The ancient coffee grinder at Joe's Diner finally gave up the ghost last Tuesday

I work the breakfast shift at Joe's Diner on Main Street, and that old Bunn grinder we've had since the 80s just seized up mid-grind during the 7am rush. The motor started smoking and smelled like burnt toast mixed with electrical fire. I had to hand-grind 12 pounds of beans with a backup manual grinder I found in the storage closet while the line of customers stared at me like I was a caveman. Has anyone else had to MacGyver their way through a broken machine at work?

3 comments

3 Comments

uma_martinez13d ago

honestly i used to think the old machines were just nostalgia bait and that any modern grinder would blow them out of the water. but watching that bunn seize up made me realize those things are built like tanks for a reason. i work at a hardware store and we had a guy bring in a modern burr grinder last week that died after six months. your hand grinding story is rough but kinda proves the point that sometimes the old tech is worth keeping around until it literally smokes.

val9496d ago

Saw a video the other day where a guy took apart a 1980s Bunn and a brand name modern grinder side by side... the old one had actual copper windings and a metal housing while the new one was plastic with aluminum wire. The circuit boards in new stuff are just waiting to die. My cousin repairs small appliances and says he sees more dead modern grinders in a month than old Bunns in a year. Something about the way they used to overbuild things back then... they just don't make them like that anymore.

sean78213d ago

1300 bucks on a ceramic burr set last summer. @uma_martinez the real kicker is the old machines use simpler motors. Less electronics to fry. That Bunn has a capacitor start and a thermal cutoff. Dead simple. Modern stuff has circuit boards that go bad from static. My uncle's 1970s Hobart still runs. New stuff can't even last a warranty period.