Chinese entrepreneurs create a 10000 yuan household coffee machine, which exploded overseas as soon as it was launched

Nearly 80% of the world's Coffee Machines are produced in China, but China has never been a mainstream player in this industry.
Whether it's La Marzocco, Simeonli, or Slayer, they all come from Italy and the United States. Moreover, most coffee machines in China are priced between 100 to 1000 yuan, making them more suitable for home use. Especially due to issues such as unstable extraction pressure, this type of coffee machine is often referred to as a "toy machine" by professional coffee enthusiasts.
But a recently discovered company - Meraki - is starting to change the problem that Chinese coffee machines rarely master core technology. The first semi-automatic Italian Coffee Machine developed and manufactured by Meraki, designed for home use, is priced at $1999 (approximately RMB 13000). It is mainly focused on the European and American markets, and achieved over 2.4 million US dollars in crowdfunding on Kickstarter last year.
Although it is a startup, founder Chen Xu hopes to fill the market gap of "professional configuration+low threshold" for home coffee machines. This product took two years to develop, not only self-developed core components, but also broke through the technical barriers of many Commercial Coffee Machines.
Because the technology is fully benchmarked against professional commercial coffee machines, the production process is also more standardized, simple, and intelligent. Meraki coffee machines have the courage and ambition to be priced over ten thousand yuan,
The bigger opportunity we see is the overseas home coffee equipment market, which is undergoing earth shaking changes.
According to the National Coffee Association, by early 2025, 71% of daily coffee consumption will occur at home, up from 63% in 2020. So, in addition to the increasing demand for premium coffee, the more prominent trend among users is that there are also more consumers who make coffee at home.
Looking back at the three global coffee waves, it can be found that. Coffee has built a dual fortress for the spirit and body of contemporary urbanites, serving as both a lifestyle and a 'life-saving tool'.
In the National Coffee Association's 2024 Data Trends Report, 67% of American adults reported drinking coffee the day before, marking the highest level of coffee consumption in 20 years in the United States. The report also found that the consumption of premium coffee in the United States increased by 7.5% compared to the previous year, with espresso beverages leading the trend.
Europe, like the United States, is also one of the most important consumer markets for coffee in the world. According to data, Europe will have the largest market share in the global premium coffee market in 2022, accounting for approximately 46.2%.
Compared to the instant coffee culture of the first wave of coffee, to the bitter deep roasted coffee brought about by coffee chains such as Starbucks in the second wave, the third wave of coffee makes drinking coffee as refined as tasting wine - special notes emphasize the flavor of coffee combined with other ingredients, while Italian espresso emphasizes the extracted flavor, whether it has floral, alcoholic, or fruity aftertaste .....
But since the third wave of coffee has swept the world for more than 20 years, the boutique cafes that have opened up in streets, offices, and shopping malls have made coffee drinkers no longer just satisfied with the simple intake of caffeine.
As is well known, making a delicious cup of coffee is not easy. The convenience and high quality of coffee machines are becoming increasingly important. It is not an exaggeration to say that there is a huge gap between "toy machines" and professional commercial coffee machines, and the flavor expression of the coffee they produce is vastly different. The price is even more so. Professional commercial coffee machines are generally priced over 10000 yuan and are basically monopolized by overseas brands.
So, how did Chinese company Meraki break through?
01 Refactoring the supply chain of Household Coffee Machines
Why is coffee in cafes better to drink?
Undoubtedly, this is a question that varies from person to person, but fundamentally for Italian coffee, the coffee machine significantly determines the success or failure of coffee production.
Coffee shops use professional commercial coffee machines to control the grinding degree, pressure, temperature, extraction time, and other indicators during the Italian espresso process to the greatest extent possible, combined with the barista's personal techniques, making the coffee richer and more flavorful.
In Meraki's office, 36Kr experienced a hot latte that was almost as good as a coffee shop.
Chen Xu probably spent less than five minutes making: from waiting for the machine to warm up, Meraki's display screen shows the progress of the machine's heating and grinding process. Unlike other coffee machines that aim for time or require additional weighing and grinding of coffee beans, Meraki accurately calculates the powder weight based on the weight of the coffee beans and automatically grinds the required beans; During the extraction process, unlike all previous coffee machines that required purchasing a separate coffee scale to weigh the extract, Meraki can directly input the required amount of extract and automatically display the extraction time; The same goes for the milk frothing process, where the steam intensity can be adjusted and the temperature of the milk froth will be displayed in real-time to alert the user of the frothing progress.
The most intuitive experience point that consumers currently feel is different from the previous coffee machine making, which is the grinding and extraction with weighing as the goal
Household coffee machines commonly use time controlled methods to extract coffee, however, a fixed time may seem standard, but it cannot extract different flavors from different coffee beans.
