By Arno Holschuh
Sam Kanenwisher didn’t grow up thinking he’d repair home espresso machines for a living. “I went to the Berkeley Graduate Theological Union and got a Masters in Divinity,” he said. “But I didn’t want to be a Lutheran Pastor, and that’s where that track ends.”
He had the basic ingredients of a career as a coffee technician: a technical mindset (from his time in the Coast Guard, where he was trained to repair electronic equipment, and a passion for coffee. Kanenwisher says, “I was roasting at home as a hobby, my uncle had introduced me to it”. And he had two years to figure out what to do after seminary, as he was a stay-at-home dad. “At some point, that same uncle asked if I wanted to fix his La Pavoni for him, so I fixed it.”
The machines kept coming. That was 2011, but Kanenwisher now runs the Bay Area’s best — only, really — full-service consumer espresso machine repair shop. Along with his two full-time techs, he takes in the machines the rest of us don’t know how to make a business out of. So how does he do it? “That’s a tough one,” he says, “I’m probably not going to tell you.”
Fair enough, but Kanenwisher did have a lot to say about the parallel world of machine repair for the home and office, from marketing and customer interactions to training and service vehicles. Our conversation follows below.
Arno Holschuh: Tell me about how you find your customers.
Sam Kanenwisher: I started out using Google Ads. At the time, no one had websites. This was 2011; Yelp was kind of a new thing back then. Everybody wanted to put me in the category of appliance repair, but that’s not really the space you want to be in. You could shell out a ton of money and people will come to you to get their drier fixed, not their espresso machine. I stuck it out with really narrow AdWords, and later got help from an SEO expert. He advised me to build up my website to contain more keywords, and Google would find me. It worked. Of course, part of it was being the only game in town.
AH: What’s your approach to training?
SK: That’s my favorite part of the job, training. Once they’re trained, they figure it out themselves. But I love those days when you bring someone new on. If they’re a good fit, they are so much fun.
I’ll tell them to fix something and give them a few instructions. I do throw them into the deep end. My desk is right there by the workbench, though. I’ll start them off with old machines that do not belong to customers, and I get to see how much they are willing to push stuff, like if they break something rather than ask for help. I really do not like hiring people who like to force things. I want someone who is overly sensitive at the start. They need a little bit of fear. And slow is okay. It’s really hard to slow someone down who is functioning fast, but you can speed someone up.
AH: Service vehicle?
SK: Subaru Forester. We go into the hills in SF, and the all-wheel drive is really nice.
AH: What’s it like dealing with your customers?
SK: Office customers come to me when they are frustrated. They’ll say “we have a nice machine, but we’re not getting good service.” And I ask them: Are you paying for good service? And they say that they’re paying for coffee, not service. Maybe they’re getting their coffee as part of a snack package and the delivery guy is looking at the machine. And I respond that’s why they are not getting good service.
I always tell people up front: It’s $152 an hour plus parts, and the first visit is often a diagnostic visit. That way, they’re aware this is going to be fairly expensive, so they’re all in. I hate negotiating after the fact. That’s why I don’t deal with coffee shops.
AH: Sounds nice, tell me more!
SK: Private individuals haggle less. They have less leverage, because we have their machine. They can’t stiff you. With coffee shops, you’ll do the entire job, and then they’ll argue and criticize you because they have a twenty-year-old machine and the portafilter turns too far to the right.
AH: What have you learned about your clients?
SK: There’s two types of people: People who like super-automatics and people who like barista machines, and they never ever cross over. It’s a waste of effort to try and convince a superauto user to convert to a barista driven machine. And the people who like barista machines like to cook.
People are super-attached to their machines, so my job is a little bit like being a veterinarian. If I have to tell someone their machine is too expensive to fix, it’s a mourning process for them. I have to give it to them very gently. I will — gently — inform them that they haven’t taken very good care of their machine, and now it needs a lot of work. There’s a lot of shame about a dirty machine, so I try to be careful. I’m often the first person to tell them about backflushing their machine. I preach backflushing all the time. It’s the gospel around here.
AH: OK, you used to preach the literal gospel, and now backflushing is the gospel you preach. Just letting you know that’s going into the article.
SK: Fine with me.