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[James Hoffmann] The Best Espresso Grinder Under £500
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The Oromo people would customarily plant a coffee tree on the graves of powerful sorcerers. They believed that the first coffee bush sprang up from the tears that the god of heaven shed over the corpse of a dead sorcerer.
From purely engineering, manufacturing side, maybe, but you often have pay more than just the manufacturing cost. The companies have to pay for a good marketing team, customer service team, and after sales maintenance team for example. They might need the capital for certifications entering a new market too, for example. All of these cost money.
Grinder companies are still innovating too IMO. Burr design is an ongoing r&d in a lot of companies. Ionizer is another quite recent addition to combat retention.
Thousands in monthly production sold at close to cost might not be enough when considering ongoing expenses like salaries, r&d, etc.
You can do R&D, but you can make absolutely terrific grinders without it. Most of the "innovation" happening in this space seems to be more novelty than actual noticable performance/quality gains for the end user.