Chinese entrepreneurs have developed a household coffee machine priced at around 10,000 yuan, which has seen a surge in orders as soon as it was launched overseas | Product Observation

Text | Zhang Ziyi

Editor | Peng Xiaoqiu

Nearly 80% of the world's coffee machines are produced in China, yet China has never been a mainstream player in this industry.

Whether it's La Marzocco, Simonelli, or Slayer, they all come from Italy and the United States. Moreover, most coffee machines in China are priced from a few hundred to a few thousand yuan, which are more suitable for home use. Especially due to problems such as unstable extraction pressure, these coffee machines are often referred to as "toy machines" by professional coffee enthusiasts.

However, a company - "Meraki" - recently discovered by Yingke, is starting to change the situation where Chinese coffee machines rarely master core technologies. Meraki's first semi - automatic Italian coffee machine, targeting the home market, is priced at $1999 (approximately 13,000 yuan). Mainly targeting the European and American markets, it raised over $2.4 million in crowdfunding on Kickstarter last year.

Although it is a startup, founder Chen Xu hopes to fill the market gap for home coffee machines with "professional configuration + low threshold". This product took two years to develop. It not only self - developed core components but also broke through many technical barriers of commercial coffee machines.

Precisely because it comprehensively benchmarks against professional commercial coffee machines in terms of technology implementation, the production process is more standardized, simple, and intelligent. That's why the Meraki coffee machine has the courage and ambition to be priced over 10,000 yuan.

What Chen Xu sees as a greater opportunity is that the overseas home coffee equipment market is undergoing earth - shattering changes.

According to data from the National Coffee Association of the United States, by early 2025, 71% of daily coffee consumption occurred at home, up from 63% in 2020. So, in addition to the increasing demand for specialty coffee among users, a more obvious trend is that more consumers are making coffee at home.

Looking back at the three global coffee waves, we can find that coffee has built a double fortress for the spirit and body of contemporary urbanites. It is both a lifestyle and a "life - saving artifact".

In the 2024 data trend report of the National Coffee Association of the United States, 67% of American adults said they drank coffee the previous day, setting the highest level of coffee consumption in the United States in 20 years. The report also found that the consumption of specialty coffee in the United States increased by 7.5% compared to the previous year, with espresso - based drinks leading the trend.

Like the United States, Europe is also one of the most important coffee consumption markets in the world. Data shows that in 2022, Europe accounted for the largest share in the global specialty coffee market, approximately 46.2%.

Compared with the instant coffee culture of the first wave of the coffee wave, to the bitter dark - roasted coffee brought about by coffee chains such as Starbucks in the second wave, the third wave of coffee makes coffee drinking as delicate as wine tasting - special blends focus on the flavor produced by the combination of coffee and other ingredients, while Italian espresso focuses on the flavor after extraction, whether it has floral, wine, or fruit aftertastes...

However, after the third wave has swept the world for more than two decades, the specialty coffee shops that have opened all over the streets, office buildings, and shopping malls have made coffee drinkers no longer satisfied with simply ingesting caffeine.

As we all know, making a good cup of coffee is not easy. The convenience and high quality of coffee machines become even more important. It's no exaggeration to say that there is a huge gap between "toy machines" and professional commercial coffee machines, and the flavor of the coffee they make is very different. The price is also the same. The prices of professional commercial coffee machines are generally over 10,000 yuan and are basically monopolized by overseas brands.

So, how can the Chinese company Meraki break the situation?

01 Reconstructing the Supply Chain of Home Coffee Machines

Why does the coffee in coffee shops taste better?

Admittedly, this is a question that varies from person to person. In essence, for Italian coffee, the coffee machine significantly determines the success or failure of the coffee output.

When coffee shops use professional commercial coffee machines, they can control indicators such as the grinding degree, pressure, temperature, and extraction time in the process of making Italian espresso to the greatest extent. Coupled with the barista's personal skills, the coffee is more concentrated and can better highlight the flavor.

At Meraki's office, 36Kr experienced a hot latte that was almost as good as the one in a coffee shop.

Chen Xu spent less than five minutes making it: starting from waiting for the machine to pre - heat, the display screen of Meraki showed the heating progress of the machine. In the grinding process, different from other coffee machines that aim for time or require additional weighing to grind coffee beans, Meraki uses the weight of coffee beans as the standard, accurately converts the weight of the ground coffee, and automatically grinds the required beans; during the extraction process, different from all previous coffee machines that require separately purchasing a coffee scale to weigh the weight of the extracted liquid, Meraki can directly input the required amount of the extracted liquid and automatically display the extraction time; the same goes for the milk frothing process. The steam intensity can be adjusted, and the temperature of the milk froth will also be displayed in real - time, prompting the user about the progress of milk frothing.

Chen Xu told 36Kr: "The most intuitive experience point for consumers that is different from the previous coffee machine production is the grinding and extraction aiming at weighing."

Home coffee machines generally use the time - control method to extract coffee. However, although the fixed time seems standard, it cannot extract the different flavors of different coffee beans.

