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Here Comes the Keurig of Everything
Tekla Perry writes: Keurig made a huge business out of single-serving coffee machines. Now, as more complex machinery shrinks in size and cost, many companies are trying to duplicate that success for other types of food and drink. Startups are introducing the Keurig of cocktails, the Keurig of Jell-O shots, and the Keurig of dinner (it makes stir fries, stews, and risottos). The question is: does having a single- or limited-purpose device make really make sense for consumables that aren't coffee? Counter space is not infinite, and most people want more variety out of their lunches, dinners, and nightcaps than they do for their morning pick-me-up. (Also, let's retire this metaphor before we get a Keurig for cats.)
There's plenty of room for competition when it comes to keurig-type machines and cats that would allow several companies to produce their own versions. Because everyone knows there's more than one way to skin a cat.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
A kitchen device that can only be used for one purpose is a waste of space.
>> does having a single- or limited-purpose device make really make sense for consumables that aren't coffee?
If you can find enough suckers to buy them and yield big profits, then yes. (See the original Keurig, for example.)
Just channel surf some night when you have insomnia. The infomercials selling specialty cooking hardware are on every channel. Sure, some are the "replace everything in your kitchen with this one device" but others a "why waste time doing it by hand when you can just use our device to do it easily in half the time"
I insert a single serving of food held in a specialized plastic container, press a button, and a minute later I've got a meal. Mine even works with a variety of food brands.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
How did Keurig become the de-facto coffee maker? What about the Tassimo, the Nespresso, or one of the few other coffee makers out there?
Regular coffee pot + 1 coffee bean grinder + 1 lb bag of beans = 1 possibly recyclable / compostable bag plus a hundred + cups of coffee.
Keurig setup + 1 kcup insert = 1 cup of crappy coffee plus an unnecessary environmental impact in the form of an non-reusable cup.
Why in this day and age are we engineering waste INTO products when we should be engineering waste OUT of the product? It doesn't make sense.
Coffeebots SUCK!
If you're not spending at least 40 minutes on your grind and brew ritual, you're just a philistine drinking gunky swill.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Is the George Foreman Grill a fad? I mean everyone and their sister has or had one at some point. It did great and still makes money but how much is it used?
We use ours at least once, sometimes twice a week..Especially now that we got one with removable, dishwasher-safe plates.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
a Keurig of Keurigs?
Need to make dinner? Use your Keurig Keurig to make a dinner Keurig.
After dinner just throw away the dinner consumable and dinner Keurig consumable. Counter space a non-issue!
Or maybe it's easier to just start an Uber for Keurigs service...
Can someone provide a car analogy?
Is the George Foreman Grill a fad? I mean everyone and their sister has or had one at some point. It did great and still makes money but how much is it used?
We use ours at least once, sometimes twice a week..Especially now that we got one with removable, dishwasher-safe plates.
I find they work pretty well for grilling burritos mine gets used several times a week as well.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
Why the @#$@ can't I get a home freestyle machine?
Seriously, I've even thought about getting the commercial one. I have a proper commercial tap for beer and fizzy water now.
..don't panic
Coffee, Tea (Sit back and think of England....), Baby Formula (for babies, obviously), Mixed alcoholic drinks, Soda - see Sodastream
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
With powdered alcohol I can see the cocktail one working, you have different pods for different drinks. The rest seem like a stretch.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
So, if we just add wifi we can have the Internet of Keurigs?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Mmmm, stir fried Jell-O
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I used mine a lot too, though I don't grill a lot of meat these days. They're very useful for quickly cooking meat from both sides.
"There is only one uni-tasker in the kitchen."
A fire extinguisher.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Unless and until we figure out how to prevent these little nuggets of plastic and steel from ending up in landfills and pacific garbage gyres, this needs to stop. These things not only generate an incredibly poor facimile of tea and coffee, but they cant be easily recycled. Vendors have also explored the concept of typing these things to DRM, meaning your coffee becomes a proprietary experience thats determined solely by a manufacturing conglomerate.
Just because we can, doesnt mean we should. Take a step back and -- if youre in the united states-- try brewing coffee with an american made coffee maker from Chemex. the thing is a work of art that lets you brew what you want, how you want. And at the end of the brewing the leftovers are completely biodegradeable.
Good people go to bed earlier.
So i see where this could be used for instant cocktails, especially since we will be selling powdered alcohol in the US this year.
http://www.theverge.com/2015/5...
the other stuff does not appeal to me. bleah. however, set the Keuritty on the floor, let the cats pick what they want to eat by pushing the lever... that's no problem. I could do that machine. as long as it doesn't use those damn DRM containers.
running power to it would be another issue, but hey, I have a coil of 12/2-WG still begging to be opened...
