May 2026
Hi everyone - You may be wondering why we’ve been quiet the last few weeks despite our desire to post more regular updates. The answer is that we’ve been overwhelmed shipping, clearing customs, and onboarding more Backers than ever before. As a comparison point, many world-class espresso machine companies add 2,000 new customers a year, and we added half that number in the last few weeks. We’re doing our best to learn from where users have questions or issues so we can improve it for the next wave of deliveries. In that way, the time between MP1 and MP2 was helpful in creating a better experience for new users.
Below are some of the things we’ve been working on to get you brewing:
2. Safety Manual: In multiple languages
4. Lance Hedrick Onboarding Series: First two released. More videos will be coming soon!
We have shipped 1,931 Meticulous units as of today and over 2,000 including our Beta units. With more users we have discovered edge cases that we can improve in how some user profiles are handled, Wi-Fi connectivity and the like that the team has been working to improve.
Cleaning & Maintenance
Many of you will have had your machine for a few weeks or months - please take this opportunity to review the Repair & Maintenance guide. Look or feel for any mineral build-up in the cylinder and if you observe it, clean it.
Production
The best news by far is that we completed 1,000 MP2 machines and have started MP3. That’s 2,000 machines built in total since we began mass production.
The chart below shows cumulative production volume by batch. It shows how much faster we have gotten at building 1,000 machines and is the result of a huge amount of work from our engineers and manufacturing partner. It requires iterating on production layout, jigs, systems and quality control processes. We believe we can go faster.
It requires us to have all of our components ready to go, and meeting our strict quality requirements. In MP2 we were surprised that some components that had never had issues, arrived with an issue and required us to go back to the supplier. Those of you with experience in manufacturing may understand how frustrating it is to not be able to fully control everything and to rely on external suppliers - we send our own team members onsite to oversee the processes, but expect to go through a learning curve.
Quality
The second number we track closely is the number of issues reported by users. From edge cases that we hadn’t seen before to things that our quality control process missed.
For MP1 we had ~6% of machines experience an issue. We were able to identify the issues via sensor data and now screen for them at the factory during our testing process. In the case of motor over-work, we introduced a protection mechanism.
For MP2 the number went down to 1.8%. So this means we are making machines faster and more reliably, and every issue becomes a learning experience that we can learn from going forward.
Fulfillment
We shipped over 700 machines in May (931 in MP2) and scaled to 50 shipments per day. We're now in the final stage of MP2 fulfillment.
For MP2 we shipped machines to many more countries than for MP1 and achieved our goal of delivering up to at least Backer 1500 in major markets (and some smaller markets too).
- Americas: US, Canada
- Europe: UK, Germany, France, Switzerland, Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway
- APAC & Middle East: Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and major Middle East markets (despite disruptions due to the war).
Some delays were encountered as we were made aware of a requirement to have a physical safety manual in local languages in the box. The team sourced, printed and included it and we are set moving forward.
We now have the confidence to pursue shipping to smaller markets as well, so thank you for your patience if you are in one of those markets. We are doing our best!
Open Country Specific Issues:
- Denmark: We are waiting for delivery of additional Danish power cords.
- Spain: We are still setting up a solution for delivering machines due to the unique requirement when shipping espresso machines directly to Spain, so apologies if you are an early Backer that has not received their machine yet.
- China: China also requires special consideration as our current export flow assumes machines are built for export and there are both certification and tax consequences for our manufacturer. We are working through the best way to handle this so we can deliver machines in China.
Software
Our focus with software has been on improving robustness. For 90% of users 90% of the time the software performed well. Our goal is to create a great out-of-the-box experience that ‘just works’ for everyone.
Wi-Fi connectivity is one challenge due to how many systems are out there. We’ve improved the fallback mechanisms to help users recover when the machine can't reach the network, plus improved diagnostics so we can identify and troubleshoot connectivity issues in the field.
Because these changes touch critical parts of the connectivity stack, they'll go to the Nightly channel first for our experienced testers. If everything performs as expected, we'll promote the update to Beta and then to Stable.
New Beta and Stable: In parallel, we're preparing a new Beta release that we expect to become the next Stable version. It fixes all currently known Stable issues and should be a noticeably better experience for Stable users.
Issue Reporting: We are improving the way issues are reported and tracked significantly. Soon, a single click on the machine or in App will allow you to upload all the relevant debugging data to our team for review.
We created a dedicated Beta volunteer group on Discord to test our beta releases faster. If anyone is interested in helping us test the beta, ask to be included on Discord. The more people helping find issues the faster we can promote this version to Stable.
Thank you to everyone testing and sending reports. They've been instrumental in helping us improve the software.
White Machines
We've started the validation process for the white machine powder coated components. We are sourcing samples for the white funnel boiling test (which is our most demanding test for powder coating). This testing can take time as both our cosmetic and performance standards are very high - but we hope that by parallel processing we can find suitable candidates as quickly as possible and move to user testing.
Accessories
Quick progress notes on the accessory roadmap:
Funnel Lid: Samples received and validated, performing as expected. We're visiting the supplier next to review the alignment between the overmolded silicone and the internal metal core. We think we just need one more round of prototypes and we will be ready to make a big order.
iPad Holder: The latest samples work and look as expected. We are expecting a larger set of prototypes to test more broadly, but this looks like it will need only 1 or 2 more rounds of prototypes.
Tamper & Tamper Station: Active prototyping again, with drawings going out for initial DFM and quotation. The design was almost closed so we are moving into sourcing and ordering samples.
Mirror 360: Material selection complete and an updated quote requested. Next step is a higher-volume sample round. The design is done, we are only validating the production quality at this point.
Foam Packaging and Travel Case: We're also progressing on improved hard foam packaging designed to better protect the machine and hold the Funnel Lid and iPad Holder. This improvement will translate to better protection for shipments, as well as the Travel Case.
Milk
Now that accessories are mostly in our CM hands, we re-started work on Milk. As a reminder, we were very close to the design for manufacturing stage for Milk. Last year we made a few prototypes we are very happy about. Restarting work means incorporating the changes we’ve identified from using these prototypes extensively and moving into larger prototyping batches with our Contract Manufacturer for the design for manufacturing stage.
We’ve been creating a work plan incorporating everything we’ve learned from Espresso and setting up the team and work schedule to move as fast as possible. Milk is also a way less complex product than Espresso so we expect these last stages to move a lot faster than Espresso. It’s a huge milestone that production for Espresso is finally at a place that allows us to focus on Milk.
Customer Support
We still are unable to personally respond to every email. We try to read and triage every email, and by necessity need to focus on shipping, customs, onboarding and support issues which require time sensitive responses. We wish we could respond to every request around “when will my machine be delivered”, or an address change (which is not necessary within the same country as you’ll be asked to confirm the address when paying for shipping). We are testing a new internal system to help triage messages more effectively. Our hope is that the new triage system will help us surface the most critical and time sensitive requests and find patterns so we can answer the most common questions faster too.
Thank you for your continued support, we’re thrilled to have delivered so many machines and hear your feedback and the coffee you are brewing.
