Every café fit-out starts with the same question from a new owner: “which machine should I actually buy?” It’s rarely as simple as picking whatever looks best in photos, and the honest answer is that the right setup depends on volume, space, budget, and how the site will actually run day to day — not just brand preference.
Here’s the process we actually walk through with a new site, and the questions worth asking yourself before you spend a significant amount of money on equipment.
Start with volume, not brand
Before machine or grinder brand ever comes up, the first question is always: how many covers, and what’s peak-hour throughput actually going to look like? A site doing steady counter service for 80 covers a day has completely different needs to one doing a breakfast and lunch rush for 300. Undersizing a machine for volume is one of the most common (and most expensive to fix later) mistakes we see in new fit-outs — it’s far cheaper to get this right at the spec stage than to replace an undersized machine eighteen months in.
Machine and grinder are a pair, not two separate decisions
A brilliant espresso machine paired with the wrong grinder for your volume and grind profile will underperform, and the reverse is just as true. This is why we typically spec them together rather than as separate purchases — grind consistency, dosing speed and burr size all need to match what the machine (and your baristas) are actually going to be doing all day. If you’re weighing this up for your own site, our guide to choosing the best machine for a busy café is a reasonable starting point, but the honest answer usually needs a proper conversation about your specific volume.
For sites that want a properly matched setup without piecing it together themselves, we put together equipment bundles that pair machine, grinder and accessories as a coherent whole rather than a collection of separate purchases.
Water filtration isn’t an afterthought
This is the step that gets skipped most often, and it shouldn’t be. Every new fit-out should include proper water filtration specced against your local water hardness and expected volume from day one — not retrofitted six months later after a heating fault. A Brita C1100 or equivalent, sized correctly, protects the investment you’ve just made in the machine itself.
Space, power and installation requirements
Machine choice is also constrained by what your site can actually support — three-phase power availability, plumbing runs, extraction, and physical footprint all need checking before a machine is chosen, not after it arrives. We put together a full breakdown of what’s typically required in our coffee machine installation requirements guide, which is worth reading before you commit to a specific model.
Making it your own
Once the core setup is right, plenty of operators want the equipment to actually look like it belongs in their space — custom panel colours, branded touches, finishes that match the fit-out rather than standard factory options. That’s a genuinely common request, and it’s why we offer customisation on a lot of the equipment we supply, rather than treating machines as purely functional boxes.
The bit that actually matters most
Every fit-out is different, but the sites that get the best results are the ones that spec volume, machine, grinder and water filtration together from the start, rather than solving each one in isolation as problems come up. If you’re planning a new site or a refit and want to talk through what an actual setup should look like for your volume and space, get in touch — it’s a conversation worth having before you order anything.