TL;DR: We believe that today’s automatic commercial machines and pre-batch systems can make as good coffee as traditional setups.
For us, choosing between a classic or contemporary approach, or a hybrid of those, depends on many variables: shop layout, time of purchase, budget, willingness to experiment and adopt new tech/workflows, ties with suppliers, personal preferences… However, the first (and essential) requirement is that the machines meet our quality and consistency standards.
Our 3 shops in Sydney currently operate with different gear setups, workflows, and degrees of automation, but the goal is the same for all: to make consistently delicious coffee and provide a great experience for both staff and customers.
If you’re a regular or follow us on social media, you may have seen some unusual coffee-making gear in our newest shops.
While St Peters still keeps a traditional 3-group espresso machine (the kind you see in most cafes today), Surry Hills and Marrickville have a more contemporary setup, introducing different degrees of automation and pre-batch workflows.
Some may find this odd.
These days, it feels like everyone takes one side or the other: Automated or traditional? Pre-batch or on-demand? Washed or natural process? Modern or classic? This or that water? We don’t really believe in such ‘black and white’ thinking. There are many ways to make, drink, and enjoy coffee – and you shouldn’t have to pick only one.
Some may (also) find this inefficient.
Wouldn’t it be easier for the business, and its staff, to use just one system/gear setup across all shops? Well, yes, probably. But we enjoy testing new gadgets and developing our own versions of novel workflows like pre-batch espresso. It’s actually fun and refreshing, not always easy or straightforward, but it keeps us motivated to turn up every day, every year. To learn something new, to keep developing as people and professionals.
So, 3 locations, 3 different flows, 3 different stages on the traditional/automated spectrum. What makes us commit to one particular setup? Let’s have a look.
Sample Coffee – St Peters
Sample Coffee – Surry Hills
Sample Coffee – Marrickville
How we choose our coffee shop gear and workflows
As you can see, we’re pretty open-minded and experimental when it comes to new methods and technology. So, in an industry that is improving every year, how do we choose our coffee shop gear?
Our first and essential requirements are:
1. Make delicious coffee consistently (delicious is a bit of a broad term, meaning something like ‘according to our own taste and standards’)
2. Facilitate a good experience (for both staff and customers)
Once we know the machines can meet these, there are a whole lot of other factors that will determine our commitment to a brewing style, brand, or workflow:
- Shop layout and available space
- Available gear at the time of purchase
- Budget!
- Willingness to experiment and adopt new tech/workflows
- Skilled staff availability
- Maintenance and warranties
- General look and aesthetics
- Ties and agreements with specific brands or suppliers
- Customer habits/expectations for that space/location
- Cultural trends
- Personal preferences
- Etc.
This is pretty much it. Now, let’s see how these played out in our 3 shops (as of October 2026!).
Sample Coffee – St Peters
(Original-ish 2015 workflow, 2026 tech setup)
We took this space in 2014 and opened it in early 2015, as part of our original roastery and headquarters. The cafe sits in a spacious and high-ceiling room with steel beams; it has a lot of industrial character inherited from its original purpose: the building complex was the original home of Taubmans Paint – one of Australia’s most recognisable manufacturing brands – since the early 1900s.
Reuben designed and built a central bar to organise the room layout and house all the coffee-making equipment. The intention was literally to put coffee at centre stage: customers can walk and sit all around it, viewing and almost participating in the full brewing and serving process. Around this structure, there is a generous number of tables and seats, plus shelving space with lots of retail bean bags and homebrewing gear. The ‘Pro Shop’ (our nickname for this shop) is the opposite of crammed and fast-paced; there’s plenty of room, inviting you to hang out, slow down, and overstay.
Since the opening, there have been some minor gear upgrades, but the setup and workflow style is practically the same. The main piece here is a 3-group espresso machine, with a few supporting gadgets that broaden our brewed coffee offerings – all within the generous bar footprint. This is our current setup:
- La Marzocco KB90 (3-group espresso machine)
- The Juggler Double (milk dispensing)
- Izaga (espresso blend grinder)
- Mahlkönig E65 (single origin espresso grinder)
- Mahlkönig EK43 (single origin filter and decaf grinder)
- PUQ Press (auto-tamping)
- FETCO (batch filter brewing)
- TODDY (cold brew)
- FETCO Pump Lever Airpots (batch filter and cold brew dispensing)
- TONE Swiss (on-demand pour over filter)
- Ice machine, undercounter fridges and freezer
Sample Coffee – Surry Hills
(Opened in 2011, upgraded in April 2026)
This is our original flagship store, open since 2011. It’s a tiny, tiny space in the heart of Surry Hills, in an area that is frequented by office workers and city visitors (it’s ~3-minute walk away from Central Station). It’s adjacent to a pedestrian plaza built in 2019, which gives the area quite a nice character and becomes an extension of our coffee shop – the inside is literally occupied by the bar/workspace and a little retail shelf.
