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Here Comes the Keurig of Everything 270

Posted by Soulskill from the for-the-lazy-people-who-only-eat-4-things dept.
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.)
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Here Comes the Keurig of Everything More

Here Comes the Keurig of Everything

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  • Cats? (Score:3)

    by Nidi62 ( 1525137 ) on Friday May 15, 2015 @01:19PM (#49698835)
    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 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...

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by glomph ( 2644 )

        The Kat-Keurig would need some intelligence.

        There already are cat-autofeeders, which dispense a certain amount of kibble/gravel on a schedule.

        My cat learned how to lie on its back, reach into the dispensing channel, and coax more food out of it. A lot more.

        He's one of those spherical cats that almost won't stop eating.....

  • Follow the Good Eats mantra (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 15, 2015 @01:22PM (#49698855)

    A kitchen device that can only be used for one purpose is a waste of space.

    • Re:Follow the Good Eats mantra (Score:4, Insightful)

      by PvtVoid ( 1252388 ) on Friday May 15, 2015 @01:30PM (#49698927)

      A kitchen device that can only be used for one purpose is a waste of space.

      Except for espresso.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by halivar ( 535827 )

      My Keurig can also make hot cider, hot chocolate, or hot water for tea.

      • My Keurig can also make hot cider, hot chocolate, or hot water for tea.

        So can my microwave.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by halivar ( 535827 )

          A Keurig is smaller, cheaper, and doesn't let me nuke shitty food. Seriously, my diet improved significantly when my college microwave broke, and I didn't replace it.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Pascoea ( 968200 )

          My Keurig can also make hot cider, hot chocolate, or hot water for tea.

          So can my microwave.

          Yeah, but can your microwave make a cool "ka-chunk ka-chunk ka-chunk, gurgle gurgle gurgle, whoosh" noise, while consuming countless overpriced non-recyclable non-biodegradable coffee pods, then inexplicably die after a year? Yeah, I didn't think so.

          You just keep your fancy multi-use device, I'll keep my shitty overpriced coffee pot, thank you very much.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Pascoea ( 968200 )
            Oh, dammit, I forgot one:

            Will your microwave only cook shit that comes in an authentic Kitchen Aid brand bowl that has a specific color rim? Because god knows how much I love that "feature" of my piece of shit coffee pot. I'd hate to be free to choose what kind of coffee I drink in the morning.

            (I say all of this as if I don't own a piece of shit Keruig that I use every day and will most likely replace with a new one when this one dies a year from now .)

      • So it's a machine that heats up water and then puts flavor in it. Brilliant. My stove top can heat up water like a champ, and I can put whatever I want into that hot water. I can even make food on it! Revolutionary!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ichijo ( 607641 )

      Unless it can do it so much better than doing it some other way and it's used so often that it's worth the space. For example, a rice cooker.

      • For example, a rice cooker.

        A rice cooker can be used to make barley or millet porridge, and bean soup.

        • And smell up the house all day long

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by sjbe ( 173966 )

          A rice cooker can be used to make barley or millet porridge, and bean soup.

          So can a pot on a stovetop.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by njnnja ( 2833511 )

      With one important exception [wikipedia.org].

    • 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 like Alton Brown but I'm curious how he justifies things like knives, ovens, stoves, refrigerators, freezers, can openers, tongs, oven mits, and any number of other things by that rule.

      For me a better guideline has been how often you use something. The less frequently you use it compared to the portion of your space it consumes the higher priority it should have when organizing a garage sale.

    • Unless you make that one thing an awful lot, to the exclusion of other things you could make, but will never make. Coffee makers tend to be the defining implementation of that philosophy.

      Hence I don't understand the purpose of this article at all, it's a self solving problem. If you can boil your life down in to a handful of meals, then one trick pony implementations make a lot of sense. If you cannot, then it's a waste of money and you'd be foolish to consider it. If you have boiled your life to a few meal

  • PT Barnum (and the Onceler) knew the answer... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by xxxJonBoyxxx ( 565205 ) on Friday May 15, 2015 @01:23PM (#49698861)

    >> 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.)

    • >> 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.)

      It isn't just about suckers. It is also about the old Star Trek ideal: The Replicator. Some people will want it for novelty. Others will actually want it, as they seed food only as nourishment and don't care how it is delivered. Look at all the shit we have put into our bodies over the decades - TV dinners, microwaveable everything, frozen whatnot, meal replacement [insert unit of food here] - and you'll see we're always looking for a shortcut. We aren't any healthier for it, and of course blame everyone (m

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fermion ( 181285 )
      Clearly these products cannot be sold at a profit. That is why Keurig has to put DRM into the makers. What is heartening is that the number of real suckers are so few that one Keuring imposed the DRM, no one wanted their product. It no longer provided value with respect to competitive products. A lesson we can actually learn, as we have learned from printers, is that if your business depends on selling consumable with a high markup, what you are actually do is creating a vigorous third party marketplace t

      • 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 schra

    • >> does having a single- or limited-purpose device make really make sense for consumables that aren't coffee?