The grinding and extraction technology with weighing as the core is mostly used in high-end commercial coffee machines and a few household coffee machines, and 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-driven precise control", eliminating the interference caused by volume and time control through the most direct physical parameter of weight, and maximizing the restoration of Italian espresso flavor.
Meraki creatively designed the three functions of grinding, extraction, and steam independently on the same platform, occupying only about 37 centimeters of space. The Meraki grinder also benefits from the support of shareholder Taimo, adopting the same professional grinder configuration as Taimo.
Behind its compact size is the Meraki coffee machine's complete reconstruction of all required components.
The supply chain for high-end coffee machines in China is actually very immature, and many components, such as rotary pumps, boilers, and even grinders, do not have a mature supply chain. Therefore, the great difficulty of self-developed is that the components need to be customized and developed by oneself. In addition to high costs, the failure rate is also high. It is a complex system, and once one component is not successfully customized, the entire project will fail.
During this process, Meraki developed its own small-sized commercial grade rotary pump, boiler, and grinding system, as well as a brand new human-machine interaction system.
The pressure of the extraction pump will determine the extraction performance of coffee flavor. The more stable the pressure, the more evenly and completely the coffee powder will be extracted.
It is understood that household coffee machines commonly use electromagnetic pumps and vibration pumps.
A vibrating pump is like an air pump, its pressure stability is not enough. When it is driven down, the pressure is very high, and when it is lifted up, the pressure is lost. A rotating pump is more stable and has a faster pressure building speed. It can rise from 0 to 9 bar pressure in 1 second and will remain stable at 9 bar pressure. The pump pressure will be maintained at 9 bar level.
Rotary pumps bring more stable pump pressure, but the technology of rotary pumps has been monopolized by Italian companies in the past.
Taking 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 rotary pump technology advantage, even though it is expensive, it has always been highly praised by professional coffee enthusiasts and enthusiasts.
The rotary pump equipped on Meraki gives it the extraction capability of a professional coffee machine.
The Meraki coffee machine also adopts a three pronged approach to ensure temperature control during extraction; Independent extraction boiler and PID technology; And a dedicated boiling head heater. The extraction boiler ensures continuous hot water supply and eliminates temperature fluctuations that may affect taste. The real-time temperature feedback of PID technology can adjust to the ideal extraction temperature, while the dedicated boiling head heater maintains the optimal boiling temperature at the handle, ensuring stable results every time boiling.
In addition to the extraction boiler, Meraki also designed a boiler for frothing milk. Designing two boilers is also a standard for commercial coffee machines. We have customized the boilers to be more compact. In the past, many companies used the boilers of commercial coffee machines directly on household coffee machines, which would make the product too large
02 Design Ideas for Everyone to Be a Coffee Maker
In addition to the coffee machine itself, Meraki has also collaborated with upstream coffee factories to lower the threshold for coffee production.
In the process of coffee production, due to the different parameters suitable for each type of coffee beans, differences in grinding degree, coffee powder amount, extraction liquid, and temperature can all bring about completely different tastes. Different coffee beans require adjusting different parameters to produce a stable and delicious cup of coffee. During the adjustment process, in addition to causing waste to the coffee beans themselves, it also creates significant psychological barriers for many newcomers.
At this point, Meraki is paired with CoffeeSense ™ Technology involves collaborating with upstream roasting factories, where professional baristas adjust the parameters of the coffee beans before attaching NFC chips to the packaging bags. After receiving this type of coffee beans, users only need to scan the chip on the Meraki coffee machine to automatically synchronize parameters, and then adjust the flavor according to personal preferences.
I think the waste of coffee beans is a big pain point for users, and it is something we are trying to solve. However, even with the same coffee beans and grinder, different temperatures and humidity will have different effects. It is difficult for us to achieve 100 points in this matter, but I hope that users can adjust the parameters by wasting only 20 grams of beans instead of 60 grams before, "Chen Xu told 36Kr.
Chen Xu stated that Meraki does not earn any fees from its cooperation with upstream baking factories. More importantly, we want the coffee produced by Meraki to ensure stable production without wasting beans.
Stable coffee production is not easy to achieve, whether for household or commercial use. Even coffee beans from the same caf é can have significant differences in flavor between morning and afternoon due to the influence of machine temperature, weather and humidity.
Having a sufficient understanding of coffee allows for more possibilities to improve the product.
At least 70% of employees in Meraki have studied coffee.
The designers and engineers of the company, including myself, are all certified professional baristas. Each of us is well aware of which parameters are needed and which are not during the process of making a cup of coffee, "said Chen Xu.
Capturing user needs and pain points by leading oneself into the game is never new in the hardware industry. At the beginning of his communication with Chen Xu, the first thing he talked about was not coffee, but the importance of research and development.
This is fully reflected in the enterprise. He rarely talks about expanding the market and operations, but more about the product itself.
It is understood that Meraki is developing a second-generation product. If the first generation of products served coffee novices, then their next target audience to capture is coffee geeks. But it's even more complicated.