Final verdict on Keurig legacy

Coffee is everywhere. It's by most measures the second most popular beverage in the world, just right there on the list after water But if you've had coffee, you've almost certainly had terrible coffee. There's a machine out there though, that promises that not only will you never have a bad cup of coffee again You'll hardly have to do any work to make it From the verge of Vox Media, this is Version History, a show about the best and worst and strangest and most important products in tech history I'm David Peerce and today, one cup at a time. It's the story of Kuric Support for this show comes from Fetch Pet Insurance. Do you have a pet Every six seconds, a pet owner in the US gets hit with a vet bill of over a thousand dollars, and it's almost always an unwelcome surprise That's where fetch pet insurance comes in. Fetch is the most complete pet insurance. Get paid back up to ninety percent of vet bills. You can use any vet in the US and Canada. All vets are in network. Go to fetchpet dot com slash save right now for your free quote. That's fetchpet dot com slash save Here's a question. What if women's healthcare was actually built around women Mount Sinai is proud to answer the call, announcing our new Carolyn Rowan Center for Women's Health and Wellness, the future of womomen's healthcare in New York City. O destination where leading specialists, evidenence based medicine, and a whole person approach come together under one roof to support your health and wellness at every stage of life No more fragmented care, no more dead ends, just seamless transformative women's healthcare designed around who you are and where you're going We get you and we've got you The Carlyn Rowan Center for Women's Health and Wellness at Mount Sinai We find a way We're back It's time for some coffee. I've already had too much coee and we're going to drink coffee in this episod. It's gonna to get very, very, very intense. Join me in the studio, Melissa McCartt, the Northeast editor at Eater. welcome. Thank you so much for having me. Tell me about your current coffee making setup. You wake up in the morning What do you do I get on an app and I order coffee to be honest. but if I'm going to make it at home, I do be letty either single or double. I like the ritual of it. I like watching it burble over. I like whipping a little bit of milk I have French press, cure eig, and a pot. Just full of options. Exactly. But instead you just order coffee. I respect this. I also do that too. I have a giant bag of beans that arrives at my house once a month and They have started to pile up because I'm in a real coffee shop phase and it's not going well for me. Also joining us, Morgan Eckroth, the US Barista champion and a creator and a barista. welcome to the show. So glad to be here. Morgan, this may be an unfair question to ask you as somebody who does coffee in so many directions for a living, but like You wake up, it's not a work day. you're just making coffee to make coffee Or not making coffee as a. What's your coffee routine? Yeah, I'm like a classic B sixty pourover person. That's I love espresso. I love filter coffee. I love all the fun wacky ways to make coffee, but like average day, I'm just, it's me and my pourover and my little kitchen scale. I respect that. Awesome. I had a long run of being a chemx guy. Oh yeah, because chemx to me felt like right in between This is upsetting to say out loud, but I don't have the patience to be a poor overver person. It's just b takes good. It's one tick too long. I'm like, I would like to be drinking this already. I used to be a restaurant critic before I took the job at Eater and The last thing that I was willing to be fussy about was coffee. And so I was like proud to be like an egalitarian Bodega coffee person So I think my tolerance for bad coffee is very high. so br in the Kig. So okay, so this is the right headspace to be in coming into talking about the Kureig. And the backstory of KQig, which I kind of knew nothing about this machine has just sort of like been in the world for a while, turns out to be really fascinating. and it starts in the nineteen eighties, basically. with these two guys, John Sylvan and Peter Dragon, who had been roommates at Colby. they got other jobs. and then they were just sort of out in the world and there's this like mythological startup story. Everybody has a sort of story to tell about themselves and it's only ever half true But the half true story of where this came from is John Syvan has a job. He's at a company called Analog Devices, which sounds like a made up name of a company, but sure. And one of the things he had to do pay the coffee veor. That was he had to like round up money from his coworkers to pay the person who brought them coffee. And he hated the job It was a super annoying thing to do to have to go around and, you know, harang his coworkers for money. And also the coffee was trash. Like this is this is office coffee, which has since time immemorial been horrible. It's like a requirement or something. Yeah, it's like the best case scenario is somebody who knows how to make coffee makes a good pot of coffee and then it sits for several hours and burns. Oh yeah. right? That's like that's as good as it gets. The worst case