      >

      Start with the list of consumables that many use on a daily or almost daily basis;

      Water
      Toilet Paper
      Soap?
      Beer
      Bullets

      Those are all covered by existing devices, and don't require heating/processing before serving. So the answer seems to be leaning toward no.

      Unless they come up with a hot soft pretzel dispenser, they likely won't get me for a customer.

  • These machines aren't new. (Score:3)

    by grimmjeeper ( 2301232 ) on Friday May 15, 2015 @01:23PM (#49698865) Homepage
    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"

    • >> Just channel surf some night when you have insomnia. The infomercials...

      Wow - thanks for the flashback. I almost forgot how crappy cable was...

      • Being an insomniac drove me to streaming a long time ago. But the memories of Jack LaLanne's power juicer will haunt me for the rest of my life.

  • I'm using one now (Score:3)

    by pushing-robot ( 1037830 ) on Friday May 15, 2015 @01:23PM (#49698871)

    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.

  • 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.

    • 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.

      convenience.

    • My wife won a Keurig awhile back. She liked being able to produce single cups of coffee (because I don't drink coffee). However, the best Keurig-purchase she ever made was a reusable K-cup. You fill it with whatever coffee you want (anything from grind your own beans to buy pre-ground in bulk), run the Keurig, and then clean out the reusable K-cup for the next cup. She saves money, still gets her single cup of coffee, and has much less waste than buying a ton of one-time use K-cups.

    • So that employees go back to work in 60 seconds instead of 10 minutes.

  • I'm having trouble understanding this (Score:3)

    by Krishnoid ( 984597 ) on Friday May 15, 2015 @01:37PM (#49698993) Journal

    Can someone provide a car analogy?

  • 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.

  • Anything people drink as often as coffee. That includes:

    Coffee, Tea (Sit back and think of England....), Baby Formula (for babies, obviously), Mixed alcoholic drinks, Soda - see Sodastream

  • With powdered alcohol I can see the cocktail one working, you have different pods for different drinks. The rest seem like a stretch.

  • So, if we just add wifi we can have the Internet of Keurigs?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tsqr ( 808554 )

      So, if we just add wifi we can have the Internet of Keurigs?

      Yes. But what we really need is the Keurig of Internets.

  • To quote Alton Brown. . . (Score:3)

    by smooth wombat ( 796938 ) on Friday May 15, 2015 @01:42PM (#49699057) Journal

    "There is only one uni-tasker in the kitchen."

    A fire extinguisher.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • It's not even that convenient (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dasher42 ( 514179 ) on Friday May 15, 2015 @01:44PM (#49699083)

    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?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by JBMcB ( 73720 )

      Keurig coffee is crap, and it creates a huge amount of disposable waste.

      We use re-usable K-Cup filters with good coffee. The machine itself is more efficient as it doesn't need to keep one or two carafes of coffee hot as well as the large hot-water boiler, it just keeps a few cups of water hot at a time. Also you don't get the wasted, burned coffee at the bottom of the pot.

      Of course I'm talking about an office environment where we go through intermittent bursts of large amounts of coffee ingestion :)

    • You must raise your own peanuts and grapes, if you think that system is easier than a PB&J.

  • single-purpose tools better be awesome + durable (Score:3)

    by xeno ( 2667 ) on Friday May 15, 2015 @01:45PM (#49699101)

    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.

    • Multi-purpose devices make much better use of limited space, that huge, bulky single use devices like a keurig...

    • Re: (Score:2, Redundant)

      by jittles ( 1613415 )

      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.

  • Doesn't make sense for coffee either (Score:3)

    by wired_parrot ( 768394 ) on Friday May 15, 2015 @01:46PM (#49699111)

    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.

  • More over-priced, wasteful products?

    That asteroid can't strike soon enough....

  • Fellow citizens! Do your part, and make waste. Life is easier when you lighten the load.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • until the marketing-drones started killing it with DRM.

  • It's called a crock pot.

  • Rice Cooker (Score:4, Interesting)

    by nuckfuts ( 690967 ) on Friday May 15, 2015 @03:12PM (#49699953)
    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.

  • Labor saving better tasting (Score:3)

    by johnlcallaway ( 165670 ) on Friday May 15, 2015 @04:53PM (#49700763)

    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???

  • Beer? (Score:3)

    by amRadioHed ( 463061 ) on Friday May 15, 2015 @06:07PM (#49701351)

    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?

  • 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!

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