Marco Beverage Systems Brand Guidelines: The Dublin Boiler Maker That Went Undercounter

Two engineers and an electronic control.

Marco Beverage Systems began in Dublin. The company’s own timeline gives its founding year as 1980 and says it “created the first hot water system in Ireland”; the trade magazine Vending Market Watch, in a February 2022 interview, also gave 1980 as the year Marco was established in Dublin.

The fullest account of its origins appeared in June 2022 in a company profile published by FCSI, the Foodservice Consultants Society International. It says that in the early 1980s the engineer Martin Coughlan and his son were working for what it called Ireland’s largest catering engineering company when they had the idea that became Marco: a new way to control pressure boilers, using an electronic system that held a precise temperature in a compact unit.

The executive chairman, Drewry Pearson, told FCSI that the technology found immediate interest in Ireland, “where we drink loads of tea,” at a time when pressure boilers were used for many kitchen tasks. Older machines, he said, were controlled by a mechanical arm that went up and down, and tended to stick, scale up and overflow. The system was then exported to the UK, but he said it “took 10 years to really get off the ground,” and that this was when he bought the company.

Under Pearson the business moved from water boilers into coffee brewing, and later into dispense technology for hot, cold and sparkling water, the FCSI profile says. It also notes a shift from pressure boilers to atmospheric boilers as the range developed.

From Dublin to three continents.

Marco’s timeline sets out its spread abroad: the UK market in 1996, with hot water systems and coffee brewers; Europe in 2006; and the United States and Asia in 2009, with offices opening in the US and China in 2015. Vending Market Watch put Marco’s entry to the US market in 2008, so the two accounts differ by a year.

The product names track that growth. The company lists the Jet brewer and the SP9 hot water brewer as 2016 launches, the MIX hot water system in 2017, and FRIIA, a hot, cold and sparkling water system, in 2019. Vending Market Watch reported that FRIIA rolled out in March 2020 and that POUR’D, a cold brew system dispensing coffee concentrate or ready-to-drink cold brew from a tap, followed in mid-2021. The current range also includes the EcoBoiler countertop and undercounter boilers, the Qwikbrew and Bru filter brewers and an automated milk system, MilkPal.

The company’s design story is about where the equipment sits. Managing director Paul Stack told FCSI that Marco was “the first to move undercounter for both coffee and water systems,” leaving only a tap or font on the counter; we report that as the company’s claim. The same profile describes FRIIA as delivering hot, cold and sparkling water from a single tap, and MIX as delivering three temperatures of hot water from one font.

That placement has made designers part of the sales chain. In the Vending Market Watch interview, national sales director Matt Dudley said FRIIA takes up about a four-inch square of countertop, and that most of its sales had come from being specified into larger projects by office designers. Pearson, in the FCSI profile, described the company’s expansion as running from the UK into Europe, then the United States, then Asia-Pacific.

Recognition has come from the coffee trade. Marco’s timeline says MIX won Best New Product from the Specialty Coffee Association in 2017, and Middleby’s acquisition release said POUR’D received the association’s Best New Product award for 2022. The company also lists a Best Managed Companies award in 2021.

Design and documentation.

Commercial coffee machine makers sell mainly to businesses rather than to homes. Their customers are hotel groups, coffee-shop chains, office caterers and restaurants, and their products sit on hotel breakfast buffets, office counters, convenience-store shelves and behind café bars. Some build fully automatic machines that grind, dose, brew and froth milk at the touch of a screen; others build large batch brewers that fill urns and airpots for a busy service.

Much of the trade grew from a practical problem. SWI swissinfo.ch reported in 2024 that Swiss restaurants in the 1970s faced higher wage costs and fewer staff behind the buffet, and the historian Jonathan Morris told the publication that Swiss automatic machines set out to make coffee and milk drinks simpler for staff without barista training. Switzerland remains a centre of that business, with makers in Weggis, Zuchwil and elsewhere.

The machines now present themselves through screens and options as much as through steel. In 2025 TOP HOTEL Projects described one fully automatic model offered with touchscreens of two sizes, modes for staff service, self-service and office use, and interchangeable panels in a customer’s chosen colour. Milk systems, cleaning routines and service networks also feature in how these makers describe what they offer.

Launches tend to happen at trade fairs rather than in shops. HOST Milano, the hospitality fair held in Milan, is one such stage; specialty-coffee events such as World of Coffee are another. This guide sets out what can be checked about each maker — who founded it, who owns it, and what it says about where its machines are made — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

An Irish maker inside an American group.

Marco is no longer independent. On 20 December 2022, Foodservice Equipment Reports reported that The Middleby Corporation, the US-listed foodservice equipment group, was acquiring Marco, describing it as a Dublin-based maker of coffee brewers, cold brew dispensers and hot, cold and sparkling water dispensers that had been manufacturing for more than 40 years. Middleby’s release called the line “highly complementary to our growing beverage portfolio.” Marco’s own timeline records the purchase in 2022.

Where the products are made is documented. Middleby’s release said Marco has facilities in Dublin and in Ningbo, China, and Marco says it runs two manufacturing sites, one in each city, both certified to ISO 9001:2015. It also says it designs and builds equipment for other brands under OEM partnerships.

The company has made its social and environmental record part of its identity. It says it is a certified B Corporation; its timeline dates the certification to 2024, while a company article from March 2025 gives 2023. That article also says Marco made energy efficiency standard in its hot water boilers from 2010. The company’s stated purpose is to “re-imagine beverage excellence everywhere.”

For a design guide, Marco Beverage Systems shows how an engineering company can make placement its signature, putting the machinery out of sight and leaving a single tap on the counter. Compare Bunn, the American maker of commercial filter brewers, and Fetco, another brewer specialist. For this guide we use a deep teal, steam white and a brass accent with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Marco Beverage Systems’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.