THE STORY
Helvacıoğlu Kahve was founded in 1926 by Hayri Helvacıoğlu in Ankara, Turkey. The company, which sells many food products in addition to coffee, started producing only coffee towards the end of the 1980s.
Levee is Helvacıoğlu Kahve’s new brand created to set out a new standard in the industry by producing highly innovative and well-designed coffee machines. Pininfarina had the role of translating this outstanding vision into a design language capable of communicating premiumness at first sight and creating an emotional bond with end-users, thus materializing Levee’s ambitions and brand values.
14 insource and over 100 outsource people contributed to Levee Espresso Machine coming alive.
Hayri Helvacıoğlu and his colleagues, Ankara
Hayri Helvacıoğlu and his colleagues, Ankara
Hayri Helvacıoğlu
Hayri Helvacıoğlu and his colleagues, Ankara
The surfaces take inspiration from the fluid lines coming from the automotive world, conferring a unique and refined style. In addition, the combination of warm and cold materials such as wood and metal, poses this new coffee machine halfway between the past and future, distinguishing itself from any other existing product in the same category.
Thanks to an intense co-creation with expert baristas and the evaluation of several mock-ups with different configurations, Pininfarina was able to create the best HMI for professional use.
The result was a perfectly balanced mix of physical controls (knobs) and digital buttons (enhanced by haptic feedback) that guarantees incredible control over the functionalities without scarifying the beauty and cleanness of the design.
This particular configuration could satisfy the needs of standard baristas (by using the presetting and the top bottoms for simple and fast results) and also of the most demanding baristas (by letting them use the manual control like the front lever for adjusting the pre-brewing time). The top digital display is also designed around the specific needs of professional users and guarantees a precise adjustment of the settings in the most efficient and fast way.
The passion of Helvacıoğlu, the expertise of professional baristas, and the deep study provided by Pininfarina allowed for reaching an unprecedented and unique design of the coffee machine that each cup reproduces the true pleasure of a high-quality espresso.