Sorry that I've been away and missed all of this. it's a damn shame we all headed down this path. Just to put a few more "facts" behind this discussion. 1st delivery is still slated for Aug 1st (fingers crossed) The first order quantity is approx 257 units (a 20 footer) The entire first delivery was spoken for, well before I had a discussion with the coffee specialist in question. They were offered stock from the second shipment ( it's not for us to share their response). Other interested coffee specialists have also missed out on the first shipment. Stock from the first shipment will go to a mix of Breville's traditional retailers and 3 or 4 coffee specialists. Enough facts. Now some opinions. The development cost for a project like this is massive (think of a number and times it by 100). And of the size that simply would not allow us to enen commence projects purely for coffee specialists. The maths just wouldn't add up. For us, right now, it has to be in HN, tGG's etc or we don't design it in the first place. In respect to the Breville brand, pre-release in blogs and specialty stockists, to me it's pretty clear that some will be interested, some will wet themselves, some wont give a toss and some will be roadblocks, but the way I see it, isn't that the same for everything in life. It's not a surprise to me that some (if not a lot) could never see a Breville espresso on their bench top no matter how well it performed (I think that of brands that i'm sure others love). But at the end of the day, we've now put a machine out there to forums that were eventually going to discuss it, and done our best to keep it as factual as possible. The floor was and is then yours to do with it as you like. Love it, hate it, range it, not range it, recommend it, bag it. Which is pretty obvious and expected as I said. Despite an opinion above, we'll attempt to keep it factual from here on in. PS, i've literally just returned from the snow, where I took one of the first production units of the 900. Everything is performing as expected, if not better, now we've further improved the punchiness of the steam. Regards, the Breville marketing guy.
