Beverage · Tool · Rancilio
Size the coffee program for the 8am line.
Peak-hour cups and espresso drinks in — brewing class and working-group math out, with the water-quality note that saves boilers.
Your program class
Coffee equipment is only ever as good as its water — filtration belongs in the spec from day one, not after the first scaled boiler. That, and the machine itself, is the conversation with your rep.
Email me these numbers
Asked every week.
How much coffee equipment does my volume need?
Published equipment-selection tiers run on peak-hour cups: low-volume brewing to about 100 cups an hour, medium from 101 to 300, and high-volume or satellite systems above that. A hundred 8-ounce cups is just over six gallons of brewed coffee an hour.
How many espresso drinks can one group head produce?
Real-world pacing runs a few drinks a minute per working group at steady load, but it's heavily craft- and menu-dependent — which is why the planning answer is a range and the real answer is your barista on the actual machine. Plan one group larger than the math says; the extra group is recovery headroom on the rush.
A tool gets you close. A person gets it right.
Every number here is a starting point, not a quote. Your Zink specialist runs these questions for a living — and checking your math costs you nothing.