Wake up and smell the coffee

Kim Vibe-Petersen and sons, Frederik and Sebastian, sample the fruits of their coffee empire.

“I have to be a little bit bored before I start producing new ideas,” says Kim Vibe-Petersen, the Danish owner of 54m Parsifal III who heads up the Scanomat coffee machine empire. “Connecting the wires inside the brain happens when you’re not too busy with other things,” he continues. “You wake up and think, ‘Where the hell did that come from?’”

On the day of my visit to the purpose-built Scanomat facility just outside Copenhagen, Kim Vibe-Petersen and his two young sons, Frederik and Sebastian, were in an excited mood. News of their new TopBrewer coffee machine was spreading like wildfire across social media websites such as YouTube and Mashable. They had just returned from the Host trade fair in Milan (“Where hospitality meets business”), during which agents flocked to secure dealerships for the new product. “The TopBrewer has made us the rock stars of the coffee-making business,” beams Vibe-Petersen over a typically Scandinavian lunch of pickled salmon. “People can’t believe the machine can make a five-layer latte automatically.”

Scanomat was founded in the early Sixties when Vibe-Petersen worked with his father out of their garage importing and servicing beverage vending machines. It was not long before his restless yet innovative nature led him to start inventing the machines himself and Scanomat was the first company in the world to develop a fully automatic cappuccino machine. Today, 27 million cups of coffee from a Scanomat machine are drunk every day around the world.

“Every morning while I’m in the shower, our machines brew about a million cups in Europe alone, which is why I love to shower,” quips Vibe- Petersen in an interview for Stream, the Perini Navi house magazine.

“We went from being an importer and service company to developing, building and exporting the machines ourselves,” he recounts. “We own the patents and manufacturing rights, but we also sell the coffee beans under the Amokka brand and spare parts, as well as offering servicing and pay-as-you-go financing where the machines are leased on a royalty calculated per cup or per kilo. It means we can contain costs and control the commercial chain from concept to completion.”

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“Every morning while I’m in the shower, our machines brew about a million cups in Europe alone, which is why I love to shower!”—Kim Vibe-Petersen

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Coffee is big business and a major commodity with the top six consumer nations – Finland, Norway, Iceland, Denmark, the Netherland and Sweden – all in northern Europe (surprisingly. Italians consume only an average of 5.9 kilos of coffee per head each year, compared with a whopping 12 kilos for the Finns). To date, Scanomat has specialised in automated commercial machines using instant or soluble coffee to meet this massive demand.

The manual brewers typical of Italian espresso bars might conform to popular perceptions, but Vibe- Petersen points out that a well-known high street coffee chain also uses an automated process, although to the unsuspecting customer it appears the coffee is being made in the traditional manner with hand-operated
tamping – the process of compressing the ground coffee – and steaming to produce the foam. The last few years, however, have seen increasing demand for coffee brewed from freshly ground beans also in the home and the TopBrewer was developed to tackle this market head on.

The TopBrewer can produce a freshly brewed cup of coffee in less than
one minute.


“The old ‘hard disc’ sometimes works better while you’re sleeping and the idea came to me very early one morning in a flash,” recalls Vibe-Petersen. “I scribbled the concept down on a tissue using my wife’s eyeliner, went back to sleep and got to work on it as soon as I arrived in the office.”

His idea was simple in essence, but complex to achieve in practice: Why have a big, bulky machine when you can literally have freshly ground coffee on tap? He wanted to design and manufacture an elegant, compact, self-cleaning, fully automatic machine that could produce the perfect cup of coffee every time. It also had to be able to serve up hot chocolate, tea, fruit juice, warm or chilled milk and natural or carbonated water. In the event, the TopBrewer even provides steam that can be used for blanching vegetables. Amazingly, although the R&D took a year to perfect, Vibe-Petersen’s team of engineers had a working prototype up and running in just two days.

