Frank, dont get too carried away with that one. Without figures to show what kind of turnover the cafe will give back in exchange for a loaner, or without a location that will guarantee such, either the price of the coffee will "loaded" with a premium to offset the lower than optimum turnover, or the answer will simply be a flat "no". It's a 2 way street. Incidentally the above "idea" gets a lot more "airplay" than really happens, and is dependent on the marketing politics of companies in any given area at any given time & the market share game being played out....so best to stay away from that one. A business needs to be able to stand on it's own 2 feet & be viable, & not rely upon something like that OR you might have to be the type of person that is willing to sacrifice the type of coffee or roaster he/she really wanted to use or deal with, for the sake of obtaining a loaner machine from a coffee roaster that wasnt his/her first preference (or not a preference at all). With regard to the question at hand: The first 2 brands of machine mentioned are the most "technical" around in terms of internal engineering & design and are therefore going to be the most troublesome when something goes wrong. That's not to say that things are going to go wrong often, just that when they do, I personally would prefer to have chosen a nice conventional design machine that anyone anywhere should be able to service & get bits for. This is particularly important depending on the area you are going to open up in. The third name I've never heard of and therefore cant comment other than to say that if it isnt a common brand in the market, the same applies. NZ mentioned his "favourite" brand either here or in the other topic where you asked the question. But honestly, I have only ever found their service backup to be substandard. It is either unnacceptably slow, or non existent, you have to contunally chase them up, they dont call you back, misunderstandings occur and not all, or some wrong parts turn up. So I am wondering what is the point of something that someone says may be "up there", when from a backup service point of view it is of no use to any of my business clients that have them. There are other very well known brand name machines that I simply (as both a coffee roaster wanting to look after my own "brand" coffee and as an espresso machine importer, vendor & service provider), dont think make very good coffee. Some of them are very good work horses from the point of view that they keep on keeping on...but the problem is they do that ad infinitum while they brew rubbish. That's not very good where both cafe owner & coffee supplier should be trying to make a name for themselves & the coffee purveyed, not destroy it!