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
This is horrible. Keurig coffee is crap, and it creates a huge amount of disposable waste.
Me, I have a small water boiler to get the water up to 208 degrees F, two grinders - a hand-turned grinder and an electric one for when I'm in a hurry and the noise isn't a problem, and a french press. I keep the coffee beans whole in a brown paper bag. Just grind, pour in a way that doesn't leave grounds floating above the water, and I can take the french press back to my desk and pour into a large mug in five minutes.
It's still simpler than a PBJ and I don't create a huge pile of plastic garbage. Jeez, will someone get the marketing departments some psychotherapy already?
Yes, kitchen counter space is limited. And toolbox space, and desks, and dressers, etc etc. Keurig has a functional niche (places where mess is intolerable or there's no one to clean it up, like medical lobby or a low-use office), but their marketing has convinced a broader market that it's too cool not to have one. It won't last. Already there's blowback about the amount of waste produced by this particular device, and popularity is waning... just like most other uber-popular single-use doohickeys.
In order to survive past initial novelty-driven sales, a single-purpose/non-flexible device had better be utterly awesome at what it does, and seriously durable in both function and regularity of need. That's why the regular pan stays while the egg-magic pan goes to Goodwill (not durable, don't want eggs every day), and virtually every Rolodex has been replaced by a free app on a general-purpose portable computing device (not flexible, need changed). The Keurig makes consistent mid-grade coffee (not awesome), and is moderately durable at best (and DRM is a form of intentional breakage), which means market survival will eventually come down to flexibility. Can JoeBob consumer make ramen with a Keurig? No? Then eventually he'll keep the kettle and throw out the Keurig.
'Jus sayin... as I sip decent coffee out of a mug, made with a 15yo Cuisinart kettle, an $0.80 sbux Via packet, and less waste/cleanup than Keurig. The packet will change, the kettle will stay.
I think not...(*poof*)
I don't have a George Foreman, but I do have a Cuisinart griddle that's like it I suppose. We use it for paninis weekly, and I use my Keurig every morning. But yeah, people buy them that are wasting their money because they like the idea of the thing, but don't have a real need for it.
does having a single- or limited-purpose device make really make sense for consumables?
Fixed that for you. Single use devices never made sense for coffee either.
so...bourgeois
http://www.acetonestudio.com
It's a fad, and will be nothing but a memory in 10 years
Keurig shipped their first brewing machines in 1998; Nespresso, in 1988. Probably not a fad.
I have loads of kitchen space and none of these bullshit devices is welcome.
http://www.acetonestudio.com
My favorite single use kitchen appliance of all time was the Presto Hot-Dogger. Something about the beauty of simplicity combined with being inches away from a mini-electrocution chamber that I can't find in today's boring appliances.
Nespresso came out in 1976, roughly one patent term before Keurig.
Single serving all the things! From flashlights to kittens, all protected with base64 encoded, dual rot13 encrypted DRM goodness!
Interestingly the k-cup patent expired and many other companies began to produce single serve packs for Keurig coffee makers. This led Keurig to redesign and produce a v2.0 coffee maker and packs, with all new patent protection. The CEO just admitted that this 2.0 plan was a total failure and they lost a ton of money.
More over-priced, wasteful products?
That asteroid can't strike soon enough....
Nifty idea's for sure. Maybe it's not a fad. Is the George Foreman Grill a fad? I mean everyone and their sister has or had one at some point. It did great and still makes money but how much is it used?
It's great if you're cooking for just one person on a regular basis. Typical dinner for me is a reasonable size slab of meat on the foreman, steam some veggies in the microwave, throw a frozen biscuit in the toaster oven and I have an easy dinner without having to get the whole kitchen dirty.
#4 Melita size electric drip coffee maker Coffee bean grinder. The rest are either less specialized, hidden, or absent.
All your database are belong to U.S.
Multi-purpose devices make much better use of limited space, that huge, bulky single use devices like a keurig...
Yes, kitchen counter space is limited. And toolbox space, and desks, and dressers, etc etc. Keurig has a functional niche (places where mess is intolerable or there's no one to clean it up, like medical lobby or a low-use office), but their marketing has convinced a broader market that it's too cool not to have one. It won't last. Already there's blowback about the amount of waste produced by this particular device, and popularity is waning... just like most other uber-popular single-use doohickeys.
