Paul Pratt started as a barista in 1995, opened his first retail stores in 1997 at 23, began importing La Marzocco into Hong Kong and Macau a year later, and built a roasting facility in 2003. He is best known in the trade for machine maintenance and for training La Marzocco technicians.
He owns around thirty espresso machines, most of them La Marzocco, dating from the 1950s to the present, and rebuilds each one using as much of the original machine as possible — down to refurbishing the factory screws. The 6 to 7 bar figure on this page comes from measuring traditional lever machines in that collection.
The Robot was drawn by Karina Mencke, a designer based in Copenhagen, who has designed every Cafelat product since the company started in 2008.
Cafelat Limited operates from Hong Kong with distribution in Hong Kong, Macau and the mainland. Cafelat International Limited operates from Bedford, England, serving Europe and beyond. The official online store is cafelat.co.uk.