La Marzocco‘s major annual event, Out of The Box, took place in Milan, Italy on Saturday, October 18th. And what a truly epic time it was: an all day celebration of coffee culture and technology, with talks, activations, special tastings, brand new gear debuts and much, much more. You had better believe that Sprudge was there in full effect, checking out the coolest moments across the day.
Taking place at Super Studio Più in Milan’s arts and culture nexus neighborhood of Tortona—where much of the annual Milan Design Week is hosted, and home to major institutions like Mudec and Armani Silos—the theme of this edition of Out of the Box was “Roots & Wings.” But another message appeared frequently throughout the expansive, multi-room Super Studio space: “May All Who Come As Guests Leave As Friends.”
Tech is king, this we know, and the 2025 edition of Out of the Box featured the launch of La Marzocco’s new Jay Grinder, plus two new systems of the Modbar—pour-over and tea. The Jay Grinder drew considerable attention throughout the day, but I was also excited to see gear like the La Marzocco x Aimé Leon Dore collaboration machine, the single group Leva manual espresso machine, and the single group Strada X.
This being a La Marzocco event, there was an absolutely incredible amount of delicious coffee around the floor. A full on True Artisan Cafe experience dominated the center of the Super Studio space, and there was an outrageous bonanza of coffee in every nook and cranny of the event. Some favorite coffees I tried at OOTB 2025 include roasts from Five Elephant (Berlin), Parcel (Normandy), Climpson & Sons (London), Nomad Coffee (Barcelona), Terraform (Shanghai), and Onyx Coffee (Bentonville, as served by Morgan Eckroth), to name just a few.
The day was packed with speakers and exhibitions, including a full screening of The Rise of Espresso, and interactive Q&As with the crowd. My favorite talk featured Fatima Diouf, Noon NutRada Kunavivattananon, and Chris Salierno (with host Amr Raslan) talking about La Marzocco’s global-and-local approach to both building and supporting coffee culture, which featured several memorable moments. Diouf, in particular, is a natural on stage, and it was fun watching this talk paired with her social media work throughout the day.
My very favorite experience on the day was led by the team at La Marzocco France, and featured a back to back set of espresso pairing experiences featuring chocolate, cheese, and Champagne. Coffee and chocolate makes perfect sense—who doesn’t love a mocha?—and chocolate and Champagne as a pairing is something we explored in-depth in our book But First, Coffee. But coffee and cheese? That’s totally far out… but it works! Every one of these experiences was delicious and interesting, so a huge merci to La Marzocco France for making this happen, it was a major highlight at OOTB.
Of course there’s more to tell—and an epic after party to close things out—but my actual favorite part of this year’s Out Of The Box experience was all the conversations throughout the day. Some of the folks I chatted with were old friends from the coffee industry, but I also met a lot of new people, and on a personal note it was pretty incredible to have so many Sprudge readers gathered together in one room. This was a highly memorable and interesting day; I can’t imagine a better way to spend a special Saturday in Milan, drinking delicious coffee and hanging out with interesting coffee people from around the world.
Jordan Michelman (@suitcasewine) is a co-founder and editor at Sprudge Media Network.
Sprudge Media is proudly partnered with La Marzocco.