scenario is Somebody who doesn't know how to make coffee dumps a bunch of crap into a coffee maker, makes a horrible cup of coffee, and then it sits there for several hours and burns. It's just bad times everywhere. Yes, absolutely So John has this epiphany where he's like, if what if I could solve this whole problem What if there was a better way to make coffee at work would make it It make the pots better, it would make the drinking experience better, it would make the whole thing better. Uh So he quits his job goes home to his boston apartment and starts experimenting. And from what I have come to understand, you should imagine like a mad scientist very nearly blowing up his building over and over and over and over again as he's trying to figure out what to do. And he lands very quickly on this idea of like what if there was just a little capsule? that you could take and you could put you could put it in a coffee maker And it would do something. And then you would have coffee. A true black box. Exactly. And there are a million complicated questions inside of this. Morgan, I'm curious if you can just explain from like a very basic sort of coffee making principle It seems like Everything about this idea of like, take a capsule of coffee, shove a bunch of water into it Magic happens delicious coffee on the other side. It's just like complete wrong Anathema to how we actually think about making good coffee. S. Well, you know, a good is an interesting an interesting word because it's so so very dependent person to person, but it's like the The idea kind of makes sense in the sense that we have like all of these variables we got to play with when you're brewing coffee, it's like you have your solvent and then you have the soluble product, which is the ground coffee, and you got to play with temperature, you got to play with time, how long things brew for, and you got to deal with pressure and like every single brew method that we do is basically just like these different elements. And so when you're trying to brew coffee like really, really quickly, you have to increase pressure, you have to increase temperature. there are ways to do it, but tweaking all of those variables for the sake of like one thing, which is time always leads to I'll call it like changes in the final flavor profile. Like you're going to get a different result. you're going to get a different result by tweaking all of these. It's not likes there's a one answer that's going to come out at the bottom of this machine Changes in the flavor profile seem such like euphemism for coffee John is making all this stuff. He eventually brings in his friend Peter, who had been working at Chiquita, the Banana compomany, to help him out, gives him full partnership, so they become fifty, fifty partners in this company. They name it Kurig, which apparently comes from the word excellence in Dutch Both Travis, our producer and I ran this down and I would say the truth of that is like. Okay It's like it's quotation mark sort of. Yeah, we're like we're like near it, I would say Aspirational. Yeah. And he also said at one point that he picked that name because everyone likes the Dutch which sure Wows, you know, that's my like first impression, which is very positive Yeah, exactly. And so Morgan, you mentioned pressure, and it turns out, one of the big things they had to figure out this whole time was pressure. Because like you said, one way to make coffee fast is to vastly increase the pressure that you put on the beans and the water and this sort of this process. The more you can compact it, the faster you can move stuff through. But that leads to all kinds of problems including how do we not have this thing explode under the pressure that it's under? And they had a bunch of early experiments and they basically, have either of you ever done jello shots And No judgment be just last week for science. this is what we do here. So they bought a bunch of essentially the containers that you would put jello shots in the little plastic ones from a company that made Jelishout containers. They put coffee filter paper inside it and then sealed it closed with an iron And so this is this is like a essentially a makes shift little cakeup Fill it with coffee and then just experiment with all the different ways to try and get water through it. different kinds of pressure, different speeds, different amounts of water, different amounts of coffee and just spend like months and months and months dialing this thing in. And their big idea from the very beginning is to sell this to coffee distributors for essentially No money who will then put it in offices for free. And they have this idea that all of their money is going to come from selling these cuuffps It's a very it's an old school like razors and blades model, right? You sell the razors' cheap and then the blades are expensive. And this is this is their whole big idea. This turns out to be a very good idea But one one thing that happens along the way and is this is a true warning to everyone who drinks too much coffee They were trying so many things and they were their own est market, right? Like A at this point, you're just sitting there drinking a thousand cups of coffee a day. In nineteen eighty five, John ends up in the hospital, and