Like all great origin stories, our story begins with two band members in a basement. At the turn of the 21st century, Corey Waldron, a guitarist by night and a barista and roaster by day, started pondering the disconnect between beverage production and beverage consumption. As a barista, he understood the craft of each drink but didn't feel it always translated to the customer on the other side of the large countertop machine.

Corey's initial idea, combined with bass player Aric Forbing's experience as a machine pattern engineer, quickly evolved into a new way of designing an espresso machine, with its inner workings neatly hidden below the counter.

La Marzocco introduced the under-counter concept at the SCAA Expo in 2007 and was an early investor in Modbar. In 2016, La Marzocco took a more active role in supporting Modbar, leading up to March 2017.

Modbar and La Marzocco now closely collaborate in all aspects of the business, from sales and service to marketing and manufacturing.

As Corey and Aric made progress on the initial design with La Marzocco, they started considering a true à la carte setup. There, customers could create their own customized bar flow/space piece by piece, rather than being locked into one setup – I want a few of these taps, a few of these, now let's put it on the bar. Each piece would be supported by independent stereo-sized modules located under the counter.

They made a prototype and presented it to La Marzocco, who were so impressed that the team decided to focus solely on this fully modular concept. Modbar LLC was established on March 1, 2012.

In 2016, La Marzocco played a more active role in supporting Modbar. The product management and development teams started working more closely together, coming up with creative ways to integrate proven La Marzocco components and craftsmanship into the Modbar system to accelerate manufacturing speed and improve reliability.

As a young company, Modbar is still evolving. However, today our design has the same goal as it did in the beginning – to help coffee shops create an open bar that truly interacts with customers.