espresso Archives - MICHAEL REUTER

My Twitter Espresso Experience

michaelreuter — Fri, 01 May 2009 19:09:31 +0000

Two weeks ago my espresso machine died — without warning. Not up to date regarding espresso machines I was confronted with an exhausting product comparison marathon. But — why not use Twitter? I wrote about my little social recommendation experiment here.

Now I want to to complete the description of this experiment with more qualitative results. First, this is how my new Saeco Aroma, the Gastroback coffee mill, the beans, milled at medium grade, and the final espresso look like:

The espresso itself has a nice crema — as you can see — it comes at a very good temperature, and with a beautiful taste.

Next thing to do is to compare different espresso beans in combination with different milling grades.

The post My Twitter Espresso Experience appeared first on MICHAEL REUTER.

Twitter as a Social Recommendation Network

michaelreuter — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 11:44:13 +0000

I’m a big fan of word-of-mouth and even recommendation engines often produce relevant and valuable results. But no recommendation engine will beat this recommendation network — formerly known as microblogging tool — named Twitter.

Besides quite a few stories told by friends I happened to learn about the social recommendation power of Twitter myself: A day before the Easter holidays my espresso machine decided to pass away. She had a good life of roughly 15 years, visited hospital just three times and served us well. R.I.P.

After getting used to an espresso partner it is difficult to realign yourself. So what should I do? Screen hundreds of reviews on the net or ask some Italian barista for advice? None of the two: I submitted a tweet to my gentle followers, asking them for their advice regarding an espresso (not coffee!) machine for less than 600 Euros.

Half a day later I had eight answers, public replies and direct messages. Six of those came with links to and recommendations of individual machines. All of them matched my conditions (espresso/not coffee, less than 600 Euros). Additionally they (correctly) implied that the machine should a bargain; i.e. it should produce good espresso at a reasonable price tag. In their recommendations my followers even offered reasons for not recommending other machines, as “will not recommend my own xyz because it’s error-prone”.

Provided with these links I ran through the machine’s descriptions and ordered one of those including an additional coffee mill the same night with amazon. It arrived 24 hours later and my wife and our friends are more than satisfied with the results which are not optimized yet.

Twitter as Social Recommendation Network: within 12 hours twitter provided me with my follower’s recommendations, which

- came within hours

- matched my criteria

- provided additional information and

- best price links.

Far from being representative this individual experience should make us think about the recommendation power an application like twitter has. I will use this social recommendation network more often an will try to provide my expertise if needed. Let’s see which applications and business models will follow…

The post Twitter as a Social Recommendation Network appeared first on MICHAEL REUTER.

Italian-style Starbucks

michaelreuter — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 14:38:28 +0000

One very offline business idea came into my mind:
You all know Starbucks. Starbucks entered a overcrowded market (you got your coffee nearly everywhere) with a commodity product (coffee). The result: they are extremely successful and are running 13.000+ stores worldwide.

In Europe, especially in Germany, Italian food is ubiquitous — here in Munich we have hundreds of little pizza restaurants and Italian coffee bars. I think it’s time for an Italian-style Starbucks: restaurants-cum-takeaways with some cold and warm Italian food, a decent selection of wines and espressi. You could even place them at the Autobahn — since there are thousands of drivers not willing to order the standard burger but looking for their Italian (!) bruschetta. In Munich we have a small group of 4 stores called Garibaldi. Highly priced they could attract a multiple of guests with 20% lower prices for good tasting food in — 20 stores.

Anyone out there to discuss that idea?

The post Italian-style Starbucks appeared first on MICHAEL REUTER.