Ristretto > Ristretto Produces 480 espressos in 15 minutes

Ristretto, the UK’s premiere event coffee company, recently produced an amazing 480 espressos in just 15 minutes at a dinner service for a blue chip financial sector client.

“Many people within the coffee industry have told me that you can’t offer after dinner espresso on a large scale, but you can and we’ve done it,” said Ristretto’s managing director Joseph O’Hara.

“You need to have a clearly defined plan of action and a well trained, well practised team. A single barista able to make a great cup of coffee is one thing - but for this task you need to have a team of baristas each making 100 great coffees. We did a trial run before the event to ensure we could produce 480 properly extracted espressos, with no quality compromise in the time available.

“You also need to have buy-in and commitment from the food caterer. For this event we were working in partnership with Rhubarb, one of the UK’s top caterers who provided the overall catering for the dinner.

“Rhubarb were great: they understood the complexity of the problem and we had a planning meeting where we were able to discuss the logistics of the event, like the need to have large numbers of waiters ready to take the freshly prepared espressos directly to the right table. This is crucial, as espresso has to be served as soon as it’s made.