he thinks he's having a heart attack. It's amazing story. And what actually happens is that John had caffeine poisoning, which until the moment of reading about this, I did not know was a thing that exists And he said his self professed number was that he was probably drinking thirty or forty cups of coffee a day. That is an incredible amount of liquid, just to consume in one day Morgan, do you know anybody that this has happened to? I don't. You know, when I was reading about the story prior to this, I I kind of knew it was leading into caffeine like poisoning. like I knew that was the direction we werere going thirty to forty cups was a truly shocking number. So I'm actually curious for your perspective on this as somebody who trains for competitition, which is the only other thing I can think of that would lead you to sort of exactly like by necessity drink coffee all the time. Yeah. so like when you you're in full on sort of Barista competition training.. How much coffee do you think you're drinking in a day? You know, I it's hard to like equate it to like cups necessarily, but there will be days where you get like Overly caffinated veryery easily, especially here like we're drinking lots of espresso, but it was funny because I was like I was like, my guy there, we can we can find ways to salt, you can spit the coffee out. there there's alf mean like wine like tasting wine Eactly. I kind of love that he did this to himself. I mean, it it's true love of the game to consume that much coffee and testing this My God, think of how many bad cups of coffee he drank. It really, loveove of the game, I think it's exactly right. So they end up getting a patent for the idea that would become K cups, which becomes kind of the main thing that they're going to eventually sell. Like a thing I don't think I really understood about until starting to do this research is the cakeup is the thing Like the brewer and stuff is all like we have the first in home cururig here and in most ways it seems like this thing is actually extremely similar to every other coffee thing that exists. It has a place for water pours that water through a thing and out comes coffee Like this actually turns out to not be the hard part. That one time purchase too. L in theory, that thing' gonna last you Five, maybe ten years, ideally Totally. But then K Cups, even they understand at the beginning, they're like, this is our thing, this is the business, this is the product, this is the invention. Spoiler alert, John in particular winds up having a lot of feelings about this thing that he invented later in his life. And we will talk about those feelings They they invent this thing, they patent what would become K cups. I can actually show you a picture of the patent. It's pretty cool and it is like, it's kind of incredible how much A detail there is in the patent that is just exactly even what we think of as cake cups now. but also how unbelievably complicated the thing is. They patented this thing in nineteen ninety four and there's a lot going on making it so that Nothing would come out before it was supposed to was really hard, making it so that it would come out when it was supposed to was really hard. Keeping oxygen out was really hard because you need to be able to preserve the coffee for a long time while it's sitting in this. This is like a series of very hard problems that they think that they've solved and emphasis on think. becausecause it turns out they keep trying this stuff and it keeps not working. And there's a great Boston Globe story from many years ago that details a lot of their history. And I just want to read you one section from it because this is the moment it all kind of almost falls apart. It says, a few years into the project, the Kirig protypes were still so unreliable that whenever the founders did a demonstration for potential backers, they never knew what would happen Early models leaked puddles of coffee onto expensive wooden conference tables. The c cup filters would often split, leading to drinks so laced with grounds that they were alarmingly crunchy. During one trip to meet potential financiers in Minnesota the founders made the mistake of checking the luggage containing their trove of homemade c cups. Once aloft, the lack of pressurization in the cargo hold caused them to burst. Self and Drag and stay up all night creating several dozen more by hand. So this is like years in. This is the st. Incredible drg It's very charming, truly. likeike the idea of this this overnight work session that had to happen. It feels like totally best in show or like spinal tap. coffee nerds. So what I wonder though, is there's almost something here where it's like, why would you keep trying this thing at some point. And I kind of wonder like Melissa, as you think about this, going back, you know, we're almost thirty years ago at this point, is it super obvious that they're right and this is clearly a thing to do and there's tons of money in it. And if we can just crack this, it's worth it. or are these just like complete lunatics who can't stop themselves from Well, I think if we look at thirty years ago before the rise of specialty coffee, it's totally right because coffee was just bad everywhere.. And everyone had to be in an office or some