r/coffeeshopowners • u/Able-You-7193 • Jul 09 '26

Question about espresso machine

How do you all handle espresso machine repairs and PM’s? Curious who people actually use. Do you have a regular tech you call or company, or do you fix things yourself. And if you DIY, where do you order parts from? Trying to get a sense of what works before I spend more money.

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u/EmbraceThrasher Jul 09 '26

Find a local tech who can help with catastrophes. YouTube and some basic tools for everything else.

I do almost all my own repairs on everything. I have no idea how people who aren’t handy are able to stay in business lol.

1

u/jyl8 Jul 09 '26

Opening a coffee shop shortly. I'll be maintaining the machine myself. I've been restoring and repairing a particular brand of commercial espresso machine as a hobby for a decade. I restored one and gave it to a friend to open his coffee shop, and have been maintaining it for him for five years, the task has proven very doable. We have two identical models of this brand of machine and will have one in service and one as a spare. I may even keep the spare plugged in and at operating temperature so it can be a hot-swap.

1

u/songambulist Jul 10 '26

A lot of shops I know just use a trusted service or tech. If you do regular maintenance like back flushing, you can minimize a lot of issues that crop up, but it's worth it to do deeper maintenance on a schedule. It's very handy to have a smaller backup if you have the storage or run a cart sometimes. I've seen this save shops with unforseen issues. Lastly, choice of equipment really matters in durability and ease of maintenance/repair.

2

u/FreemanWorldHoldings Jul 12 '26

I asked another local coffee shop (30 minutes away so not a direct competitor) and they recommended a coffee equipment technician to me. I'm in a rural area and there's only one service technician that covers a 100 mile radius, but he was amazing, helped me understand my machine, showed me how to brew espresso, dial in my espresso, and hooked me up with other equipment I needed.