Uploaded April 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Walk into almost any specialty coffee shop and you'll probably see the same espresso machine behind the counter. Not a coincidence — it's a La Marzocco.
*How does a product outshine the rest? We found out:* clickhubspot.com/53m7
But thirty years ago, nearly every La Marzocco in America was inside a Starbucks. The small Florence manufacturer powered Starbucks' entire espresso operation as it grew from 425 stores to 8,500 in a decade — then got quietly replaced by a fully automated Swiss machine that could do the barista's job at the touch of a button. For a family-run company that had been hand-making machines since 1927, it should've been a death sentence.
Instead, losing Starbucks pushed La Marzocco straight into the arms of a movement that was just getting started: specialty coffee, where precision and craft were the whole point. We talk to the entrepreneur who first brought La Marzocco to the U.S. and introduced the brand to Howard Schultz, plus an LA repair shop owner who now moves up to 10 La Marzocco machines a day — and explain exactly why the same machine ended up in every trendy coffee shop.
Get the 5-minute newsletter keeping 2M+ innovators in the loop: thehustle.co/join-free-2
Walk into almost any specialty coffee shop and you'll probably see the same espresso machine behind the counter. Not a coincidence — it's a La Marzocco.
*How does a product outshine the rest? We found out:* clickhubspot.com/53m7
But thirty years ago, nearly every La Marzocco in America was inside a Starbucks. The small Florence manufacturer powered Starbucks' entire espresso operation as it grew from 425 stores to 8,500 in a decade — then got quietly replaced by a fully automated Swiss machine that could do the barista's job at the touch of a button. For a family-run company that had been hand-making machines since 1927, it should've been a death sentence.
Instead, losing Starbucks pushed La Marzocco straight into the arms of a movement that was just getting started: specialty coffee, where precision and craft were the whole point. We talk to the entrepreneur who first brought La Marzocco to the U.S. and introduced the brand to Howard Schultz, plus an LA repair shop owner who now moves up to 10 La Marzocco machines a day — and explain exactly why the same machine ended up in every trendy coffee shop.
Get the 5-minute newsletter keeping 2M+ innovators in the loop: thehustle.co/join-free-2