kind of place where there was like a person who lurred it over the coffee that made it especially bad. So in theory, it seems like This can be less bad and my life will be better So ye. But then with the intersection of specialty coffee in this, then it became lunacy, right? Yeah. So like whenever Starbucks came. This is where Morgan You could give us know the pin in terms of the date of the rise of specialty coffee Yeah once we started chop going out for specialty coffee that wasn't terrible, then it just became like, what are you doing? I thought it was most interesting looking at the timing of all of this because it was like all the a lot of the thought process and development was happening. like what I would consider like slightly before like thirird wave really took over is like the predominant L US coffee drinking movement, but then once we get a little bit further here, once we actually have like actuation of this machine to market, like it very much aligns with the rise of specialty and coffee getting so much better in cafes. I think it's really interesting to see these two happening parallel. And it's kind of weird that they happen in parallel, right? that all at once we're running towards The most convenient coffee we've ever had quality aside Yeah. And I think it is worth saying that they they're here. their goal is to make better coffee notot like for the world, but for one very specific place, which is your office, which definitely for sure has horrible coffee. And everyone wants a different coffee too. Yeah. Totally. And I thinks I would have assumed that this and kind of third wave coffee culture likeike from Starbucks all the way up the chain would have run into each other, but they actually are able to exist next to each other for a surprisingly long time Yeah. But okay, so this in nineteen ninety seven Something very weird happens, which is that both founders of Kurig end up leaving KRig. They raise some money. They first, I think it's fifty thousand dollars and then I think they raise a million dollars. So they're like they have they're close enough and people are bought in enough to this idea they want to make it a thing the investors look at this disaster of a prototype situation and say, we need to install some of our own leadership. John gets mad, doesn't want to deal with this new corporate structure of people who are watching over him, and he leaves. and he makes Kurig buy him out for fifty thousand dollars. They buy his half of the company for fifty thousand dollars. Spoiler alert, that was a bad deal by John Sylvan. Peter, the other co founder, leaves a few months later, but he keeps his investment. He keeps his part of the company. move for a long time and that ends up going quite well for him So that's in nineteen ninety seven. byy nineteen ninety eight This new team and new leadership has actually made the thing They build a cake cup factory, they start installing machines in offices and like immediately People start to love this thing. I say they kind of work because they actually genuinely only kind of work. They still have lots of problems. they break down, they spend a lot of their time going to people's offices to fix them. but no one who gets one of these ever wants to get rid of it. Yeah. becausecause it immediately solves a really obvious problem, which I think is really fascinating. And it's Melissa it's exactly what you described. Everybody wants better coffee But also everybody wants their coffee. Absolutely. And this seems like an insight that Kerig folks had that winds up being really important, which is not only can we make the coffee a little more sort of personalized in that you can make it when you want it, but actually we can have different kinds of coffee for different kinds of people all in one system. The first machine, by the way, was called the B two thousand, which is a hilarious name for your first product. It's so dark. Itly is. The Kureig B two thousand, our initial launch. It was huge.ike we think of KRig as like this little thing that brews a cup of coffee at a time, but these old ones were more like diner coffee system.. They were big. they cost nine hundred dollars. You had to hook them up to a water line. These were like industrial sized coffee makers, even though they only made one cup at a time. But again, this thing works, right? People are into it. They continue to validate the idea. the thing continues to get better And then the company decides it wants to branch out and get into people's homes. Again, this is not a gimmy at all, really. This is like still going to be an expensive machine It's still going to be complicated. It's a new set of things they have to figure out how to solve. Pe don't want to hook this thing up to their water line. But they decide they're going to do this. And we should take a break here. but my question before we do, does this idea, like if we rewind all the way back Should we have allowed this to happen Kig an Kig is an office coffee thing, I think like unparalleled good idea, right? Like made everybody's office coffee situation better I think As we look at the long sweep of history, the In home Kurig ends up being a much more complicated thing. Yeah. So if we're if we're going back in time hould we just prevent this from