Commercial Espresso Machines - What to Look For

Espresso is slightly different than coffee. It is a concentrated hot beverage brewed by using hot water under pressure and forcing through finely ground coffee. This creates a high concentrated beverage that is a bit thicker and has higher concentrations of caffeine. The espresso is generally used as a base for other beverages involving coffee.
Commercial espresso machines come in many different shapes and sizes. They come in sizes that will be big enough to provide for a family of 4 or enough to provide for a restaurant of 100. This, obviously, will be the first feature you will be looking at. There is no need to overdo it on it's capabilities of making large amounts of espresso. The basis for looking for this feature is how many groups can the espresso machine do at what time. Some espresso machines come with only 1 station for making espresso at a time while other machines come with 3 or 4 stations for making espresso, which would support a high volume being made at one time.
Many commercial espresso machines are made out of steel, and for good reason. Look for this feature, which will most likely be standard, but if you find one made of some cheaper material that will definitely reflect what's on the inside. The steel machine provides for high quality and easy clean up. It can simply be quickly sprayed down and wiped off. There may be plastic covers and parts and that's alright, but the body and main frame structure should definitely be made out of steel. A commercial espresso machine is not a cheap machine and all details should be looked at very carefully, if you do some good research you will be very very happy with what you get.
Another thing to look for other than how many cups of coffee it can make at a time is the speed in which you want the coffee to be made. Would you want to pay less for a single unit machine that takes a longer time to make the espresso or would you want to pay more for a single unit machine that takes a relatively short amount of time to make espresso, or variations of this with larger units. In the product description it should have some sort of indication of how much time it typically takes to make one cup of espresso.
Be sure to educate yourself with how much maintenance each type of commercial espresso machine will take to keep it up. This will also be reflected in the price. The cheaper ones may need more meticulous cleaning while the higher end machines may have self cleaning features or be design in such a way that cleaning is quick, easy, and effective. If you're just using this to make great and consistent espresso at home you may not want to buy a machine that takes a great amount of time to clean and maintain, unless of course you have a man around the house that likes to take care of these kind of things.