Posted on 03/04/2015 10:10:35 AM PST by Responsibility2nd
For one, 'they're kind of expensive,' John Sylvan says
(Newser) If anyone would brew his morning joe using K-Cups, you'd think it would be the inventor of the K-Cup himself. But John Sylvan, whose single-serve pods revolutionized the coffee landscape, sticks with making coffee the old-fashioned way. "I don't have [pods]. They're kind of expensive to use," John Sylvan tells James Hamblin, writing for the Atlantic. "Plus it's not like drip coffee is tough to make." But besides being steeper in cost, the plastic-and-foil pods that made up most of Keurig Green Mountain's $4.7 billion in revenue last year have been called out for being environmentally unfriendly. According to a 2014 article in Mother Jones, Green Mountain made 8.3 billion of the non-biodegradeable, mostly non-recyclable K-Cups in 2013—"enough to wrap around the equator 10.5 times." "I feel bad sometimes that I ever did it," Sylvan admits to Hamblin about his invention.
The Green Mountain K-Cups' lack of, well, green-ness has led to environmental advocate backlash: A 2010 New York Times article said Green Mountain's sales growth, boosted by the K-Cup, ran "counter to its reputation" as an "eco-friendly" company; more recently, a Canadian production company created a "Kill the K-Cup" video that went viral on YouTube. Keurig promised in its 2014 "Sustainability Report" that by the year 2020, "100% of K-Cup packs will be recyclable." But that's five years away—and Green Mountain's competitors are already using reusable, biodegradable pods. The company's chief sustainability officer tells Hamblin, "I gotta be honest with you, we're not happy with where we are, either." Sylvan, who sold his share of the company in 1997 for $50,000, says he has come up with a "much better way" of packaging and transporting the coffee, but that the powers-that-be at Keurig "don't want to listen." (Someday you'll be able to make Coke via something similar to a K-Cup.)
I had the standard Keurig and I could not see spending $25 dollars and up per pound of coffee. We used the reusable coffee filter (see post 3) and made our own cups. My wife and I were not crazy about it and gave it to our daughter when she moved out. Someone gave us a single cup machine and it was the worst. You had to fill it with water for every cup and wait for it to heat up. By the time it was done I could have run to 7-11 and back with a steaming cup of joe. At the cost of the coffee they should give the machines away for free.
10 hours!?!? In my experiences flying 10-12 hour patrols all around the N. Atlantic,coffee that sits in the urn for that long tastes akin to paint remover. Ya gotta be desperate to consume it.
My wife uses the K-cups but I too like fresh ground flavor. I have several Cafe Cups that I fill with my fresh ground. Mmmmm Good. I think Cafe Cup forced Keurig to begin the new line using the encoded cup. After just a couple of years, Keurig has raised the price of their cups from $12+ to $18+ yet the wholesale cost of beans dropped significantly according to the International Coffee Org. Check their website: ico.org.
Trung Nguyen is some good stuff.
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Please don't suspend me for education only
We just bought the 2.0 a few days ago. see post #39.
Last night we discovered the issue you mentioned. I will try to find a way to defeat this restriction.
Maybe they told coffee enema jokes !!!!!
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I have at least 12 coffee makers. 2 are Keurigs. Rant at the waste & cost, it’s hard to beat the relative ease & speed & quality of a Keurig. I prefer better quality and usually opt for it, but it’s certainly harder and slower.
There’s already a work around. You can affix a foil lid to the interior of the device, where the cup meets the lid. The spent foil will fool the sensor. Search YouTube.
I remember my then-employer bringing in K-cups after complaints that the office coffee was not exotic enough.
This caused our receptionist, mother of three, to go into a tizzy. “This company is going broke. I did not get a raise last year, and yet they just took the cost per cup of our coffee from thirteen cents to forty-three cents. What the &$^% ?”
OuTSTANDING!! Thank you very much.
I use K-cups. I only drink 1 cup a day perhaps 2 at most and was tired of using the french press.
Don’t use K-cups 2. They’ve encoded the top of K2 cups so that they won’t use sanctioned cups — which are even higher in price now.
I’ve tried re-usable cups and they generally work, but you have to be careful, pack it loose and close it tight or you get grounds in your coffee. You can put a coffee filter round on top and tuck it inside the edge .. that works. Actually re-using the spent K-cup works just as well. I use the tin foil, and filter cut into a circle method.
Even though it seems comparatively expensive, it does save me quite a bit of money.
>>10 hours!?!? In my experiences flying 10-12 hour patrols all around the N. Atlantic,coffee that sits in the urn for that long tastes akin to paint remover. Ya gotta be desperate to consume it.<<
It is pretty amazing — they are sort of thermos-ie: no heat (which is why the taste stays good).
I will ping my wife (who says that?) and get the maker’s name for you.
Pathetic what FR has devolved into with the hyperactive church-lady moderation deleting posts everywhere. No wonder fund raising drags on forever.
Definitely not the most economical way to drink coffee I’m the only one in my house that drinks coffee and only two cups a day, so it works for me. If everyone drank coffee, I would just make a big pot of Mr. Coffee.
As for disposing of the K-cups, well - I use styrofoam plates, so....
This is not directed at you PJT but my curiosity meter just went off the scale,
OK, how in the heck can someone get posts deleted on a COFFEE thread for goodness sake? And more than one!
I had the same question, Al!
Probably because he sold of his share of the company for a mere $50,000.
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