- Once the pinnacle of coffee chic, Nespresso has gone mainstream
- Among the affluent, low-key rituals have replaced flashy logos as the new luxury signal – but conspicuous consumption is back
- 63% of millennials purchased luxury goods in 2024, of which 54% use them to display their wealth and accomplishments
FOR a time, capsule coffee was the height of domestic sophistication. Nespresso’s sleek machines, marketed with George Clooney’s tailored designer suits, promised continental elegance at the push of a button.
The brand took coffee and convenience, and “engineered a luxury lifestyle in a cup.”
Illy pioneered single-serve espresso with its E.S.E. pods in 1974, but it was Nespresso’s 1986 launch that transformed the market, offering freshness and consistency. Initially aimed at restaurants and offices, the early machines were utilitarian, designed as tidy alternatives to traditional espresso preparation.
The real breakthrough came in the 1990s, when Nespresso repositioned itself for affluent European households. Design became central: sleek finishes, curved levers, and an artisanal aesthetic turned the machines into luxury items. George Clooney’s campaigns embodied the aspirational lifestyle the brand sold.
This design-led strategy set Nespresso apart from rivals like Keurig, which dominates in America with machines that favour function over form – boxy, colourful, and built for ease rather than elegance.
But ubiquity erodes exclusivity. What was aspirational in the 2000s is now considered ordinary.
“Nespresso may have been seen as a status symbol at first because espresso was so strongly associated with cafés, making home espresso – outside of instant coffee or perhaps a pre-ground French press or moka pot – feel unnecessary or even superfluous,” says Luke Adams, editor-in-chief at Standart.
“At the time, options for home espresso making or other sophisticated coffee brewing were not readily available – even to sophisticates. Now, with a wide range of alternatives available and a higher tier of luxury coffee status symbols emerging, Nespresso has naturally slipped down the list. Its broader adoption and higher production volumes have also brought prices down, making it far more accessible.”
What once signalled affluence has become mainstream. For those still chasing coffee as a marker of taste and wealth, the signal has shifted.
From capsules to prosumers
The latest prize in “luxury coffee” is not convenience but conspicuous commitment.
Premium espresso machines designed for cafés but shrunk to fit home kitchens – brands like La Marzocco, Slayer, or Rocket – retail for $3,000 to $10,000.
Over the last 4 years, at-home coffee consumption has held steady, and home specialty coffee preparation is on the rise. Australian appliance giant Breville Group, known as Sage in Europe, has recently reported a record performance, achieving $1.53 billion in revenues last year, marking a 3.5% growth.
Such machines make a statement, whether or not they make good coffee. Pulling a perfect espresso on professional equipment requires training, precision, and practice – La Marzocco knows this and has a dedicated learning space for best espresso practices. By contrast, a skilled amateur can brew a superb filter coffee with a $30 V60 and a burr grinder.
Yet the kitchen-sized La Marzocco has become less a tool than a home monument. The “La Marzocco Home” Instagram account, created for “the barista at home,” now has almost as many followers as its original B2B brand account
Increasingly, coffee consumption is staying at home and the wealthier tier with disposable income is investing in fancy coffee machine statement pieces for their kitchens.
Here Luke is sceptical that status is the primary motivation: “Coffee-brewing at home has now become a hobby, just as with sourdough-bread-making or pickling. People are willing to spend more on their hobbies than in the past. I’m not sure an expensive espresso machine carries the same weight as a status symbol as Nespresso did, perhaps because it is so specialised so as not to be aspirational.”
“Nespresso succeeded because it was convenient and appealed to a broad demographic. Prosumer machines are the opposite. You have to install them, wait half an hour for them to heat, dial in multiple shots to get it right, and then clean and maintain them. Unless you’re genuinely passionate about espresso as a hobby and taste experience, that’s a lot to take on.”
Nevertheless, for many buyers, the signal matters as much as the taste. Coffee bars – dedicated counters stocked with gleaming chrome machines, grinders, and shelves of Standart or Drift magazines – are now among the most requested features in U.S. kitchen remodels, according to the 2025 National Kitchen + Bath Association.
