Buying an Espresso Machine

As a gift for someone else, is not an easy task, especially when I am not exactly a coffee drinker.

I mean, whenever I visit friends and family, if offered coffee, I would take it, no problems.

But at home, it is not automatic for me to have coffee in any drinking liquid form on a daily basis. I prefer hot chocolate, juice, plain water and on occasion, tea.

So, with some trepidation, I stealthily inquired my best friend, Stella on what makes her coffee tick. Yes, tick or tickle her pink, whichever applicable. And through our casual chat over the phone, I managed a small list without giving any of the upcoming surprise away. I was sincerely hoping so, of course.

Next, I had to combine that list of criteria with the environment and life she is living.

By that, I was thinking of
a) the size of her kitchen and counter top, where she would most likely place the espresso machine,
b) the number of coffee drinkers in her household, so that the number of cups the machine provides on a single run is enough to cope with the daily demands of the household,
c) how frequent she throws a get-together for friends and family, even how often I came to her house and notice her taking a cuppa.

I also know, based on my observations, that she seems to prefer specialty pods on our outside meets, she’s not a coffee purist (purists would most probably have their very own system of grinding coffee to unleash the UTMOST best from a coffee bean, and have an exact system of extraction, beating the current scientific method), her coffee machine is aging at home, and now that her sons are going of to college, the tendency is to just have a cup on her own leisure.

Well, I am finally glad to say after all the research of my target “market”, I was happy with the purchase I made, and Stella was extremely ecstatic and practically over the moon with the one-cup espresso machine I had gotten based on the many feedbacks from Amazon. Hurray!