Firstly, good luck with your business, it takes confidence to launch a business of any kind so congrats on that.
Sadly, whilst pretty bluntly delivered, the above comments are all valid, youāre not going to efficiently make ādecentā coffee quickly and repeatedly on a Ā£1000 machine with a built in grinder. Itās hard enough to consistently make a good espresso on those at home.
And certainly not if you only have one member of staff.
Reliability is a huge factor and you might be making as many coffees in a day as a home user would in two months. Thereās also things like temperature consistency and the ability to steam milk alongside pulling espresso.
There arenāt many machines approved for commercial and home use for less than Ā£4K. That isnāt to say you canāt use a home one, it just means itās not tested for that environment.
I have a machine thatās technically apporoved for commercial use and Iām still not sure Iād want to use it in a commercial setting. Iād want two groups (to make two coffees at once) at the very least. If someone comes up and orders three coffees, and youāve got a single group home machine, their food is going to be cold by the time the coffees are ready.
My suggestion, for whatever itās worth, would be to consider batch brewing filter coffee in a big commercial batch brewer and then serving from something like this.
Itās not going to be a cappuccino or or flat white but if the coffee isnāt the focus, itās still a way of quickly dispensing decent enough coffee.
There used to be a coffee shop in East London which was a subsidiary of one of the best roasters in the UK (and NZ) called Ozone who would serve batch brew to commuters in the rush hour from similar canisters to the one above. It served the purpose and was still enjoyable.
Otherwise, making a decent espresso based drink commercially is an expensive and involved process that you canāt really skimp on.
Good luck with the business.