Espresso for All and Always Espresso for All and Always This is a page to detail the efforts to improve the SCS community by adding an espresso machine to the lounge in Wean Hall. For those that don't know, the lounge is available to all SCS faculty, grad students, and staff. If you don't have a key, you may obtain one from Skees.
Here's a table of contents for the information you'll find on this page. At any point, you can click the sad cappucino to return to the top of the page.
While nearby coffee facilities are nice, they often don't serve the
strange schedule many SCS members live by. Moreover, when we
tend to desire coffee the most (i.e. deadline pressure times),
we usually discover the time problem to be at its worst. With an
SCS machine, espresso drinks will be available 24x7.
Why do we want an espresso machine?
Furthermore, the bite that the caffeine habit can take out of
our wallets can be quite unpleasant. We can supply
drinks to the community at a fraction of the cost available from
most places.
Most importantly, these benefits add up to an incentive for
people across all of SCS to gather in the WeH lounge. Thus
providing another good opportunity for interdepartment
socialization in SCS on a daily basis.
Finally, it's just a nice addition to the lounge. It can also act as
a recruiting boon (remember there are no 24-hr coffee shops in
all of Pittsburgh).
The machine actually dispenses real espresso/cappucino.
When you make your selection, the machine takes whole espresso
beans, grinds them, packs them, and extracts an espresso. There
is a built-in refrigeration unit that hold regular jugs of fresh
milk. The machine draws milk from the jug, steams and froths it.
But I want real espresso/cappucino...
You can select decaf or regular beans, non-fat or regular
(currently rotating 2% and whole -- give your opinion) milk, plus
the size and style of drink.
If you'd like a closer look to be convinced we'll start giving
demonstration of the internals for a short amount of time.
The sheer fact of the matter is that very few if any SCS members
want to spend time making their own espresso drinks. After all,
that's not why we're here. Therefore,
we'd like to "bring the mountain to Mohammed." We tried to find
an espresso machine that fit the style of the SCS community
without sacrificing quality of drinks. We also wanted something
that met certain sanitary needs. With that in mind, we found
something that will automatically dispense beans, grind, pack,
make espresso, store milk in a connected refrigeration unit, and
dispense fresh frothed and steamed milk. It will also dispose
of the beans automatically. Furthermore, this is high quality
cappucino. This isn't like many of your standard coin-operated
machines. It's
likely you've had products from a similar machine at high
quality restaurants and cafes. The standard maintenance is minimal:
(1) add more beans to hopper if they
run out (each holds 2.2 lbs) (2) replace jug of milk in refrigeration unit if it runs
out (holds two 1-gallon jugs) (3) empty grounds bin after every (approx.) 60 uses.
Who will bother with all the work?
The model we have purchased is the Acorto
2000i. You can read more about it in the press release.
Technically, there are no machines exactly like this. There are
machines that have subsets of the features on this machine,
but after looking extensively we chose this machine for a
variety of reasons.
Our primary considerations
were (1) will a large part of the SCS community be able to use
the machine (in terms of operation complexity, time, cleanup, etc.) on a
day-to-day basis (2) will the community be able to easily
maintain it in a sanitary fashion (3) will it provide all of the
types of drinks we'd like (4) maintenance and warranty guarantees.
What machines are there like this one?
Unfortunately, ease-of-use comes at a price. This machine was
quite expensive as its usual target is high-end cafes and
restaurants.
However, we felt if we amortized this across SCS, this was
readily justified in terms of savings to the community and
community improvement. With average use (1 cap per day/20 days
per month), a $100 donation is earned back in about 3
months.
As noted above the per-cup
maintenance is almost nonexistent. A few things will need to
be done on a day-to-day basis. These include: (1) running the
machine through its auto-clean cycle (2) refilling the bean
hoppers (3) replacing empty milk containers (4) purchasing new
milk. We are looking for a group of graduate student volunteers
to perform these tasks. Please contact pbennett+espresso@cs.cmu.edu if you are interested in helping. Yes, there are benefits for being a volunteer.
How will it be maintained?
