Why did espresso never catch on as a mainstream drink in the US? I live in the US. During a recent trip to France, I was struck by the fact that espresso is the default coffee configuration there (i.e., if you order "coffee" in a restaurant without specifying further, espresso is what you get). And Nespresso-compatible coffee pods are sold in the supermarket for use in Nespresso-compatible machines, whereas in the US Nespresso hasn't licensed their system to any third parties, so it's still a specialty item. Presumably the same situation prevails in Italy, where espresso originally comes from. 

In the US, meanwhile, you can get "espresso drinks," but that usually means espresso diluted in a large quantity of milk and syrup. Espresso per se is an esoteric beverage consumed mostly by a small number of enthusiasts.

Part of what motivates this question is that in some ways espresso seems tailor-made for the American market:


Invented out of a desire for fast service
Involves large, complex machinery
Lends itself to quick consumption


And yet here we are. So the question is: are there specific factors, beyond "different countries do things differently," that kept espresso from catching on in the US?
Coffee spread throughout Europe in the 17th and 18th C and was brought over to the United States by colonialists and immigrants. Coffee was already a fixture here by the time espresso was invented in the early 20th C.


  Coffee arrived in Italy in the 17th century.It was made in the Turkish manner andconsumed in elite coffee houses such as Florian in Venice.Cappuccino was madeby adding the froth from warm milk to the coffee.However it was only in 1905that the first espresso machine entered into production.
  https://www.academia.edu/379110/The_Cappuccino_Conquests._The_Transnational_History_of_Italian_Coffee_2007_


Espresso did not become a staple of Italian or European culture until after WWII. 


  By the late 1950s, most Italians consumed coffee at home, in the traditional moka pot—first built by engineer Alfonso Bialetti in 1933, and now an icon of Italian design worldwide, as Morris explains in his 2008 essay “A History of Espresso in Italy and the World.” But there were exceptions. A young Calvino was a regular customer at Caffè Talmone, a café in Turin where he met with other intellectuals to discuss books and politics. There, he drank Italian espresso with a layer of foam on top, the result of a patent registered by bar owner Achille Gaggia in 1947.
  https://qz.com/992879/the-curious-tale-of-how-italy-became-the-world-capital-of-coffee/


So why did espresso come to dominate European culture after WWII and not the US? Why would any fad or variety necessarily come to dominate the world? Why would a new variety necessarily overcome tradition?  For one thing - espressos require specialty machines that were extremely expensive. Until recently it was not something that would be found in an ordinary kitchen whether in Italy or the United States.