New functional solutions, to get things moving again as quickly as possible. During lockdown, there were not many Ho.Re.Ca companies that came to a halt, in Italy or elsewhere. And for all of them, more than ever before, one thing mattered more than anything else: the indispensible nature of focusing on innovation and on investing in certain trends – from sustainability to the digital world. “It’s a trend we’re seeing across the entire professional hospitality sector,” says hotel industry expert Juan Bernardo Kferman, who is the Food, Beverage & Supplies buyer for Club Med – USA and Caribbean Region. “Everything is heading in the direction of touchless devices, as was seen in on Italian company that released air-touch tech on coffee machines. And there are apps for everything now, from room keys to menus and even for flushing a toilet. Everything operated from a mobile phone.”

Still on the subject of sustainable coffee machines, for the last seven years Simonelli Group in collaboration with Università Politecnica delle Marche and the Marche Manufacturing cluster, has been working on a series of research projects aimed at reducing the environmental impact of espresso coffee machines. The result: T3 technology has managed not only to guarantee temperature stability and the consistency of the beverage in the cup, but also an energy saving of between 30% and 40% compared to a machine that uses other types of technology. Another example is the patented T.E.R.S. (Temperature Energy Recovery System), a solution that gives a saving of 8% on the total consumption of the machine. 

The Brambati brand has also been focusing on innovation, with attention focused over the past few months on restyling its roasting machines, from both an aesthetic and a functional point of view, and paying particular attention to sustainability. “The other new idea that is big on hi-tech is the implementation of the new SW devoted to the high-end BR model of roasters. As well as offering the usual level of flexibility, they have all the features required by the Specialty sector,” says company president Fabrizio Brambati, who stresses how the new SW “makes it possible to check all the parameters (temperature, times, air volume, motor speed and heat exchange between the beans and the air), to diversify the methodology (set-point/gradient), all the way through to cupping.” In this way various users can evaluate the flavour of the coffee, creating their own assessment datasheets, also with the help of the dedicated web app. And that is not all: “the same application can also visualise the history of the roasting curves, the use of green coffee, the previous cupping sessions and a series of key performance indicators (or KPIs), like the number of batches executed, the use of recipes, the frequency of alarm episodes, productivity and much more besides.”