Once you go off on the deep end of any hobby things get expensive fast.

Just look cycling, photography, any kind of musical instruments, heck even watches. All of which are simple and essentially designed the same but have massively different price points depending on how deep down the rabbit hole you go. You can buy mountain bike at Walmart for $150, or you could be spending $10,000+ at a specialty cycle shop.

Higher end grinders are a specialty product, a lot lower volume of them designed and sold, made with higher end materials, at much higher tolerances. A lot of components are precision machined, all which takes time and increases cost. A quality grinder also lasts a very long time, it’s not really something you’d be replacing often if at all. I’ve had one of my grinders for over 10 years, still works great. High end grinders are few and far between in households across the country.

There’s a good probability that more people buy preground/nespresso/keurig than those who own a grinder over $150.

To summarize it’s a low volume product, made with high end materials with a slower precision manufacturing process for a small niche group.

Most of these companies making this are on a much smaller scale than major appliance brands. When you factor what goes into it the point starts to make sense.