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MI LA N & F L ORE N CE , I TALY WE ONLY HAD A COUPLE OF HOURS before dinner, so we had to hustle if we wanted to spend any time at the mercato della pelle—Florence's famous outdoor leather market. It was midafternoon in Tuscany, autumn, and the light was like liquid, gushing gold over everything; screaming taxis and whispering teenagers, mothers with strollers arguing noisily with wild hand gestures, Italian style. We ducked around the omnipresent young lovers posing and trading phones to photograph each other, to remember this day, this city, always. You don't need a photo for that though. Not in Florence. I'd reunited with one of my dearest coffee friends, Lizz Hudson— previously of Stumptown Coffee and now independently consulting on café design—at the La Marzocco Out of the Box (OOTB) event in Milan, October 18 and 19, and we'd been practically attached at the hip ever since. OOTB is like that though: It's intimate and friendly, it invites conversations—long ones, in depth. It was built and continues to be known as the anti–trade show, and I really, really love it. The idea for OOTB was born at La Marzocco's Florence headquarters in 2009. Looking ahead to the enormous—and expensive—HOST Milano hospitality show, which is the largest of its kind in the world and takes place every other year in the fall, the company's Chris Salierno and Guido Bernardinelli took a big risk: They withdrew La Marzocco from HOST. Unlike trade shows in the United States, where you might find two, three, or maybe four espresso machine companies exhibiting, everyone exhibits at HOST. Even the most seasoned coffee Opposite page: At top, a few lucky guests at La Marzocco's Out of the Box event took the tiny electric cars for a spin around Milan during the event, which took place in October and drew more than 3,000 a endees from 70 countries. Below, La Marzocco proved it can throw as great a party as ever when this band donned lucha libre masks for a rollicking set. This page: At top, Guido Bernardinelli toasts the winner of the custom La Marzocco bike. Below, thousands of espressos were brewed over the course of the three-day event, which featured coffee from 24 roasters from around the world. professionals will stumble across an espresso machine company they've never heard of somewhere in the gigantic halls. This show is a beast. In looking back, however, La Marzocco's dicey decision to opt out of HOST and present its own event instead was pretty on par with the way they do things there: La Marzocco takes risks, always has. History shows the strategy works. The first Out of the Box was grungy and punk. It was held at a warehouse in the heart of Milan. (HOST, meanwhile, takes place at a convention center so massive it has to exist on the very outskirts of the city.) It was one cavernous room with 20-some espresso machines, artists, baristas from around the world, music, and a lot of grassroots education. Lizz was at that first OOTB. She remembers she had just opened Stumptown's first New York café, located in the lobby of the renowned Ace Hotel. She was exhausted, her to-do list was still a mile long, and it seemed unthinkable to abandon her brand-new staff for a few days in Milan. The change of heart happened around noon a few days after the café opening, and she was on a plane by 6 p.m. Chris gets almost teary remembering it. "Lizz used her frequent-flier miles to get here and be with us. That first year, it felt www.baristamagazine.com 45