In order to survive past initial novelty-driven sales, a single-purpose/non-flexible device had better be utterly awesome at what it does, and seriously durable in both function and regularity of need. That's why the regular pan stays while the egg-magic pan goes to Goodwill (not durable, don't want eggs every day), and virtually every Rolodex has been replaced by a free app on a general-purpose portable computing device (not flexible, need changed). The Keurig makes consistent mid-grade coffee (not awesome), and is moderately durable at best (and DRM is a form of intentional breakage), which means market survival will eventually come down to flexibility. Can JoeBob consumer make ramen with a Keurig? No? Then eventually he'll keep the kettle and throw out the Keurig.
'Jus sayin... as I sip decent coffee out of a mug, made with a 15yo Cuisinart kettle, an $0.80 sbux Via packet, and less waste/cleanup than Keurig. The packet will change, the kettle will stay.
You could make ramen with a Keurig. I use one to make oatmeal in the mornings.
Fellow citizens! Do your part, and make waste. Life is easier when you lighten the load.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
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until the marketing-drones started killing it with DRM.
try the snoopy hot dog toaster. hot grease sizzling near toasting elements might give you that feeling back.
my mom bought one of these from shopko this spring, it did the buns great on 1 run, but the dogs had to go twice to be hot enough.
The shear amount of waste involved boggles my mind.
On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
It's called a crock pot.
Of the predominantly single purpose things, the toaster and the rice cooker are definitely worth the space they take in my kitchen. I can always move them to a cupboard when I don't need them. They don;t sit on the counter permanently.
Nullius in verba
Yeah, I put my frozen veggies in a mug and rest the dinner plates on top. 4 mins later and hot plates and veggies.
Keurig for cats already exists as the self-cleaning litter box
I'm not sure how a rice cookers interface can be that complicated. Mine has an on/off button and keep warm. You put in rice and water in the appropriate ratio, press the on button, and then go do whatever the hell you want for the 15 minutes to an hour it takes to finish. The timer it takes depends on how much rice you put in and what type, brown rice taking the longest in my experience.
In my experience cooking rice on the stovetop sucks. It needs constant tending and is easily burned if you get distracted at the wrong time. My wife thought it was a silly thing to purchase at the time until we had used it exactly once. Perfect rice every time you use it, with the bonus that you can safely focus on other tasks while the rice cooks. And even once the rice is done cooking you can keep on doing other things until you can get to the rice because the cooker won't burn the rice.
Professional offices are probably Keurig's biggest customer base now. Many places want to have coffee available for their current or potential clients. This gives them a way to appeal to many tastes, give that air of concern for individual attention, and not waste heat and water keeping an unconsumed pot of coffee warm all day.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Why is your rice cooker the only one on the planet that takes longer to cook rice than the standard method? Most are the same or slightly faster, and unlike the stovetop, impossible to set the heat too high or too low, so the end result is generally more consistent.
Rice cookers are also brilliant at making slow cooked oatmeal (rolled or steel cut), which is the only kind worth eating.
Ideology: A tool used primarily to avoid the bother of thinking.
Holy crap it actually exists.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
I am not going to buy these gizmos now. Next year they are going to add 3D printer to the food machines that will build your dish layer by layer, dot by voxel dot. I will look foolish owning last generation food gizmos.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
sometimes eggs make lizards, turtles or even snakes. it's kind of potluck
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
A few years ago I bought a top-of-the-line Japanese rice cooker. It cooks any type of rice flawlessly, and easily allows me to specify in advance what time I want the rice to be ready. Yes, it takes up counter space, but it's an investment I appreciate every time I use it.
Who uses bullets "on a daily or almost daily basis"?
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
"It's highly expensive for a single serving after all."
Like that stops anyone. Ever heard of Starbucks? As an alternative, Keurig is an absolute bargain.
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
I have a rice cooker and I can use it to cook rice in an hour or I can get some Uncle Bens and do it on my stovetop in about 30 minutes.
You bought the wrong rice cooker. The good ones cost less than $10, and go inside your microwave oven. They cook perfect fluffy rice everytime, in exactly 23 minutes.
Disclaimer: My wife is Chinese, so I know a lot about both rice and rice cookers. She also taught me that in a traditional Chinese family, the man is responsible for cooking the rice, while the woman is responsible for browsing the Internet. Can anyone verify that?
I'll state up front that I agree: Keurig coffee isn't great. The beans were ground months ago, the amount of coffee isn't a lot, and it's pretty easy to do better.
Yet these machines fill a niche. There is a reason why they are popular, and that reason isn't "everyone but you is an idiot".
