Ciao VX3 Duo Bean to Cup – Ex Showroom

Display stock moves on. This Ciao VX3 Duo bean to cup and its matching Coffee to Go serving station have been displayed rather than worked hard, and they are now available to a venue that wants a finished coffee point instead of a machine on a table. Buying ex-display is also the quickest route to a complete package on site, since the unit is already built up and tested.

What ex-display actually means

The unit has been on display and lightly used, so expect a cosmetically used finish rather than boxed-new packaging, with the mechanics checked by our team before sale. That is the whole trade: appearance in exchange for availability. A two-year warranty comes with it regardless, the same as new stock. If a mark on a panel would bother you, say so before you order.

Ordering a drink from it

Selection is handled on a touch display. A customer picks espresso, americano, cappuccino or caffe latte, and the machine takes care of grinding, dosing and brewing, with every drink ground fresh at the moment of ordering. The serve position sits at the front of the cabinet with the cup presented directly under the outlet, which keeps spillage down and makes the process obvious to a first-time user.

In the package

• Ciao VX3 Duo bean to cup machine with touch-screen selection
• Matching Coffee to Go serving station in black with steel panelling
• Front-facing serve position designed around clean cup placement
• Fresh grinding for espresso-based drinks on demand
• Espresso, americano, cappuccino and caffe latte on the menu
• 1,000 drinks supplied with the package
• Ex-display condition, inspected before sale
• Already built up and tested, ready to be positioned

The two buyers it tends to suit

The first has an office or waiting area where the current offer is a kettle and a jar, and wants something visitors notice for the right reasons. The second is a retail or hospitality floor where coffee is a secondary line that still has to look deliberate. Clinics, showrooms and staff areas upgrading from instant all sit in one camp or the other, and both want the machine to carry a normal working day without anyone being trained as a barista.

Self-service, or a person on a machine

If your peak is a hard, short rush with a queue out of the door, weigh a traditional espresso machine and a person on it instead. If the demand is spread across opening hours, self-service is the easier answer by a distance, and this is the version of it that still puts a freshly ground cup in front of the customer. Our comparison of automatic and traditional espresso machines is a useful sanity check before you order.

Planning the position

Allow a little space either side for cup stock and a bin, and treat the approach as part of the design: people should be able to see the touch display from a few paces away and reach it without squeezing past furniture. Check that the socket you intend to use is where you want the cabinet, not where the cabinet nearly fits, and ask us how water will reach this unit before anything is positioned. If the room has a cleaner’s schedule, tell them the machine is on it.

The milk question, worth asking early

Cappuccino and caffe latte are on the drinks list, so it is worth confirming the milk arrangement on this particular unit with us before you commit, because it decides whether the daily job is a canister refill or a chilled milk routine with a cleaning cycle attached. Neither is difficult. Choosing the one that matches your staffing is what keeps the machine working in month twelve.

The daily job, and the filters

Set up as an unattended coffee point it asks very little of your staff: hopper top-ups, waste emptying and a daily wipe down. There is no dialling in, no tamping and no group head to keep clean, which is precisely why it suits a site where the coffee is not anybody’s main job. Show two people how it works and let them show everyone else. Build a filter change schedule into the installation plan rather than waiting for the coffee to taste flat, because filtered water protects the boiler and the brew unit, and in hard water areas it is the single most valuable thing you can do for a machine like this.

Order the consumables at the same time

• Cups and glasses sized to the drinks you intend to sell
• Ciao coffee ready to fill the hopper on day one
• Replacement filters, so the first change is not a scramble

All of that sits in our Ciao essentials range, and ordering it alongside the machine is what makes the coffee point complete on the day it is switched on. Packages like this one appear in our ex-demo and clearance stock from time to time, usually briefly, so if the specification suits the site it is not a decision to leave sitting.