Over the years, Sample Coffee Surry Hills has lived through many gear iterations and fit-out upgrades, but the concept was always the same: maximise the space and focus on the coffee experience.
The latest major renovation in April 2026 involved installing a brand new bar structure that fits new and more machines, more under-bench fridges, a small freezer, and more (never enough!) storage. All while making it look nice, tidy, and simple from the outside – the material is a custom recycled plastic surface from Defy, with a custom colour palette that reflects our iconic coffee bag labels.
Milk orders are made on-demand (not pre-batch) with an Eversys superautomatic machine, while single origin espressos are pulled on a fancy and good-looking La Marzocco Leva. Best of both worlds. Here’s the full setup:
- Eversys Shotmaster (superautomatic espresso machine)
- The Juggler Double (milk dispensing)
- La Marzocco Leva (1-group espresso machine)
- Six Simple Machines Freepour Batch (four taps) (connected to an underbench fridge)
- Mahlkönig E65 (single origin espresso grinder)
- Mahlkönig EK43 (single origin filter and decaf grinder)
- **xBloomv (on-demand pour over filter)
- Freezer (storing our premium VS coffee range)
- FETCO (batch filter brewing)
- TODDY (cold brew)
- Ice machine, undercounter fridge
- Soft serve ice cream machine
Sample Coffee – Marrickville
(As per opening in August 2026)
Our latest shop, attached to our newest roastery and headquarters in Marrickville (we had to vacate the St Peters warehouse due to its redevelopment). It’s ridiculously close to Sydenham Station, so it sees a lot of commuter foot traffic, kiss-and-drops, and local workers. Perhaps some destination coffee hoppers on the weekends, as the neighbourhood has become the new ‘specialty’ coffee roasters hotspot in Sydney.
Like Surry Hills, this shop is super small and compact. It occupies the footprint of an existing retail room, which we decided to keep as is because it made things easier financially and permit-wise – plus, we needed most of the warehouse space for the coffee roasting operations, anyway… We also thought that it could work well as is due to the fast-paced and transient nature of our potential customers – people on the go to the station or to their workplace.
With this context and our good experience with the Eversys machine in Surry Hills, we decided to continue with the automated/single-group hybrid for this shop’s coffee setup. But we’ve gone a step further and implemented our version of a pre-batch espresso workflow for milk orders (inspired by, and continuing with the work of Beta and Project Zero in Australia).
There are some obvious benefits in terms of speed and room for better customer interactions, but a critical factor here when choosing this setup was the physical appearance. If we had put a classic 3-group espresso machine in our front bar, it would have become a bulky barrier between barista and customers when they walk in; the machine would have dominated the small space, while, with the current setup, the eye contact and visuals are a lot more open. Also, there wouldn’t have been any room for the Six Simple Machines taps. Too many cons.
Another cool feature (that we love, anyway) is the floating timber: the fridges that contain the pre-batched drinks are tucked away behind the side wall, liberating the space under the countertop and allowing us to have the open space below, making it feel lighter, different.
This is the current tech:
- Eversys Cameo + Latte Art Factory Bar Pro (milk coffee orders - pre-batch)
- Modbar Espresso + Modbar Pour Over (single origin espresso and pour over orders - on-demand)
- Six Simple Machines Freepour Batch (four taps) + fridge (on-demand batch filter, cold brew, and special/seasonal pre-batched drinks)
- FETCO (batch filter brewing)
- Mahlkönig EK43S (single origin espresso and decaf grinder)
- Ditting 804 (single origin filter grinder)
- Soft serve ice cream machine
- Freezer (storing our premium VS coffee range)
Wrapping up
As you can see, we’re not attached to anything but delicious coffee and good times. We’ll work with what we have to make things happen, and this may involve using different brands, design solutions, and systems. It’s all part of the fun.
If you’d like to know more about any of our shops, how we get our coffee to taste consistent across different workflows – or if you simply want to nerd out about tech and design solutions –, reach out via email.
As you can probably tell, we don’t mind a chat about coffee, tech, design, and everything in between.