The Great Automation Debate, with WatchHouse’s Roland Horne and LAP Coffee’s Tonalli Arreola

WatchHouse is a boutique specialty coffee group built on craft and human hospitality. LAP Coffee is reshaping specialty coffee with automation at its core. Two successful coffee businesses, two very different visions. Is the coffee industry big enough for the both of them?

For Roland Horne, Founder & CEO of WatchHouse, human hospitality experiences can never be fully replicated by automation, nor should that ever be the goal. For WatchHouse, automation is an enabler of its human-centric ethos. But does performing repetitive manual tasks really make a barista a craftsperson? For Horne, delivering a truly artisanal coffee experience is far more complex.

Tonalli Arreola is another details-obsessed coffee entrepreneur. He co-founded LAP Coffee with a mission to liberate specialty coffee from the constraints of high operational costs. The solution? Automate every stage of the café process for maximum operational performance – and some of the lowest-priced specialty coffee in Europe. But should specialty coffee experiences be about more than just the liquid in the cup? Arreola knows that removing humans from hospitality is risky business.