happening? or was this just an idea whose time has come and it was gonna to happen no matter what It's a tricky, it's a tricky, tricky question. you know, I think the The thing I often like think about with the Kurig and Especially when we think about kind of like the pipeline from like you start brewing your own coffee at home. and then like ideally, you know, especially when you know for us that work in especially coffee industry or like who operate in that world a lot, the idea is like people kind of have their stepping in point to making coffee. and then ideally that is kind of a pipeline that leads them to want to drink better coffee down the road, kind of explore that rabbit hole But like the Kirig is such a perfect machine for so many people in the sense that it's like wildly convenient. It was and is like such a status symbol as well that it's like it kind of became this stopping point where people were like, actually this is actually this is great. We don't need to kind of progress down this rabbit hole. And so there's this conundrum where I'm so wildly impressed and like in awe of the Kirig, but also like kind of simultaneously hate it. Likes it's a very Yeah Yeah. it's like I'm so truly split on it from like a product design standpoint versus like the impact standpoint. I mean, I also think that there's like a sort of nineteen fifties like housekeeping element to it. I mean, if you're buying K cups, you never even see coffee grounds. And I mean, I still spill coffee grounds and like beans and like make entire like messes of the counter and like that will never be something you have to deal with. And I think that was attractive for a lot of people. Yeah. Totally. Yeah, I think to me the part of this is that always been so complicated is like Are we Is the Kureic sort of a perfect example of us just conveniencing ourselves to death, right? Like Have we come so far that we can't even be bothered to make a pot of coffee in the morning? And maybe that's a ridiculous way to think about it, but that is also the part of me that's conflicted is like This is are we getting away from the thing that this is actually supposed to be because it's slightly easier to do. Like we're muting our highs and lows just for the sake of like evens. I know. And there's nothing more that way than Kic. Yeah. Okay, so we should take a break here, but this is we leave ourselves here at two thousand four when the first in home ks start to ship and spoiler alert. it goes super, super well We'll talk about sex fors take a break Here's a question. 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The app lets you filter hotels by neighborhood, vibe, star level and amenities like pools and spas and beachfonts and Wait, I'm not done. Stop cutting the up slide All right, we're back We have a new friend in the studio. This is the Curig K Mini Go which Travis, our producer just brought us, It's cute and it's white and it's blinking. And Melissa you want be some coffee? Yes. Morgan, I'm sorry, you can't. It's okay. I'm there in spirit It seems like you have sixty or seventy different coffee machines in your immediate vicinity and none of them are cured. Definitely not lacking for coffee brewers. So I get out the cake cup which is couple inches tall It's it's white and round and Plassy You could just do Ku ASMR for the rest of the show. And every I think basically every machine since the beginning of KRic has worked the same way. You have this thing, you pull up on the handle and it pulls it up And then you put the cake up in the place the hole for the cake cup, and you put it down, and ready I'm going to put the mic on this thing because this noise is very important That's the thing that makes it work And then the thing starts blinking, asking me how many ounces I want ten because I don't want to sleep ever again. then I have to put a mug in Finished the one coffee. We're rebooting it right now You put the mu under Can you hit it It's really true. Like looking at this now John Silvan is right. this is just a different look of the same thing Kirig has been for thirty years It's kind of wild, and then it brews It's like a leak from a rainstorm. I know it really is. It's verym point my I I canar it slightly in the back. It's very relaxing. Oh, that's lovely. Like you're in Japanese gu.. She's a very slowly dripping waterfall. I assume that was on purpose by the theic folks.'reike, how do we make this sound lovely while you drink coffee? We have Green Mountain, Nntucket Blend and Melissa, we also have original Donnut chop coffee, regular, medium roast coffee. So I guess my question is shall I have the doughnut I think you have them It's up to you.be it' a personal decision, Melissa, and I would never make that for you. All right? Okay, now comes I would say the first annoying thing about a Kirig, which is what do you do with the cake cup? Oh, and my answer is usually Car it on the counter. Cry a dripping one across my house. Hot water on your hand is you? Toasty. Okay, so'm I've chosen the original Dut shop U like either a combination of diner nostalgia and or dunkin and donoughuts if you're from Boston Um I'm going to press Wong whichich is at the top corner, I would like a strong cup of coffee and I'm going to guuess this that's probably. I have