Doram
What a bizarre take. He seems to have completely ignored the fact that the very existence of the ‘third wave’ and subsequently the reason a lot of us are even discussing this hobby is because there was a desire to move away from automation.
Over 10 years ago, the ‘second wave’ (Starbucks) moved from La Marzocco to more automated and efficient processes, the independent artisan shops popped up to service the appetite for craft and quality, at the cost of some convenience and price.
Automated machines have been around for decades, if these shops really wanted to ‘move away from the craft’ they’ve had many years to do it.
Take almost any industry and there will always be a market for efficient and low cost and then an artisanal higher end. Cars, clothes, musical instruments, computing… coffee.
Just like we’ve always had the choice of getting a Nespresso or DeLonghi bean to cup, this isn’t a new ‘trend’.
My guess as before is just that DeLonghi want to include some kind of ‘Powered by La Marzocco’ badge on their machines and to be fair I can see why they’d pay an enormous premium to be able to put one of the most prestigious names in coffee on their products.
It’s happening in other industries. The Swatch group putting the Omega or Blancpain name on lower-end watches, charging a premium and watching customers flock in huge numbers.
For La Marzocco, we can hope it’s just a big payday and they continue as they’ve said, to operate independently. As above, the Omega Moonswatch hasn’t cheapened the Speedmaster, if anything it’s probably opened the door for future watch enthusiasts to save for the £6k watch.