by Lars H
Way back in the early 2000s, there was a new high end drip coffee machine in town, called the Clover. The Clover machine made drip coffees one at a time, and allowed amazing detail and precision for brewing a coffee. You could choose the exact water temperature and extraction time, allowing you to really dial in exactly how you wanted a coffee to taste.
The Clover was a breakthrough drip coffee machine, and only a few speciality coffee shops had them. They cost around $11,000 at the time, and were designed for commercial use and not really intended for individuals to own as a home coffee maker.
In 2004, the three engineers launched their project, spending the first month brewing coffee every way possible — drip, espresso, vending machines, vacuum pots — to learn how it was done.
Employees came and went, including Wyer, who left in 2005. By early 2006, the first Clover was delivered to Caffé Artigiano in Vancouver, B.C.
The machine is basically a semiautomatic French press that allows baristas to set the temperature and brew time for individual cups of coffee. The idea is to grind the coffee fresh and to calibrate the brewer so that its settings extract the ideal flavor from different types of beans.
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/clover-coffee-machines-catch-starbucks-fancy/
When Starbucks saw these machines, they liked them so much that they actually bought the entire company, amusingly called The Coffee Equipment Co.
It made the news at the time. Starbucks planned to roll these machines out nationally, raising the level of Starbucks coffee to a new level of quality.
Here in Dallas, I remember how excited I was to learn that there were only two of these Clover coffee machines in Texas, and one of them was at the local Starbucks that I liked to visit, on Knox Street in Dallas.
Clover coffee cost more, and they had special beans to choose from when you’d place your Clover coffee order. Things like single estate Papa New Guinea, or Rwandan beans. They’d rotate through different beans, so one month might have completely different choices than the previous month.
If you wanted a decaf coffee in the afternoon, Starbucks didn’t typically brew that in large batches, so they’d make one for you on the Clover. You could ask for a Pike or one of the other common roasts too if you wanted, but I never really saw the point of that.
Now There’s a New Clover Machine in Town, the Clover Vertica
For whatever reason, Starbucks never really rolled out the original Clover coffee machine into very many stores. I would estimate less than 100, but that is mostly just my guess based on never seeing them anywhere I went.
I think it’s a little labor intensive to make a Clover coffee, because you have to grind the beans, weigh them, and then stand there and whisk while the coffee is extracting. It would require separate training to use the machine. Maybe these were reasons.
But in 2023, Starbucks introduced a new Clover machine called the Clover Vertica.
The Clover Vertica solves all the issues with the original Clover. It makes a coffee with the push of a button, like a Superautomatic espresso machine, except for drip coffee.
Right now at Starbucks, the employees make big containers of coffee in large dispensers. This system works great in the mornings when they have a lot of customer traffic in the store, all ordering drip coffees.
But in low traffic stores, or in the afternoons when not as many people order drip coffee, it poses a problem for Starbucks. You see, they are not going to let coffee sit in the dispenser and get old and taste bad. They have strict rules about how long they are allowed to have it in a dispenser before they have to throw it out and make a new batch of coffee.
Imagine all the waste if customers are hardly ordering many drip coffees in the afternoon, but Starbucks employees are still brewing big dispensers of Blonde, Pike and Dark Roast. They might end up throwing away gallons and gallons of coffee per day, using up all those coffee beans and all that water and all those filters for nothing!
But the Clover Vertica will solve this issue, because it’s a single machine that has either 4 or 6 bean hoppers on top of the machine, depending on which model.
If a customer comes in and orders a decaf, they can hit the decaf button and it will grind the beans right on the spot, and then run the water through and brew just that single coffee. How can you get any fresher than that? And no waste!
Learn more about the Clover Vertica here.