso machine ensures that your coffee measurements and stages are consistent. If you do not do this, as many coffee shops do not, you will end up with inconsistent coffee and therefore unhappy customers.

What is the point in spending thousands on a coffee machine, only to not use it to its full potential? If you do not calibrate your coffee machine daily, you may be selling poor quality coffee. Paired with no maintenance you are just selling poor quality coffee with a shot of limescale and a side of a sore tummy. Spending money on an expensive machine and then not bothering to upkeep it and use its functions properly is a waste of your time and money. Why buy a top quality machine and make poor quality espressos?

It is clear then that maintaining your coffee machine by scheduling regular maintenance, and also by playing your own part in cleaning and calibrating it daily is beneficial to you. It will save you money longterm and may also increase your earnings by making some great tasting coffee that customers can’t resist. There is no point in spending loads of money on a machine and then not up-keeping or using it to its full potential. Maintenance is your key to great tasting coffee.