Hoffman on the Duo

DavecUK There is a general assumption that SSP burrs will transform grinders that I suspect is erroneous. Will they be different – yes; day and night different –no.

Niche could offer the high-clarity Mazzer 151H & 151G as an upgrade without any issues. That would likely satisfy most enthusiasts. The Duo already satisfies most consumers who just drink coffee and do not visit forums.

It’s far from unusual, and not just with grinders or even coffee gear more generally, for manufacturers to exclude warranty cover for non-original parts, and/or work by non-authorised personnel, and the logic behind that is pretty clear - if they haven’t tested a part, they don’t know if it’s suitable or not, or perhaps sufficiently durable or not.

So it’s common to exclude liability, which doesn’t mean that they can’t honour the warranty despite not being obliged to, if when they see a failed product, the failure is nothing to do with the unauthorised part. Legally, they’re on safer ground by excluding liability and then repairing broken equipment provided the fault wasn’t due to non-authorised parts, than if they hadn’t excluded that and then try to reject a claim when the user does something or uses something that caused damage.

On the same lines, if they supply a model with blank carriers and no burrs, an argument could be made that by doing so they’re encouraging users to try alternate burrs that might be incompatible, or wrongly fitted, and that as a result, they could be held liable. By not providing a burr-less option, they precude that argument from being made.

I have absolutely no knowledge of what Niche’s reasons for what they do or don’t offer, and this legalistic approach might be nothing to do with their decisions. I’m not a lawyer but I have seen that approach taken in other non-coffee product lines, for the reasoning outlined here.

In other words, their reasoning might be as simple as “lawyers said don’t do it, it might bite you”. That certainly wouldn’t surprise me, but I’ve … excuse the pun, Zero knowledge of what their reasoning actually was.

As for JH’s review, I found it interesting, particular the similarity in profiles in his graphs. It does somewhat undermine the flat v conical argument though, at least in as far as saying it’s not that simple.

Personally, as I think I said I another thread, I’m pretty happy with the Zero, and now after watching that, even more don’t regret my decision not to buy a Duo. Part (a large part, to be honest) of my reasoning is that I’m not convinced my taste buds are good enough to tell much of a difference anyway, and as I get a cup I enjoy from the Zero, it’s good enough for me. That’s not to say anyone else shouldn’t go Duo if they feel they’ll benefit - their taste buds may well be better than mine, or even if not, they may just want to try the Duo and, why not?

Cuprajake
If niche were to offer ssp burr option, they should also bring into consideration the cost that is saved from not using the 151B burrs in calculating the eventual price. That would bring the duo into competitive contention for the customers wanting the ssp option as they are comparing it against such other grinders like the df83V.

Cuprajake
Or niche could offer a specific burr carrier for their ssp option. If it opens up a significant new market for them, it would be a good business decision to take.

chlorox If niche were to offer ssp burr option, they should also bring into consideration the cost that is saved from not using the 151B burrs in calculating the eventual price. That would bring the duo into competitive contention for the customers wanting the ssp option as they are comparing it against such other grinders like the df83V.

Maybe. But the saving might not be as big as you think. A lot would depend on how much, if at all, their totalsales grew.

Think of it this way. In order to be confident in supplying, and then warranting, any 3rd party component, theyre going to want to do a pretty comprehensive sets of tests to ensure it’ll work, and not cause issues. And that costs. They have already incurred that costs for the current burrs, and every grinder sold is going to reflect a portion of that, and all other development costs.

Now assume they offer a new burr option. They can hardly charge existing ‘standard’ buyers for part of tge cost of that testing, so it’s all gong to reflect in the price of that extra burr set. How many of that model will they sell? Will any sales of that option be at the cost of not sellig a standard version they otherwise might have? If so, the proportion of the cost of testing existing burrs is going to be distributed across a smaller number of sales of the older burr versions.

And, of course, every extra SKU they offer comes with increased administratve costs, stockholding csts, etc.

It would need a good accountant, access to their manufacturing costings and a pretty good forecast both of sales of the new burr models, and any reduction in sales of the old ones, to be sure what adding that option will cost.

