Let’s face it, life in the HR team is hectic and we all need a coffee break from time to time. We’ve come an awfully long way from my first ‘pre-coffee-culture’ working days. Getting the coffees in meant a trip a few floors down to a ground-to-ceiling vending machine. Then waiting two minutes for it to spit out a plastic cup of a hot brown liquid that vaguely looked like—although it didn’t taste anything like—coffee.
Nowadays, it’s not much better and you find yourself either traipsing to the nearest coffee house or having to negotiate coffee granules—with an amazing capacity to deliquesce—and sugar spills in the pantry. Fear not, we’ve discovered a new workplace coffee machine from Nespresso that seems to hit the mark when it comes to making fast, and more importantly decent tasting, cups of coffee for staff with zero mess or fuss.
Pop and press simplicity
If you’re new to NESPRESSO, basically you pop a little coffee capsule in the top of the machine, pull down the handle and press a button…half a minute later you have a great cup of coffee. The coffees come complete with a creamy foam on the top, by virtue of the machine’s patented high pressure, 19 Bar, filtration system.
There are plenty of varieties and strengths of coffee to choose from, ranging from mild and aromatic to full-bodied and intense, so everyone in the office can be catered for. The coffee capsules also come in several decaf options for those looking for a flavour fix rather than a caffeine one.
Test drive
Recently, we’ve been test driving the latest Zenius model from NESPRESSO in the HR Magazine pantry. If you saw how tiny our pantry is—it is just as well that machine is pretty slimline at around 7.5 (W) x 12 (H) x 16 (D) inches. But, behind the sleek exterior of this mini barista lies some pretty mighty technology. The Zenius model is more efficient than many of its predecessors with a much faster warm up time—ready to use in just 35 seconds. The first generation model we used to use at the office had an annoying habit of spitting used coffee capsules on the floor when you pulled up the lever to try and discard them in the waste container below. Thankfully, the new Zenius, has been much better designed and features a simple drop-in and drop-through design for the coffee capsules, which has eliminated this glitch seen in some earlier models. Now, once you pop in the coffee capsule and press the button you never see the capsule again as it drops below into the container, that holds up to 25 used capsules.
The removable water container has also been beefed up and with a 2.3 litre capacity you don’t need to fill it up as often. The only slight drawback is that at nearly 11 inches tall, you need a good bit of clearance below your taps to fit it under when filling, or use a jug. One new feature I really like with the Zenius is the two-tier stainless steel cup rack, of which the top tier can be swung aside so you can fit a huge mug underneath it, instead of having to limit yourself to a polite mini-cup each time.
Now there’s something that will certainly enhance employee efficiency: one pantry trip…Two coffees.
Paul Arkwright
Publisher