The grinding and extraction technology centered on weighing is mostly used in high - end commercial coffee machines and a few home coffee machines. It can only be achieved through high - precision sensors, closed - loop control systems, and intelligent algorithms. Its essence is to shift the production of Italian espresso from "empiricism" to "data - based precise control". By using the most direct physical parameter of weight, it eliminates the interference caused by volume and time control and restores the flavor of Italian espresso to the greatest extent.

Meraki creatively designed the three major functions of grinding, extraction, and steam on the same platform but independent of each other. It only takes up about 37 centimeters of space. Thanks to the support of its shareholder, Timemore, Meraki's coffee grinder uses the same professional configuration as Timemore's.

Behind its small size is that Meraki has reconstructed all the necessary components of the coffee machine.

Chen Xu told 36Kr: "The supply chain for high - end coffee machines in China is actually very immature. Many components, such as rotary pumps, boilers, and coffee grinders, do not have a very mature supply chain. So, a major difficulty in self - development is that the components have to be custom - developed. Besides the high cost, the failure rate is also high. It is a complex system. Once one component fails to be customized, the whole project fails."

In this process, Meraki has achieved self - development of a small - sized commercial - grade rotary pump, a boiler, a grinding system, and a new human - machine interaction system.

The pressure of the extraction pump will determine the extraction performance of the coffee flavor. The more stable the pressure, the more evenly and completely the coffee powder will be extracted.

It is understood that home coffee machines generally use electromagnetic pumps and vibration pumps.

Chen Xu told 36Kr: "The vibration pump is like a bicycle pump. Its pressure stability is not enough. When it is pushed down, the pressure is high, and when it is pulled up, the pressure is lost; the rotary pump is more stable and has a faster pressure - building speed. It can increase the pressure from 0 to 9 bar in 1 second and will always maintain the pressure at 9 bar."

The rotary pump brings more stable pump pressure, but the technology of the rotary pump has been monopolized by Italian companies in the past.

Take La Marzocco, the industry benchmark in commercial coffee machines, as an example. Its core technology comes from the rotary pump technology system. Due to its advantage in rotary pump technology, even though it is not cheap, it has always been highly regarded by professional coffee people and enthusiasts.

The rotary pump equipped in Meraki gives it the extraction ability of a professional coffee machine.

Meraki's coffee machine also adopts a three - pronged approach to ensure temperature control during extraction: an independent extraction boiler, PID technology, and a dedicated brew head heater. The extraction boiler ensures a continuous supply of hot water and eliminates temperature fluctuations that may affect the taste. The real - time temperature feedback of PID technology can adjust to the ideal extraction temperature, while the dedicated brew head heater maintains the optimal brewing temperature at the handle, ensuring stable results for each brewing.

In addition to the extraction boiler, Meraki has also designed a boiler for milk frothing. "Designing two boilers is also the standard for commercial coffee machines. We customized the boilers to be more compact. In the past, many companies directly used the boilers of commercial coffee machines in home coffee machines, which made the products too large."

02 The Design Concept of Making Everyone a Barista

Beyond the coffee machine itself, Meraki has also collaborated with upstream coffee factories to lower the threshold of coffee making.

During the coffee - making process, since different types of coffee beans have different suitable parameters, differences in the grinding degree, amount of coffee powder, extracted liquid, and temperature will bring very different tastes. Different coffee beans must have different parameters adjusted to make a stable and delicious cup of coffee. In the adjustment process, besides causing waste of the coffee beans themselves, it also causes quite a psychological barrier for many beginners.

In this regard, Meraki is equipped with CoffeeSense™ technology. That is, through cooperation with upstream roasting factories, the parameters of the coffee beans are adjusted by professional baristas before leaving the factory, and then an NFC chip is attached to the coffee bean packaging bag. After users get such coffee beans, they only need to scan the chip on the Meraki coffee machine, and the parameters will be automatically synchronized. Then, they can make fine - adjustments to the flavor according to their personal preferences.

Chen Xu told 36Kr: "I think the waste of coffee beans is a major pain point for users, and it's also what we're trying to solve. However, even with the same coffee beans and coffee grinder, different temperatures and humidity will have different effects. It's very difficult for us to achieve a perfect score on this, but I hope that users who used to waste 60 grams of beans to adjust parameters now only need to waste 20 grams."

Chen Xu said that Meraki does not make any profit from the cooperation with upstream roasting factories. It mainly wants to ensure that the coffee produced by Meraki can always have a stable output without wasting beans.

It is not easy to achieve a stable coffee output, whether for home or commercial use. Even for the coffee beans in the same coffee shop, the flavor of the extracted coffee will vary significantly in the morning and afternoon due to the influence of the machine temperature and weather humidity.

Only by having a good understanding of coffee can there be more possibilities to improve the product.

In the company of Meraki, at least 70% of the people have learned about coffee.

Chen Xu said: "The designers and engineers of the company, including me, are all certified professional baristas. Each of us is very clear about which parameters users need and which they don't in the process of making a cup of coffee."

Getting involved to capture users' needs and pain points is not new in the hardware industry. At the beginning of the conversation with Chen Xu, what he talked about first was not coffee but the importance of R & D.

This is fully reflected in Chen Xu and his company. He rarely talks about market expansion and operation, and mostly discusses the product itself.

It is understood that Meraki is developing its second - generation product. If the first - generation product serves coffee beginners, then their next target users are coffee geeks. However, this is even more challenging.