Tag Archives: Keurig

Are K-Cups Old Hat Now?

Day 161: The Chai Latte K-Cup.Quarterly earnings for Keurig Green Mountain are “disastrously bad,” according to this week’s reports, and with consumer complaints about the price of a Keurig 2.0 and its rejection of off-brand coffee pods, analysts are wondering if the single-serve coffee craze is over.

If you haven’t heard, the latest Keurig coffee machine, released last summer, was designed with a scanner in order to detect whether you were using Keurig-brand coffee pods or off-brand pods. If you were trying to save money by using cheaper, off-brand pods, the machine would say, “Oops! This pod was made in North Korea and will probably kill you, or worse, insult your palate. Throw it out, fool! Use only Keurig Brand coffee pods with coffee as fresh as if Moses, standing on Mt. Sinai, ground it himself.” Not only did the new machine of coffee magic reject off-brand pods, it also rejected K-cups that didn’t have the special Incan runes on the label.

Coffee drinkers found this design feature unhelpful and began to complain. Some joined a resistant movement to take back their freedom of brewing.

But these may not be the only reasons for the company’s earnings report slump. In a partnership with Coca-Cola, Keurig will soon release a single serve soda-pop machine that will cost way more than even a single can from an amusement park vending machine (if that’s possible). I’ve heard New York City has already taken steps to ban it. In a world that is decreasingly buying cokes (that’s what we call them in the South), who will want a custom coke machine in their man cave when they can have a fridge-full of craft beer for less.

Or water, which is what I’d ask for.