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If you like me, are way behind on viewing the TopBrewer, then take a look; a pipe coming out of a counter is their vision of coffee making. How does that make you feel?

More importantly, is the visual aesthetics of making coffee add anything to the experience?
What’s more important: the taste? Or the process?

Vending machine coffee has been around a really long time, so this isn’t anything new, however, coffee drinking is exploding and we’re better than ever placed to redesign. Design can change minds, just look at Apple for that evidence. If the masses can be convinced that removing the mucky process from all our lives, not just wealthy individuals and public spaces, then would we go for it?

How important is seeing beans, smelling grounds or getting a customers brew muddled up? Purists (which I assume most of the people visiting this post to be), will probably argue for the hand made process.

But could we consider that we’ve accepted this manual brewing process because of a gradual adoption to coffee drinking (the needs and demands), the development and improvement of technology, and the limitations / costs of bricks and motar premises? Haven’t we just become attached to a process of manual production, because we have had to?

If we could flick a switch, change the world in a second, and create a new coffee drinking environment, free from money restraints, costs and out dated technology, would we do it?

I’m considering, that if we could accept such a change, that our coffee experience would still exist, however it would be centered around the outcome / result of drinking coffee, not the process… and I believe that outcome would look very different from what it is today.

So, back to TopBrewers’ ‘pipe in a counter’; I don’t think for a second that it will replace the coffee process we’ve all come to love. But I do believe it could start a chain of events which takes equipment design and functionality in a complete different direction and lead us all to explore what is really important: coffee or community?

I’d love to hear your thoughts.