Coffee By Thirty

Engadget posted an invitation to comment on your favorite Espresso machine the other day. The suggestions readers left range from cute, $3 stovetop models to the stainless steel monoliths of caffeinated might.

Of course, good ol’ CoffeeGeek features reviews on consumer level espresso toys, and every other coffee toy on Earth.

I had planned on my espresso machine being the most expensive bit of equipment in the shop. After some research, I’m realizing otherwise.

Much to my appallment, refrigerated cases for storage of pastries and bottled beverages cost minimum the price of espresso machines. Some of these cases cost four times as much!

Once again, opening a new business costs a lot more than you think it does.

Pictures of espresso and lattes so gorgeous, I feel dirty for looking at them.

I am a foolish buttnugget.

One cup, in U.S. measurement, is eight ounces. If you recall, a standard cup of coffee is six ounces. (Three-quarters of a cup.) The reservoir on my coffee brewer is pre-marked at two, four, six, and eight-cup marks. Except they’re not full cups.

No, the fine people at Black and Decker, realizing the proper size of a cup of coffee, properly marked their machine. I, on the other hand, assumed they were using the standard U.S. measurement and never bothered to check otherwise.

In short, I’ve been doing it right the whole time and didn’t even know it.

According to the Small Business Administration, once my coffee shop makes six million dollars, I’ll no longer be a small business.

Six million dollars. That, by the way, amounts to over 42,000 lattes a week.

(Coffee shops are NAICS code #722213. It’s helpful to know as you scroll through the ridiculously long table on the SBA site.)