pressed the big brew button right in the middle And now there's a whirring sound And soon there's going to be the scent of coffee that's going to make it feel like it's the morning. It does smell nice. It does. All right, so while whileile we're brewing This obviously not the first one that chipped. The one behind us is the first one that chipped. This is called the B one hundred. this is again, very funny name for your first product But this is the one that Karig decides to ship. They want to get it into people's houses. They spend a long time getting the size down, making it sort of simple and easy and look non threatening, it is incredibly uncomplated, which is a big part of the deal. One thing I really enjoyed about this, and it's useful to remember that the idea of this does not exist, right? Like that. That sounds like a stupid thing to say, but this is not an experience people had had before. This is starting to become a thing as the original in office Kurig became so popular, other companies started to build things like this. So actually Turig in its in home products was not that far ahead of the game in that sense People had not had this experience before. So people didn't actually believe that this could possibly make decent coffee Big marketing push for Kirig is they would actually go to stores, grocery stores, all kinds of places around the country and just sit there and make coffee for h.. That was the whole marketing strategy. Like Costco and the samples. A hundred percent. And it was the thing that they were trying to prove to people was that it was ood and that it was fast And those turned out to be the two things that really made KRig work for people is, oh, I don't have to go through the process and the waiting of making a whole cup of coffee. I can go from nothing to a cup of coffee with esssentially no effort and like sixty seconds. And that ends up being a powerful thing. If I'm remembering too correctly, Kurig at launch too was one of the more premium models, correct? Like this was like far and above like more than what people were spending on their average like home coffee maker Oh, totally. yeah the thing was the thing was it was like a couple hundred dollars and it was not Even today that feels feels prraiceing. Oh yeah. abbsolutely. So I have to say the Green Mountain smelled delightful when it was Brewing this smells burn coffee. It smells like it burned already. It really does. The smelling here has gotten notably worse since you started I know. I like Cheers. Morgan, I'm sorry, you're not here. It's okay, Cheers And it tastes like it. See, mine' actually not bad. That It don't smell like I felt like a recoil that happened a little bit. It's hot. It is hot. This is ordinarily the coffee I would put the most milk in just to brings it down and it evens it out But this this is not the worst cup of coffee I've ever had. I have to say also, this is, I mean Ys, I bet is better, but like the The strength of this is better than the one I make at home, but I have one of those fill your own beans, but I clearly am not putting enough coffee in it Yeah, so again, this is this is sort of the whole idea, right is they try to make this Unscrew upable And in the first one, there aren't these options for like, do you want it weak or strong? How many ounces do you want? It's essentially just a power button and a brew button. The idea is don't worry about it We will handle the coffee for you. You just put in the coffee that you want and out will come delicious coffee. This works very well for people. So this thing is immediately a hit. It gets great reviews. Lots of people start to buy it. sort of immediately validates this whole single serve coffee thing in people's minds. And then Two years after the first one comes out in two thousand six, Green Mountain This company which is one of Kurig's biggest investors. and a huge coffee maker at the time Um just acquires all of Kirig it winds up Valuing Kirig at about one hundred sixty million dollars, which I would remind you, John Silvan sold his half of the company for fifty grand That's That's a tough beat. Melissa, you were saying before that one of the funny things about this story is that Green Mountain bought Kirig. Yes, it's sort of like today you think about like Environmentalism and Bernie Sanders, not like not like capitalist Sure Egg pods, right. Yeah, it's very true. So at this point these sort of Curig story on its own, the brewer story moves very fast. They now come in lots of shapes and sizes. They start to have more expensive models and less expensive models. They make models that can brew a pot of coffee and a single cup of coffee. They branch out into hot chocolate and tea. They start trying to do more stuff But fundamentally it is still the thing that it always was, right? It is a thing that you pod into you stick your coffee mu under and it makes you coffee the end, then two things simultaneously start to happen, which I think are very interesting. Everybody else tries to get in this game. And the first way a lot of people try to get into this game is by making K cups that are not made by Kurig Um essentially bootleg Kake cups And because this is the business, right? Like they're still selling these things and not making a huge amount of