Several places the Keurig works:
A small office, where a conventional coffee maker would result in throwing away half-full pots of unused coffee. The Keurig contains the mess, so the office won't have coffee grounds everywhere. (If you work at an office where nobody ever makes a mess and leaves it for others to clean up, great! Get a real coffee grinder and something better than a Keurig!)
A small restaurant like a burger shack, where sometimes people order coffee but it's not that common. The Keurig is fast and the coffee will be better than most ways a burger shack could make coffee.
At home, for someone who values convenience more highly than saving money or having tasty coffee. Or, as a way someone who doesn't drink coffee can offer coffee to guests. (The K-cup capsules have a longer shelf life than fresh coffee beans.) Also a way for someone who normally doesn't drink decaf to keep a little bit of decaf around.
I don't own a Keurig and I don't want one. But I don't sneer too much at those who choose to own one.
P.S. If you run a burger shack and you want to serve coffee, look into the AeroPress. Not as convenient as a Keurig but convenient enough, and makes better coffee.
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
What's the most expensive part of a Sodastream, the carbonation?
The flavors (per their estimate of 12 liters per flavor pack) are around 50 cents per liter, which is about the "on sale" price of most 2L bottles of soda. Canned soda is about 80 cents a liter (more or less depending on brand and price).
A friend bought a kit to fool around with and toyed with the idea of an adapter to use standard bottles of CO2.
He ended up really hacking it by abandoning the Sodastream carbonator itself and instead put schraeder valves in the caps of the Sodastream bottles and bought a 20 gallon CO2 tank off Craigslist. I think he's even gotten into converting 2L bottles to use with this.
Is the George Foreman Grill a fad?
My ancient model gets frequent use for bacon-wrapped sausages.
The Chinese don't really know very much about rice. That's why the purpose of other dishes in Chinese cuisine is to help the rice go down.
The Japanese are the real rice connoisseurs. In Japanese cuisine, rice is a thing of worship, probably as an artifact of the Shinto religion where everything has a soul. A Japanese person will tell you that their domestic rice is the best, followed by California rice. But to the Chinese, rice is rice.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
My wife just tossed her Keurig, and she is so much happier. She had forgotten what it was like to wake up to the smell of brewing coffee,and able to get her 2-3 cups instantly instead of waiting for each cup. She does miss some of the flavors, but now is more likely to add a little cocoa to the grounds the night before, or toss in some fresh vanilla with her real cream.
So .. to keep on topic ... from my experience, most things that introduce a labor saving mechanism in the kitchen change the characteristics of the food. I make pizza dough in a stand mixer every week or two. Last week, I couldn't find the dough hook and made it by hand for the first time in months. It was so much better, the kneading that I did made a dough with better texture than the dough hook. Probably because as I knead, I can feel the dough and know when it's done. Now, to be fair, it could be that I just don't do it right with the dough hook. But .. since it produced a pizza dough that was serviceable, I didn't really care. At the time.
The hand grinders I used as a kid did a better job than the using the food processor, we had much more control and it produced far more consistent texture. It is far easier to over beat egg whites using a hand mixer than doing it by hand.
I appreciate the labor saving devices, and have a microwave, food processor, stand mixer, electric knife, and ice cream maker to name a few. I use them often. Love the ice cream maker, my wife won't even eat store bought ice cream anymore. But I kinda miss the hand cranked one, I just can't seem to get the same consistency that machine did.
For something special, I almost always drop back to doing it without them. I find there is a better connection to food for me when hand mixing, hand chopping, and hand shaping that I don't get letting a machine do it and just watching.
Several years ago, I spent time in India. While there, I got over the Western taboo of eating with my hands. I now find myself being watched at restaurants as I tend to still eat some of my meal with my hand, it somehow seems to make the experience more satisfying.
In our current mobile-phone addled society, I suppose the quality of the food isn't as important as it used to be. I admit that my wife and I tend to eat dinner with the TV on because the kitchen table usually has some project on it. We didn't use to when we first got married, I always made it a habit of turning that damn thing off because she is such a great cook.
Now, I'm not a food snob. Even though I appreciate good food, my wife and I also can enjoy fish sticks and Kraft macaroni and cheese for dinner. I've been known to hanker for B&M baked beans and hot dogs and chastise my wife to not add anything to them; she is often tempted to 'tart them up' and make them her own.
Appreciating the difference between Gortons fish sticks and a hand grilled mahi mahi is not the same as turning ones nose up at Gortons. All food has flavor, and I have the opinion that if I feel food A is better than food B, it only pertains to me and no one else.
But I'm afraid that the more we move towards Keurig, the less people will know how food can really taste when done by hand. And they won't have the skills to do it when the zombie apocalypse finally hits.
