My coffee machine

Everything on tap Like most theatres, the Almeida, which opened in Islington, north London, in 1980, has a "green room" - a place where actors and technicians can relax with refreshments before, during and after performances. Until recently, the room had been equipped with a water boiler and actors had to make their own coffee from soluble ingredients.

Demand for coffee can be sporadic and varies from 150 to 250 cups each day. In the lead-up to a production, technical staff are often on site from 6am till midnight. On performance days, the consumption pattern is somewhat different, with actors usually arriving from 5pm.

When the theatre decided to invest in a coffee machine, the key requirements were something simple to use that would make refreshments available to the actors and technicians at any time. They chose a QwikBrew machine, a bulk filter coffee machine from Marco TSE. It makes six litres of coffee at a time - that's 50 cups - and keeps it hot so it's always available. It also has an independent hot water tap for those preferring tea or hot chocolate.

Quality was also a factor, and since the brew is made automatically from fresh ground coffee - bought in bulk portion packs from Caf‚ Bar - it tastes so much better. "The buck stops with us to provide continuous refreshments for our actors. Our old system was unreliable and the quality of hot drinks poor," says the theatre's stage manager, Maris Sharp. "The QwikBrew has transformed our refreshment services. We have fresh coffee, tea and hot chocolate on tap and that makes for happy performers and staff."

Good-looking and fully automatic When Richard and Victoria Smith decided to open a caf‚, following on from their success with Thyme, their three-AA-rosette restaurant in Sheffield, the idea behind the coffee offering was the same as for the food - simple, but well prepared.

They also wanted to create a traditional caf‚ atmosphere with a traditional-looking machine. So they decided to replicate the system in the restaurant, which was supplied by Caf‚ Du Monde - a two-group fully automatic Gaggia espresso machine with pressure pumps, grinders, and waste knock-out drawers, purchased over three years on Caf‚ du Monde's interest-free plan. "Reliability is very important for us, which makes the Gaggia a good choice," Adrian says. "We insist on having it regularly serviced and, as a result, it never lets us down. It's a dream to work on. Once trained, staff find it very simple to use."

Staff training took place on site following installation and lasted about two hours. In the event of staff changes, Caf‚ du Monde will conduct follow-up training free of charge as and when necessary.

The menu includes speciality coffees such as espresso, cappuccino, macchiato and latte, as well as tea and hot chocolate. Cappuccino is the most popular hot drink, and in all Thyme Caf‚ serves up to 100 hot beverages every day, with demand evenly spread between lunch and dinner.

Thyme has chosen Caf‚ du Monde's own select espresso beans, Grand Cru, which are 100% arabica and deliver a perfectly rounded, smooth taste with a full golden crema.

Tough enough for the Falklands? In 2002, Falkland Islands restaurateur Alex Olmedo was at Hotelympia to buy an espresso machine for the Falklands Brasserie, the business he co-owns on the islands, 8,000 miles form London in the South Atlantic.

His demands were modest - it had to make great coffee and look good. Probably most important of all, it had to be reliable and easy to maintain - after all, a service call-out from London could produce a rather large bill. Olmedo chose a Midi automatic espresso machine, manufactured in Milan by Rancilio, for whom The Coffee Machine Company (CMC) is the sole UK importer. The company also supplied Alex with a more extensive set of installation and service manuals than usual, since the cleaning, service and repair of the machine would all be down to him.

"As you can imagine, setting up a speciality coffee menu at this distance presented quite a challenge, but the system we now have runs like clockwork," says Olmedo, who, like all his staff, is a skilled barista.

"The most important aspect of the Rancilio machine is that it is simple to use and totally reliable. You can imagine that it would need to be, since we have no trained espresso engineer on the islands. To date it has proved faultless, and the Drury coffees have been designed to complement it perfectly".

The Falklands Brasserie has developed an extensive speciality coffee menu, with firm favourites such as espresso, cappuccino and latte, but also macchiato and a fine range of liqueur coffees starting at £3.50.

Olmedo places a regular order for coffee with CMC's associate company, Drury Tea and Coffee. He has settled on Drury's Espresso Reale, a blend of 77% arabicas, primarily from South and Central America with some high-quality African robustas, and decaffeinated beans for use in the espresso machine. Orders are shipped to him from Southampton docks about every six months.

Now, Olmedo has established a year-round trade with the locals and is busy throughout the day, serving on average 90 cups per day and getting really hectic in the summer, when the brasserie becomes a haven for visiting yachtsmen.

High standards every time Coffee consumption at the Haycock Hotel in Wansford, near Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, starts with breakfast at 7.30am and continues throughout the day until around 10pm. So choosing the right machine was a long process for general manager Pierre Marechel. "It was important that the machine could deliver the same standard of coffee every time it was used," he says. In addition to consistency, Marechel wanted efficiency of service should anything go wrong.

The privately owned 48-bedroom hotel reopened under new ownership a year ago, having been refurbished throughout to high standards. Besides the Orchard restaurant, which serves brasserie-style food, there's also a bar area, so it was decided to put a coffee machine in each. For the bar, where it would be on full view, the machine chosen was the striking Arte traditional espresso machine (above, inset) supplied by First Choice Coffee. In addition to looking good, it enables the operator to give customers the full coffee bar experience, from grinding the beans to frothing the milk. First Choice Coffee came in for a day to train all the staff to use the machine.

In the restaurant, the choice was a Black & White CTS1 fully automatic machine, also supplied by First Choice Coffee, which serves all the usual favourites. This machine probably supplies the bulk of the hotel's coffees, about 100 cups a day.

Self service as they fill up Having recognised the opportunities offered by the growth of dashboard dining, Jet Garage manager Tony Stevens decided that installing a hot beverage service would be welcomed by his customers, increase his profits, and help to drive sales in snacking.

But running a busy service station on a main road on the edge of Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, where 500 people pass through a day, meant his key requirement was simplicity. Hence his choice of a Nescaf‚.go dispenser, from which customers help themselves.

The all-in-one system is a complete-mix product with its own compact hot water dispenser and merchandiser unit. The pre-mixed ingredients are foil-sealed for freshness within the 10oz, mug-sized single cup units. The customers pull their preferred options from the dispenser, pull a tab to release the ingredients and add hot water.

"Customers have said how easy to use it is," Tony says, "and I find it very easy to re-stock and keep clean."