The machine will be available to all SCS grad students, faculty,
and staff. We cannot make use of the machine available to
anyone outside of SCS; our intended goal is to improve our
community -- not to be a vending operation. Opening the
machine to everyone would involve us in the University's
vending rules.
Who will be allowed to use it?
Until the electronic payment system is finalized, the anticipated
and current prices are $1 for any drink for a member and $1.50
for a non-member. (See below
for information on becoming a member.)
While some people consider that high, consider the fact that any
regular coffee operation usually sells the same drinks for at
least twice the price. In addition, since we are currently
leasing to own, our costs for the machine are still quite high.
Becoming a member is a one-time fee that will help us finish
paying for the machine.
How much does it cost for a cup?
For those desiring standard coffee, you can use the machine to
make an "Americano" (espresso + hot water) which is similar in
taste and strength to coffee.
Will it also make coffee?
To make a one-time donation, address a check to "Dec/5, Inc." and write
"espresso fund" on the subject line. It
is very important that you send your check to either Paul
Bennett (CSD) or Sharon Burks, so that your donation is properly
acknowledged and credited to the correct account.
How can I contribute?
For those making donations, we have established the Espresso
Club. Any donations are welcome, but for those making
donations at certain levels, membership is granted to the
Basic Club, Bronze Club, Silver Club, Gold Club, or
Platinum Club.
The
benefits for these clubs are: (1) permanent recognition via
dedication plaques to be mounted by the espresso machine (one
for each club) (2) "free coffee days" whose frequency varies
with the level of membership (3) lower cost per cup. We won't
be able to say how often we can have these "free coffee days" until we can
determine what community usage can support. The required
donation levels for each of the clubs are (until 1/31/2002):
Basic Club Membership (only available for students and support
staff): $50 and above
Bronze Club (minimum level for research staff and faculty): $100 and above
Silver Club: $250 and above
Gold Club: $500 and above
Platinum Club: $1000 and above
Later this semester (but no sooner than 4/1/2002)
membership prices will go up 50% because of
interest payments we make in paying off the machine.
* = pledged
Who are the current club members?
| Members | Bronze Members | Silver Members | Gold Members | Platinum Members | |
| Parallel Data Lab | Anonymous | ||||
| F A C U L T Y |
Danny Sleator | Jeannette Wing | Jaime G. Carbonell | ||
| Robert Harper | Guy Blelloch | Takeo Kanade | |||
| Lenore Blum | Manuel Blum | Mahadev Satyanarayanan (Satya) | |||
| Avrim Blum | Peter Steenkiste | ||||
| John Lafferty | Randy Bryant | ||||
| Anastassia Ailamaki | |||||
| Alex Rudnicky | |||||
| Gary Miller | |||||
| Jim Morris | |||||
| Tom Mitchell | |||||
| Seth Goldstein Additionally sponsored: Mahim Mishra, Girish Venkataramani |
|||||
| Anupam Gupta | |||||
| S T U D E N T S |
Mark Moll | Paul Bennett | |||
| Umut Acar | Francisco Pereira | ||||
| Stefanie Tomko | Dushyanth Narayanan | ||||
| Ted Wong | Dimitris Margaritis | ||||
| Ariadna Font Llitjos | Derek Dreyer | ||||
| Stratos Papadomanolakis | Patrick Riley | ||||
| James Fogarty | Stavros Harizopoulos | ||||
| Ke Yang | John Pane | ||||
| Alik Widge | Spiros Papadimitriou | ||||
| Alok Ladsariya | Stephen McCracken | ||||
| John Kominek | Laurie Hiyakumoto | ||||
| Ryan Williams | Ioannis Koutis | ||||
| Monica Rogati | Leaf Petersen | ||||
| Kevyn Collins-Thompson | Owen Cheng | ||||
| S T A F F |
Heather Browne | David Eckhardt | |||
| Dean F. Sutherland | Jennifer Landefeld | ||||
| Violetta Cavalli Sforza | |||||
| A L U M N I |
Peter Dinda | Donald McCracken | |||
This section is to detail special donations made by other
individuals and groups who deserve special recognition.
Who else has made donations?
| Bruce Nelson |
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