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The Tip is 'Labeling Tip 1' Know Your Labeling - For products Made in America, the greater the US content the more American jobs required to produce it. So whenever possible choose the product with the highest percentage of U.S.content. US content must be disclosedon Made in USA textiles, automobiles, wool, and fur products. There is no law requiringmost other products to be marked or labeled made in USA, or, have any otherdisclosure about their amount of U.S. content. Those manufacturers and marketers who choose to make claims about the amount of U.S. content must comply with the FTC's Made in USA policy. Note: Imported products must have the country of origin on their label whileproducts partially Made in USA do not. For a product produced in the U.S. to be labeled made in USA, or claimed to beof domestic origin without qualifications or limits on the claim, the product must be all or virtually all made in the U.S. This would mean that all significant parts and processing that go into the product are of U.S. origin. The product should contain no (or negligible) foreign content. Made in the USA products create the greatest number of American jobs for our country. This is because the labor to produce the product, and the raw materials that go into the product, are created with American labor. For most products, there is no law requiring made in America labels, or any other disclosure about the amount of U.S. content. However, for job creation purposes if you have a choice between an imported product and one with no country of origin on the label, choose the product without a country of origin over the imported one. The product without the country origin on its label has some American labor in its content and the imported one most likely does not. Buying Tip Continued - Read more on Made in America Products by Salvatore Espresso Systems When we got there, we even got a tour of Salvatore Cisaria s workshop and found out he makes his fantastic machines entirely by hand. I mean, he makes his own moulds for brass fixtures and chromes them. He cuts the brushed stainless steel himself. I think the only part he doesn t make is the filter baskets. It also turns out that Salvatore used to fix Italian espresso and pasta machines. He soon figured out what worked and what didn t and what the ultimate machine should have; things like a separate pressure system for the coffee and for the milk frothing wand, so that you can make coffee and do the milk at the same time. What a concept!! Also he decided on simple rocker switches instead of those clumsy knobs to turn everything on and off, even the steam for frothing the milk. Who hasn t gone to back off the steam and had milk go everywhere as it takes a few extra seconds to wind the steam off? Well that often happened to me with those crappy other machines. Depending on his work load, Salvatore takes around 6-8 weeks to make a machine to order. On display were all sorts of wacky ones, like a coffee machine that looks like a jukebox or one that was shaped like a classic car that kind of thing. The basic semi-automatic model set us back $1200 at the time, and that was 8 years ago. The same one costs about $1360, now By the looks of their photos, they now all come with a pressure gauge and soft switches. It was so cool and exciting to meet Salvatore and his wife, Wendy, and to see how it all works. About 8 weeks later we were the proud owners of a Famosa one of the most beautiful espresso machines around. His design really is quite Bauhaus, by which I mean form follows function. (One of the main objectives of the Bauhaus movement was to unify art, craft, and technology.) But this machine is da bomb! The ones Salvatore makes for commercial use have the same internal workings as the home machines. They re all well-made and industrial grade. We love it. Everyone loves it. We used to use it every day, but in the past year we ve both cut way back on coffee so I use it probably 3 times a week and anytime anyone wants one of my killer frothy hot chocolates. It s never needed overhauling or anything, but we did have one instance where there was a problem the water wasn t coming through properly from the reservoir to the pump (before it expressed). Fortunately my guy is fairly handy with machines and Salvatore talked him through the problem that turned out to be a damaged filter in the water system. If it had been more complicated than that, we d probably have had to return the machine for repairs and he probably wouldn t have been able to get around to looking at it for several weeks Oh, another time Ash replaced a seal (they posted one to us) and all he had to do was deal with was four screws. Easy. |
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