Premium coffee machines have played a crucial role in the growth of specialty coffee by offering precise control over brewing variables such as temperature, pressure, and extraction time. The precision from the like of La Marzocco and De'Longhi allow for the optimal extraction of flavours from high-quality beans, ensuring a consistent and superior coffee experience.

A new entrant to the commercial-grade end of the business is South African Henlo who have launched with three models including a Prosumer version starting at R79,000 ($4,300). In this interview, founder Henlo van der Westhuizen outlines the journey of the Henlo and where it stands today.

What inspired Henlo? Where did you experience espresso machines before, and how did you start to think of a new approach?

Henlo started as a simple mission of the creation of consistently excellent coffee. While researching the hurdles resulting in inconsistencies, we started to realise the complexity of chasing perfection due to the sheer number of moving parts. Everything from the beans used to equipment employed, work environment, throughput demand and ultimately the subjectivity of the end coffee drinking client. There is no solution or right way to do things in this field of artistry, however, there is one golden thread that might go unnoticed at first glance, which drives the passion for coffee around the globe. This is the human element. Where super automation in machinery coming from first world coffee drinking nations aims to remove error by removing human interference, we saw opportunity, not adversary. Especially true in your emerging markets like South Africa, where the baristas are the essence of your coffee offering. High labour turnover due to employees using newly found learnings and opportunities - are success stories that drives economic growth.

The vision thus became to strive for consistently excellent coffee directly resulting from the human element. All we now needed to do was create an intuitive environment with direct feedback based on how well you are performing. Keeping it simple, the barista would be empowered to try, fail, and succeed on their own accord. Like riding a bike.

Unfortunately, no trusted source of truth existed in a café that would answer the questions we would need to ask and feedback on back to the barista. "It's basically a fancy kettle", we said naively when we set our sights on building our own espresso machine, with now prior knowledge whatsoever.

Can you describe the journey from forming the first design principles for the first model, to producing your first working product?

With the daring task ahead, we at least knew that don't know what we don't know. From what we did know is what technology is needed to enable barista upskilling (i.e. touch screen, volumetrics, reliable repeatability, auto shut-off steam wand), and that we need the ability for remote diagnostics as our first machines we needed to sell were essentially all prototypes.

Our very first machine was an absolute unit (that ultimately did make coffee), which took a lot longer than our most conservative estimates while drawing its fair share of blood, sweat and tears. Fortunately, it was a raging success of proof of concept and introduced a monumental amount of learnings we could build upon for our first client sale.

We then identified that we should work 'consulting services' into the value proposition for the early adopters as best possible and play to our strengths of customization due to local manufacturing and making the client involved in development as much as possible. This additional revenue generated outside the product development allowed us to look after those very critical first clients with problems we know we were going to face.

What quality assurance have you put into your design and manufacturing process?

The ability to sustainably create a good product worth creating is only an empty promise without finding success in those principles first. The balancing act of making the machine accessible to maintain based on universal components, while innovating on long-lasting robust key areas was an important aspect for us. We knew if we could find success with a more 'open source' approach would help build the brand and steer our focus to innovate on key revenue driving areas and not how much we upcharge on after sales support.

Your regular coffee bits come wherever the most efficient existing supply chains run, where the larger stainless-steel fabrication and other low hanging fruits where (critically) long term guarantees exists are done locally.

How have you worked with local suppliers?

We work with over 40 local suppliers each specialising in their own field and products. The most important aspect easily taken for granted is that relationship building is the key to continued success in product lead time and quality. This is even more true with a startup where the leniency of the relationship can make or break the early days.

Have you taken measures in production or operating efficiency to tackle energy consumption?

We properly insulate all the boilers in the machine, which effectively halves the energy consumption in comparison to machines that don't. The rest of our operations are exceedingly lean in energy usage in comparison to operational units in the field.

Have you started to grow an in-house team?

We have started a bit of a culture with our in-house team. At our current scale we don't face a lot of challenges larger teams inherently face, however what is very important from day one is do things now how you one day want to. Counterintuitively as a startup, we don't over-work in unusual or long hours, even if we are close to missing a deadline. It's not always easy to take a step back when you are about to fail in the short term and strain those very early client relations. However, if you crunch, and find success you will miss out on the pain that is the outcome of some larger systematic problem. This will not only likely land you in trouble again, but every time you do, you will believe that to crunch the team is the solution, because historically you are not wrong.

What's the next stage for the company? What can we expect later this year and into 2025?

Honestly, we don't exactly know. Playing into the strengths of our hand being young and agile, we can first see where we find success and the invest more in that area. Make no mistake though, we are doing everything differently and actively seeking to continuously sustainably disrupt. 

Learn more at henlo.coffee