The result might, depending on those numbers, not result in much cost savings at all. It certainly isn’t as simple as deducting the cost of the previous burr sets fro the cost of the new ones, because other costs are involved.

It may also be that their estimates of any growth in sales from that strategy just don’t justify investing thetime in doing it. We can certainly assume that anything we see appear at retail as a product is likely to have been in development for a year or two, and that the things they’re spending their days doing right now will appear in a year or two …. if they carry on doing them. But they’re a pretty small team from what I can tell, and if crittical design or engineering staff divert to do testing on new burrs, they aren’t spending those hours/days on whatever prodducts they were developing.

It’s known as opportunity cost. Think of your own time - if you’re self-employed and decide to spend an hour washing your car, the opportunity cost is that you can’t spend that hour doing chargeable work for a client.

Friends that have never run ther own business often used to ask me things like “You’ve got all those printers and the skills, why do you pay an artist to produce <insert choice> artwork? You could do it yourself.”

And yes, I could, but if I’m charging £100/hour for my time, and paying the artist £25/hour for theirs, I can pay for 4 hours of their time by working one hour at what I’m good at. In my case, it’s probably worse even that that, because while I could do that artistic work, theprofesional artist will probably do it in a half or less the time it would take me. That’s opportunity cost, and at least a version of that applies to Niche - if engineers spend a week doing job B, testing other burrs, it’s a week they didn’t spend doing job A, and a week of delay in getting job A ready for market. That week of delay in Job A might bite further, if outside msnufactring contractors are waiting for an order, have a slot booked dand they miss the deadline because of working on Job B. It can all get very convoluted, which is to say, looking in from the outside, we have no idea how much cost would be saved by removing the original burr option. But probably not as much as you might first think.

Stock mazzer burrs are about £100 SSP £300
Having to make a brand new carrier smaller to fit SSP just to cater to a small % of people doesn’t make financial sense really

Can’t imagine the costs on developing a brand new tool to make a new carrier.

Then there having the optimal speed for the burrs

My SSP MP burrs are taking 45s to grind 18g of beans. This is double the mazzer equivalent

So far not overly impressed, they have had 2kg through them but still learning the burrs and dialing in

Imo those who generally want things like ssp don’t buy the duo they spend more

CoffeePhilE

Look, all that is part and parcel of the businessman life and the successful ones find a way to make it happen. It is for them alone to solve and for them to alone reap the benefits if they do. If they want to cater to that market, they will find a way and do it at a price that makes sense to that market. If they don’t want to or don’t feel the need to, they won’t.

But others have already succesafully done so at good prices notwithstanding any obstacles and yet others will do so in the future in ijcreasingly better and better ways, and that willl be for the benefit of us as the customers.

Ok

If Carlsberg made grinders…. 🥂🤪🤣😂🎄

Cuprajake interesting!

dfk41
During the roaring twenties, Henry Ford thought that the model t in black only and withoiut any options was perfect too and thar he didn’t need to bother with what the market wanted because he knew best and his cost and manufacturing model was the best…all his yes men in the company created an echo chamber and told him he was right. . his company almost went out of business as a result and general motors reaped the benefit by giving the market what it wanted in the form of many subbrands, models and coloirs…..

Anyway enough said by me on this topic…

I’ve have a DF64V with SSP MP burrs and the difference compared to the Niche Duo (espresso only) is minimal for the coffee I’ve tested and my tastebuds. This said I’ve only done four blind taste tests on two beans I’ve really liked. When testing I’m really looking for differences but they are so close.

I’ll keep testing when I get the chance but I don’t feel that compelled to do so based on my findings so far.

If I had to sell one it would be the DF as the workflow on the Niche is superior.

this morning i back to back the same bean with both burr sets, i prefered the duo stock lol - im just not elite

Cuprajake I’m getting the impression for me that some beans are better in different grinders, I think @MediumRoastSteam alluded to this when comparing the zero to the duo with a particular bean where the zero was better.