Convenience, obviously. Why own a car when you could ride a bike? Sure, it will take you 10x as long to get anywhere, but you can always just leave earlier.
This comparison makes no sense. Regular coffee makers make far less waste and are just as convenient. Hell, I grid my coffee by hand and brew it one cup at a time with one of those conic filters and it still takes only 6-7 minutes.
For a nontrivial number of people, that's probably about five minutes too many. Are you also factoring in the cleanup of your coffee-making accoutrements? That's a few minutes, too. Some people just want their cuppa, with absolutely minimal fuss.
Your metric for what is or isn't convenient isn't necessarily anybody else's, and other people aren't "wrong" for having different metrics than yours. Optimizing for time spent in the process of making the thing is a perfectly cromulent priority.
Cleanup? A regular coffee machine uses disposable filters. The advantage of the k-cup over this is brewing for a single cup of variable size. However this is easily achievable with pourover or "clever dripper" methods, each of which use the filter and thus have little to no cleanup. There's no justification for the cup system at all.
Take that up with the millions of people buying them. I do my own pour-overs in the morning.
I just find it endlessly fascinating to watch people extrapolate from their personal preferences, in the face of a demonstrably valuable (in the "it has value to someone" sense — because people are buying the things, which, in a capitalist system is definitive of "having value") to "There's no justification ... at all".
> Take that up with the millions of people buying them. I do my own pour-overs in the morning.
They don't even know the alternatives exist. Marketing is king.
You're misinterpreting the point. It's not quibbling over whether the customer values the product, that's self-evident. It's "not justifiable" in the ethical sense in light of environmental impact and the alternatives available. People just don't know.
I highly doubt that is the reason. I bet I would be hard pressed to find someone who owns a Keurig that is not familiar with standard "drip" coffee machines.
People opt for Keurig because it's quick and user friendly. Pop in a pod, hit a button, and then continue your morning routine. The entire user experience takes all of 10 seconds which has tangible value. I agree with your ethics argument, but I still don't believe that people are just buying Keurigs because they are blinded by marketing.
People just don't know there's another way to make coffee than pod machines? I'm sorry, I just don't accept that premise. What am I missing?
People are making a choice — an admittedly consequential one, yes — but they're making it based on their personal priorities, not because marketing has deluded them into thinking there's no other way. They're paying someone else to have done all the work of making their cup of coffee, except loading the pod, pushing the button, and making sure the water tank is full enough — for them, at least.
Hell, even that illustrates the point: in every environment I've ever been with a shared pod coffee machine, I've had to fill the basin, more often than not. People can't even be arsed to make sure there's enough water in the stupid thing for the next person who wants a cuppa. It's laziness.
> People just don't know there's another way to make coffee than pod machines? I'm sorry, I just don't accept that premise. What am I missing?
Other than drip, that's what I'm saying. They aren't aware of convenient alternatives. Stands to reason if they did, they'd buy them.
> they're making it based on their personal priorities, not because marketing has deluded them into thinking there's no other way
I don't think you can divorce marketing impact from consumer choices. Keurig as a priority wouldn't have existed without the advertising effort a priori.
I think the coffee pod idea took off because people use them at work (it's a pretty good setup for offices), liked the convenience, and end up buying a machine for home.
I have an E61 based espresso machine at home with a flat burr grinder and if it either part were to break today, I'd probably replace it with a Nespresso machine.
How is it fashion or wealth signaling if you're doing it at home, alone?
I'm sure it is for some people, but status signaling is baked into our monkey brains at such a deep level, I find it a bit silly to be something we throw shade at people for doing. But even if Joe the status-signaling pod coffee drinker is status signaling, he probably also appreciate the extra five minutes in the morning, or whatever.
Also, I've never tasted an instant coffee that didn't disappoint, usually profoundly. The pods are actual, real-time brewed coffee, with the same level of convenience.
We had a commercial Gaggia bean-to-cup machine, fresh ground, etc., the difference to me is noticeable obvs, but it's not worth the costs. It's only a drink.
>are just as convenient. Hell, I grid my coffee by hand and brew it one cup at a time with one of those conic filters and it still takes only 6-7 minutes.
It takes about two seconds to pop in a k-cup, maybe 20 more every N cups to fill up water. Also allows for different grounds to be used on a per cup basis.
Convenience and speed is the entire reason these things exist.
The single-cup brew is what sold it I think. Coffee machines were already just as fast and familiar, with fast cleanup, but programmatically brew a whole pot. You could achieve the same single cup convenience with a filter using pour-over or clever-dripper.
I drink about 10 cups of coffee per day (enjoy the taste). You are suggesting I spend over an hour, 7 hours per week (a full workday) making my coffee? That's literally insane.
Now, I'd never get one of these machines, because it tastes like ass - I tried it at work. People at the office walk up, pick from 20 different flavors, and make their cup. What is it you suggest to replace that? 20 huge office pots that someone refills from a huge drip machine, so some are out and some get underused and tossed/refilled in a few hours?
Your comparison is what does not make sense. You are taking your use case, which does not apply to 90% of the self-brew cases. Literally the definition of a strawman. I personally think cars are a bad invention, and I don't see the use. I live across the street from work, and once a week take a lyft. Why are all these people driving?? I just can't figure it out.
Now, here's what I do actually do. I have Kona green cherry and Peaberry light roast. I take a cup of green and grind it fine in my conical grinder. I double-filter tap water, boil it, then filter it again the next day once cool. I use that to boil the green for about 10min in a large steel pot. I drink half of that mixed with fairlife fat free milk. Good for 1st drink of the morning. While that's going on, I grind 2 cups of peaberry, and dump it into the pot, adding a lot more boiling water. Boil for 2 minutes, let sit for 10. Now it's mixed light roast peaberry and green, for that lightly charred lawnmowerbag taste. It's naturally quite sweet, but sometimes I'll add a splenda.
I spend more than an hour per day on coffee. The process is relaxing. When I'm at work running from one meeting to the next, I pop in a cup with some weird flavor and go on my way. If I had to do what you do, I wouldn't do it at all. That's the price of your 6-7 minutes - a barrier to entry that's just too damn high.
Actually it is a great example when you think of how much waste and pollution you create by driving a car instead of walking or riding a bike. Great example.
People like to virtue-signal but when they really want something all convictions go out the window.
I have the opposite during warm weather. I have a 12-15 minute bike commute that takes 45 minutes by car and an hour by bus. I'm sure that's not the case if you don't have decent bike infrastructure though.
Yes but that is an issue with your choices, which makes sense we all want convenience, but you could make those choices from a bicycle perspective. I did, atm I get about 10 minutes extra every day because actualy do something with my commute. This is true for every place I've lived in (Europe, NA/SA and Asia), you just have to make the choice.
And I out-walked (well, tied) the Uber driver who cut me off at a crosswalk, to dropping off his fare across the street from my apartment a few blocks further up the hill, the other night. Contextually constrained anecdata like ours simply aren't relevant to the general point here.
For the vast majority of people in the parts of the world where using pod coffee machines is a meaningful thing to talk about, your commute is a driving or transit kind of thing, not walking or biking.
