We bought this for a wedding coming up in July. We had 25 friends over for a test run and it kept up very well. The machine is very adjustable, ice cream hardness, it tells you how much percentage is ready to serve. 0-100. The digital read out is very helpful.We tried powder mix for the first run. The powder mix works just fine, it recommended that you pre-mix the powder and water a couple hours before and refrigerate it. The refrigeration helps get the liquid cold before putting it into the machine. We are going to try the liquid mix from Gordon foods before we have the wedding on another test run. We think the liquid mix will have better flavor.The machine counts how many times the handle is pulled for Ice Cream. On our first test run we had over 75 pulls of the handle, (not serving), but how many times the machine was activated to dispense ice cream. The manual says 2/3 of a cup is a serving, I believe all our servings were more than 2/3 of a cup.We were very pleased with the machine, and how well it kept up with our crowd.