I first saw the machine in action aboard Parsifal III during the 2011 Perini Navi Cup. Installed in time for Vibe-Petersen’s birthday last year, the only visible part of the appliance is a curved, height-adjustable stainless steel spigot, much like the sort you find in a home kitchen. But that is where the similarity ends. The innovative part is attached at the working end of the tap: A patented milk foamer containing 22 components that is the smallest of its kind. As cold water heats up on demand, chilled milk is pumped to the foamer and steamed to create a textured foam for a cappuccino or latte. Frederik explains that chilled milk heated just prior to delivery is best because it contains more oxygen and produces a better froth.

The same is true of the water, which makes for a more flavoursome cup of coffee or tea. After each serving, cold water is automatically flushed through the system to clean the pipes. The TopBrewer comes with a stylish touch screen built into the integrated tabletop, but Frederik and Sebastian are also perfecting iPhone and iPad connectivity for the machine. The Beta-tested app means you can pre-programme your favourite coffee drink with full control of the appliance, while status messages display when the appliance is woken up from standby until it is ready to brew. Frederik’s own iPhone and iPad chime throughout the night with more than 100 emails a day from potential distributors.

Much of Vibe-Petersen’s business acumen and his penchant for technology are reflected in his approach to yachting. Parsifal III is one of the most successful super sailing yachts on the charter market and is managed by the family in conjunction with Camper & Nicholson. Just prior to the financial crisis, the yacht was turning over US$5.5 million in annual charter revenue. Nowadays, the family has become adept at stepping in at short notice to make maximum use of their yacht between charters – a process Vibe-Petersen describes as “the equivalent of synchronized swimming”. So when Parsifal III is not busy fulfilling her reputation as one of the best party boats on the circuit, she is also working as a serious business proposition for her owner. But there is another aspect of Vibe-Petersen’s working life that pervades his love of sailing.

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Much of Vibe-Petersen’s business acumen and his penchant for technology are reflected in his approach to yachting.

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Scanomat has pioneered a zero-wattage standby system that completely shuts down all power consumption. This new heating technology means the TopBrewer can go from standby to ready in just 45 seconds and still produce a freshly brewed cup of coffee in less than a minute. In an eco-conscious nation where offshore wind farms provide more than 20 per cent of its energy needs, like most of his countrymen, Vibe-Petersen is loath to waste it (his wife Nina, for example, was the first person in Demark to take delivery of an electric Tesla car). This drive to harness new technology to produce more efficient coffee machines has, in turn, led directly to his latest sailing yacht concept.

Ever since the launch of the Perini Navi’s Maltese Falcon in 2006, Vibe- Petersen has been fascinated by the opportunities for easy, energy efficient sailing the DynaRig can provide and has spoken at length with Tom Perkins on the subject (he is also quick to point out that a fellow Dane once owned the DynaRig patents, but never developed the technology). Maltese falcon was designed around an existing 88-metre hull with standard diesel engines and generators, but Vibe-Petersen has been developing a 70-metre concept that employs the DynaRig combined with a diesel electric or fully electric propulsion package and azimuthing pods.

“We actually sail very little with Parsifal III, which is frustrating,” he admits. “The problem is that the preparation time is too long and the wind conditions have to be just right. Maltese falcon, on the other hand, sails a lot. But it still takes around seven minutes to deploy all the square sails. With more compact and efficient drivers, I want to reduce that time to around a minute and a half.”

This would make short transfers under sail to pick guests ashore, for example, more feasible. But Vibe-Petersen is also looking into eco-friendly, auxiliary energy from mast-top wind vanes, photovoltaic sail fabrics and electric pods with battery banks that recharge while under sail.

“The problem is that all this requires a lot of expensive R&D,” he points out. “Tom Perkins was willing to foot the bill for Maltese falcon, but I want the subcontractors and the shipyards to invest in these developing technologies, as they’re the ones who will benefit in the long term. After all, I make coffee machines – I’m not in the boatbuilding business.”
 
Some suppliers are showing interest and Vibe-Petersen revealed he had just received a 120-page report from ABB investigating options for electric pods, but until more investors come on board, his dream of a Falcon-rigged Parsifal IV is likely to remain just that – a pipe dream. In the meantime, his magpie brain continues to gather shiny new ideas that can benefit his core business.

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