money, all of the money is in the K cups because like per cup It's way more expensive to make Kuregg coffee than it is to just brew a pot of coffee There's nothing preventing other people from puttingting their stuff in these machines. So other people start to do. So they on the one hand, this is great news, right? All of a sudden, the amount of different kinds of coffee you can get in k cup form just explodes. Kurig decides to fight this in a big, big, big way because this is the company's money maker. So they do essentially two things. They become kind of a patentroll. they start suing people, they start picking big fights about the patents And they release a new Kureig with DRM And this kirig will only brew Kurig official K cups. And this I would say is the first giant dent in the reputation of Churig as not a company that cares so much about making great coffee, but is just trying to sell you really expensive cake cups. This is one of my favorite sort of alternate universe moments of this story, which is if Kirig had decided not to pick that fight and close down and try to sort of own the whole experience of itself. and instead had just tried to like open way up and become this open platform for lots of people to make lots of coffee, lots of different ways. maybe the whole idea of single s of coffee and the way that we Think about what Kurig is and the way that we make coffee right now might have changed in really cool, interesting ways. Morgan, I'm curious for your thoughts on this as like from a pure like how we make coffee experiment. Is there a world in which Kurig sort of says everyverybody make coffee in our pot the way that you want. It's just a pot, do whatever you want. And we get like a whole unbelievable range of cool kinds of coffee inside Kurig or like is a cakeup a cakeup, a cakeup? You know it's kind of interesting because I like love the idea of a world where, you know you have like specialty roasters, you have your mom and pop shops, like all able to sell their coffee in this way that everyone can experience it the same way brewed well like in their homes. And I think because Kurig didn't allow that and then kind of like forced people to work within their systems, get really used to like the pod systems. in the last like five or six years, we've seen a lot of new different branded brewers come out that are emulating that sort of system It feels very familiar, but it targets towards that like higher end more customizable market. So I like I feel like we're kind of seeing a little bit of like how that alternate universe would have played out now all these years later with different tech. But you know, looking back, it's like I fully understand why they did what they did. It makes it makes a ton of sense It's a I think it could have been such a cool world to see everyone be able to opt into this like open source coffee brewing system Absolutely. I agree. I think there just would have been something so cool. And this especially gets weird in twenty twelve, which is when the K Cut patent expires. That's when the competition sort of explodes Kurig starts to lose some of its shine. This is the moment there were like a million Kurig competitors out there. Everybody was starting to make weird different kinds of cakeups. and then they sort of lock it down again with the DRM and this becomes a big sort of reputational problem. But the bigger reputational problem, which is How much just it brewing and that's a pun that sucks. Which is also starting to happen around the same time is that People are starting to question the environmental costs of Kureig and Kake Cups in particular Melissa, I know've been you've been reading up and researching on this. likeike my sense is this becomes a huge deal and a huge problem for KRig very quickly Is right I think so. I mean, I think that it parallels with the rise of Instagram, for example, when there's more like of calling out of businesses or call out culture because It's like it's sort of like popcorn they can't control the narrative anymore because there's so many platforms for them. get essentially called out for how they're harming the environment. and also at a time when there's an uptick of people politically and personally caring about the environment, where like if that were at this moment where it's sort of muted a bit that might not not be the case, but just at that trajectory, it was a big deal. Yeah. And this this hits a really interesting in twenty fourteen. Mother Jones runs this story where they did math that said you could circle the globe with all of the K cups that had been produced in that year. if you just lined them up side by side You could circle the globe ten and a half times, which is A, a testament to how unbelievably successful this thing had become. It was just absolutely ubiquitous. I feel like there was a time where you couldn't go into like a dentist's office, a house, someone's clinic, whatever clinic. Like anywhere people sat down There was a Kuric. Yeah. It was unbelievable. L it was just completely ubiquitous in society. And so Mother Jones runs this story and I think it's something about that image of many c cups being made. Circling in the globe, ten and a half times stuck and that number Kurig has disputed that number many times. But