Brain ceviche anyone???
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
What exactly is a Keurig of beer? Most beer I've seen already comes in convenient, single-serving packaging. Where does the need for a machine come in to play here?
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
In a world where many seemed to be moving towards things being less disposable, I was shocked at this 'Keurig' thing to start with. More waste? More 'single use', throw-away, non-biodegradable food-related things? What the actual fuck? Seriously, there needs to be LESS of this sort of thing, not MORE of it, and I'd be happy to see this whole 'K-cup' thing go away for good. Get a decent French press and make your coffee that way, it's 100% reusable and makes excellent coffee to your specification, and they're inexpensive. Want only one cup? They make little French presses that are appropriate for a single serving. Everything else this article is about? Screw that, make your own cocktails and whatever else the way they've always been made, there's NO reason to change it. Stop being lazy, people! We don't need more shit in landfills!
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
I want a food replicator. Pick stuff from a recipie, eat without cooking. Dump in bags of ingredients once a week or so to refill. It doesn't need a huge selection so long as it's consistent and gives ok results. Ability to program (or download) your own recipies would be nice.
Now if only one of them would tell me how to get my rice to come out like every fucking generic chinese takeout restaurant somehow manages to get perfectly right every single time...
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
Italian risotto beats asian-style rice any day
--
The world is divided in two categories:
those with a loaded gun and those who dig. You dig.
I'm not sure how a rice cookers interface can be that complicated. Mine has an on/off button and keep warm.
Mine has about 30 settings for several different types of rice and grains and the recommended ratios of rice to liquid require consulting a manual. Hence it is needlessly complicated.
Why is your rice cooker the only one on the planet that takes longer to cook rice than the standard method?
Rice cookers don't accelerate the process of cooking rice. They make it consistent and (hopefully) easy but they don't speed it up, at least not with any rice cooker I've ever owned or used. If you make rice with most meals I think a rice cooker is a worthwhile investment. I own one (a gift) but I rarely use it because frankly it's more trouble than the benefits justify.
Rice cookers are also brilliant at making slow cooked oatmeal (rolled or steel cut), which is the only kind worth eating.
I get perfectly satisfactory results on a stovetop which requires no special equipment. Rice cookers can do a fine job of course but I certainly wouldn't buy one just to make oatmeal and I don't eat enough rice to justify taking up the counter space. Your mileage may vary of course.
You bought the wrong rice cooker. The good ones cost less than $10, and go inside your microwave oven. They cook perfect fluffy rice everytime, in exactly 23 minutes.
Or I can do it on my stovetop in about the same amount of time and get perfectly satisfactory results every time. Or if I really care I can pull out my electric rice cooker and use that but I find that to rarely be worth the bother.
Frankly anything that takes 23 minutes in a microwave is a misuse of the microwave.
You forgot that he does allow for 1 uni-tasker. The fire extinguisher. Then the anniversary special came around and he created an alternate use for that as well....
I'm as much a fan of Alton Brown as most people here but I think the "unitasker" rule is a silly one if you really insist on it. There is nothing wrong with a labor saving and/or performance enhancing unitasker (also called a specialty tool) if you use it regularly. Some tools are single purpose but they do that purpose REALLY well. If it is something you will use with some regularity and the tool actually makes the job meaningfully easier there is nothing wrong with specialty tools.
The problem is with special purpose tools that don't actually make a better product or save time. Those are a waste of money and kitchen space.
"There is only one uni-tasker in the kitchen."
No tool is truly a uni-tasker unless you lack imagination. That said I disagree with Alton Brown on this point. There is NOTHING wrong with a specialty tool, provided that it either saves significant time or does a better job and if you will actually use it with some regularity.
Rice cookers are also brilliant at making slow cooked oatmeal (rolled or steel cut), which is the only kind worth eating.
You left out congee.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Disclaimer: My wife is Chinese, so I know a lot about both rice and rice cookers. She also taught me that in a traditional Chinese family, the man is responsible for cooking the rice, while the woman is responsible for browsing the Internet. Can anyone verify that?
Mine says the same thing. Coincidence... or conspiracy?
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
That does seem excessive. Mine uses half a cup more water than rice, unless it's brown rice which needs half a cup extra or something. The thing uses a thermostat I believe to determine when the rice is done so no timers are needed. It basically boils the water and as soon as it detects the temperature climbing past the boiling point, signifying the water has all boiled off, it reduces the temp to the keep warm setting. I wonder if there are types of rice for which this wouldn't be sufficient, not that it matters in the USA the stores typically only have a couple varieties for sale.