It's a joy to handle but can the Nespresso survive a debunking in favour of the messy old coffee machine? writes ORNA MULCAHY
I’M IN a recession-free zone, standing in a queue watching George Clooney walk up the wide white steps to heaven. Earlier, a piano had fallen on his head but, at the top of the steps, he strikes a deal with St Peter – handing over his Nespresso coffee in return for another go at life. Next thing he’s back where he started, flirting with a woman over an espresso with a head on it like a pint of Guinness. It’s cute. Very watchable and it helps to pass the time in the queue at the Nespresso boutique in Brown Thomas, past pots and pans on the third floor. It’s the only queue going, one person ahead and three behind, the rest of the sales floor like the wide open plains of Wyoming.
My turn, eventually, to explain that a friend has run out of coffee capsules, I’d like to buy her some, but am not sure what she likes. No problem. By tapping away at her screen for a while the sales assistant can tell me, in complete confidence of course. “This one, and this one . . . and a leetle bit of that one,” she says, pointing to the long thin black boxes of capsules that are arranged under glass, like precious artefacts. “She likes very much the Arpeggio,” she adds, making me think that I would probably like it very much too. While paying, I gabble on about maybe one day buying my own Nespresso machine, and that’s it. Game over. They happen to be having a sale, and 10 minutes later the lady has sold me the whole shebang so skilfully I don’t mind heading back to the office like a pack donkey.
Generally, I try not to buy household appliances in lunch hour. Sod’s law decrees that you run into a business contact, or an ex, or the chairman of your own company while puffing along with some enormous contraption in tow. It kind of takes away one’s executive edge. Perhaps there’ll always be a glass ceiling as long as there are 30 per cent off sales in white goods.
The Nespresso machine at last. Long admired, not quite understood, but firmly resisted in defence of the family espresso machine with its authentic heavy cups and handle and unpredictability reminiscent of waitressing days. Sturdy for sure, but user-hostile. Invite friends around for coffee and it can act up, spitting out granules, or let steam escape to one side, rather than pushing it down through the coffee. Some days it produces a thin bitter flow, other days a lovely creamy coffee. The one consistent thing is the mess. Coffee all over the place. Spilled milk and expletives when the handle comes away but the cup is still stuck to the machine, then falls away on its own and bangs down on the floor.
The Nespresso on the other hand is a joy to handle. First choose your capsule. Depending on the time of day it could be a 10-strength Ristretto, or an easy-on-the-nerves 4. Then, in goes the capsule, down comes the lever. Press the button and out comes the coffee. The empty capsule is deposited in a drawer out of sight. No mess at all.
I have about 10 minutes to admire it in situ before the debunking begins. Ah, a Nespresso machine, says my husband mildly enough, as I serve up an Arpeggio latte. Very nice, he says, but of course that’s not the end of it. He admits to feeling like Mrs Doyle when Father Ted gives her the Teasmade. “I liked all the fuss of the old machine.”
Then the analysis. How much does it actually cost per coffee? According to the receipt the Arpeggio is 36 cent a cup while upgrading to an estate coffee, say a Dulsao do Brasil, costs 41 cent a go, minus the milk.
“Let’s just work it out now, how much the old way costs,” he says, taking a scoop and the weighing scales and a packet of the Lavazza coffee that the old machine takes. “About 13 cent a cup I make it . . . roughly. Also, they’re not very eco-friendly are they?”
The old coffee ground went on to the compost heap, but in fact the compost heap has had to go, since the rats had gotten so bold they were trying to get in the kitchen door.
It’s all true. The capsules are expensive, and you can only get them by queuing up in BTs or by ordering them online, a brilliant wheeze on the part of Nespresso. Users may feel as though they are members of a very exclusive club but in fact they’re swelling profits at Nestlé, the Swiss giant that owns Nespresso. Sales for the coffee products rose 30 per cent despite the onset of the great recession. The brand employs 2,500 people worldwide, and then of course there is George. He can’t come cheap, but then they couldn’t do it without him. That whiff of laid-back Lake Como living is irresistible. Interesting to read, in Nespresso’s own glossy magazine, that George likes the little red capsules. The decaff ones.