One director of retail at a US roastery told Better Homes & Gardens that today’s coffee lovers are “more inquisitive than ever.” Many are investing in home-brewing equipment and gadgets, and increasingly taking part in workshops, tastings, and tours – something she sees firsthand at her own roastery.
Performance, not just consumption
This evolution mirrors a broader cultural shift in luxury. Once, luxury meant scarcity; now it is often about performance, ritual, and display.
One example is the rise of the “performative male,” who invests in hobbies requiring gear, technique, and ritual – cycling, vinyl, pour-over coffee – as a way of building identity and romantic leverage. It’s less about the hobbies or products themselves, and more about the performance of them.
Similarly, Instagram feeds are saturated with coffee accessories and set-ups: scales, refractometers, filter cones, neatly stacked journals, chrome surfaces, designer coffee tables, and an Eames lounge chair – a highly sought-after, luxury design icon, status symbol for those who “made it.” The beverage itself is almost secondary.
Luke cautions against overstating the novelty: “Luxury has been broadly conspicuous for millennia, across countries and cultures. I might sooner attribute the rise in home espresso usage to a rise in gear fetishism and the cult of optimisation – think hiking gear designed for gruelling alpine conditions worn for a weekend stroll, or $10,000 bicycles fit for the Tour de France rolling through city streets at 15 miles per hour.”
“But that kind of consumption is still utilitarian – it’s about doing something a little better than you might otherwise. In that sense, home espresso machines may fall closer to ‘quiet luxury,’ especially since they’re confined to the home rather than paraded in public.”
However, conspicuous consumption – which we see in flashy cars and designer handbags – has a history of existing in homes as well. MTV Cribs, an American documentary television show that featured tours of the private homes of celebrities, was the pinnacle of performative luxury in the home. A New York Times article highlights that “the decade it belonged to was flush with wealth worship, class striving and conspicuous consumption.” It originally aired from 2000 to 2010. Architectural Digest is another good example, with Lenny Kravitz bragging about having Bang & Olufsen speakers installed throughout his “regal Paris home.”
Interestingly, MTV revived its “Cribs” show for new full length episodes in 2021 – hinting that conspicuous consumption is back. One survey shows that 63% of millennials purchased luxury goods in 2024, 54% are keen to display their wealth and accomplishments through luxury purchases, and 70% are concerned about projecting the right image. The status and prestige motivation was about 40% higher for millennials than more mature consumers surveyed.
Brand strategy consultant Eugene Healy made a TikTok video called “Cultural shift: the return of conspicuous consumption” in which he explains the link between economic collapse and performative luxury. “The irony is that with this widespread sentiment of impending disaster in the air, we’re responding with an almost defiant excess and lavishness. People wanna perform successful as a signal to others that, ‘hey, I’m not going down with the ship,” he says. “The cultural imperative has gone back to pretending to be rich and celebrating success…if you’re rich, you’ve already won. So why even hide it?”
The symbolism is powerful. A $7,000 espresso machine is more readily photographed than a balanced water profile. And the “in-house café” movement – where homes are reimagined as sanctuaries with curated zones for wellness, ritual, and self-expression – gives coffee a prominent stage. Coffee, once about what was in the cup, is now also about what sits on the counter.
The paradox of luxury coffee
By definition, “luxury coffee” cannot be mass-market: as soon as a trend becomes accessible, its cachet fades. That is why Nespresso, despite premium prices, lost its allure once machines appeared in office kitchens. Prosumer machines remain desirable precisely because they are niche, impractical, and expensive.
But even within specialty circles, the fetishisation of equipment often exceeds its utility. Many coffee connoisseurs admit that the best cups often come from modest setups. What matters more is bean quality, grind consistency, and water chemistry.
The paradox, then, is that “luxury coffee” has become less about taste than about ritual, gear, and image. For some, it is a genuine hobby; for others, a form of cultural signalling. For many, it remains impractical.
Coffee Intelligence
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