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Comment by ruph123 | Hacker News Reader

It is so interesting to me how the marketing of flair and ROK (but mostly flair) drive the amount of coverage they get online in terms of reviews and discussions whereas the Cafelat gets almost nothing. It sure has flaws (the lever hands and the awkwardly positioned pressure gauge) but not needing to preheat the brew chamber is such a big win, it is clearly the better product.

To this day James Hoffman has only one crappy video about the Cafelat, which is not even a polished review and rather a first look. But he has a few highly polished flair videos and discusses their ridiculous electricly preheated pro versions to death. (Without ever really seriously comparing it against the Cafelat)

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But that's what marketing and sales are for. The first result for the Cafelat on Google (at least to me) isn't even their own web page. It helps that the Flair is an excellent product too.

This is what marketing, sales, and brand outreach do: they connect customers with products. People get sold Flairs, they like them, they tell others, people consume content for Flairs, Robots occupy the same niche and once you get a Flair you don't really have a reason to go with a Robot.

Ships from the UK:

https://www.cafelat.co.uk/

Hoffman is a joke and is not respected by anyone in the coffee industry, he's a pretentious twat and exactly the opposite of what coffee needs. Most content you see online is pay-to-play so if you spend more money you get more content.

Who is respected in the coffee industry? I like his often scientific approach to coffee, diving into the data, papers, etc. He is very methological.

Anette Moldvaer who founded Square Mile with him (I think they were a couple) is the coffee person behind it. She is the roaster and coffee person, he is the frontman/salesperson.

Scientists have a hypothesis and then test that hypothesis, this isn't what he does. You want a scientific approach try these guys https://socraticcoffee.com/ they do a reasonably good job.

I mean this is absolutely not true.

Yes it is.

"not respected by anyone in the coffee industry" is an impossible claim. I personally know people who are in "the industry" who like his videos. He participates in communities positively.

Low-quality comment. Hoffman's responsible for opening up the world of coffee brewing to many more people than might have otherwise explored it, along with other content creators in the space who do the same, and his content is enjoyable to many regardless of what randos think.

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