I think it even that the dispute says it's sort of directionally correct. and has haunted them for forever. And as this is starting to happen, But This video comes out called Kill the K Cup. Do you guys remember this? Yes. Let me just play the Kill the Kake Cup video so you can see it Ha happappy birthday to you in an office and there's an explosion What is it This is so wonderfully awustible YouTube. And outside it's staming cakeups What is that thing? I think it's one of those coffee things. C is that? Holy. It's a huge spaceship. It looks kind of like a cupcake. Oh my. Launching Kos Th people are crawling on the ground. why to k out monster? So good, Godseella I love this visual of the army firing machine guns at a K Cup monster. K Cup invading Eth. The sound design is wonderful. It's really good. And then it ends with this big kill the K Cup before it kills our planet Hashtag kill the cakeake. Incredible. This goes so viral and becomes a huge problem for Kurig. Kill the K Cup becomes this like trending topic all over social media. We end up with this like long running problem. And by the way, the top comment, I think on the YouTube video for Kill the K Cup says It appears to be from a YouTube account belonging to John Syilvan, the creator of Kurig And it says, sorry PS, I don't use them W I was not one hundred percent able to confirm that it was John I'm pretty sure it was.ertainly looks like it was. In the course of figuring out what's going on here, it turns out that the big culprit here of all the stuff going on is the cups themselves are made out of what's called number seven plastic And number seven, plastic is essentially the other category of plastic It could just mean anything. whatever you want it to be. And it turns out this kind of plastic is very hard to recycle And even if you do recycle it It's very dangerous for the people who have to process it. So cururie comes out and says, actually, it's not as bad as you think M most of the parts are recyclable. and the response to that is everybody's like, well, who in their right mind is going to neatly take apart each one of their c cups in order to recycle some of the parts that are recyclable? And then Kirig also makes a case which I think is more interesting and compelling which is that there's a really strong case to be made that pods are actually more efficient in their brewing. They use coffee grounds more efficiently than some other ways of brewing coffee the machines use electricity more efficiently, that there are some real upsides to this. and actually this debate has turned out to be more complicated than I realized. But it does seem like there is there is essentially no argument to be made that the c cups themselves are anything other than kind of an environmental disaster. And then the other thing that happens right around this same time is the Atlantic does an interview with John, the co founder. who says that he doesn't own a Kirig he says in an interview that he had bought one to sort of take it apart and see what had changed and was surprised at how little had changed in essentially twenty years, that it was basically still the thing that they had designed. And then he was kind of like, I don't know how you'd make it better. It works. But he said he didn't have a Kureig. And then the quote from him is, it's not like drip coffee is tough to make Incredible. So excellent. Yeah Also like it's at that time, this is twenty fifteen, there were studies that estimated that one in three households in the United States had a pod based coffee machine. One in three like this thing had abolutely taken over the world.. Yeah. Kureig sold nine billion K cups that year in twenty fifteen, that one year. So John, who is evidently just excited to light this company on fire It continues in this interview at the Atlantic No matter what they say about recycling, those things will never be recyclable. The plastic is a specialized plastic made of four different layers sccorched earth. Yeah and he had on this like years long apology tour essentially saying I regret this invention. We never should have done this. It's so bad for the planet that it was a bad idea and we never should have done it in the first place. I mean, I've been looking at the Green Mountain container and it still says, peel the lid and dispose and recycle, check locally to recycle empty cup. Like why would you do this for every pod? No No one did Like just factually no one No one U And John was like developing these ideas. He seems to have sort of simultaneously disuaded himself that this was a good idea and also had some ideas about what he might do. And he his big idea was take coffee and put it in a centrifuge and it comes apart. Then you take the parts and combine them back when you make the coffee. So you could use something like a ketchup foil pack and the separate parts won't become oxidized when they're stored and transported. Then you can combine them again at the last minute while you're making coffee. I bring this up because I have this memory of a few years ago bunch of companies trying to find ways to do, not quite exactly this, but This question of like, are there other better ways to coffee last longer. Like, I don't know if either of you ever remember this company Cometer. Yes. I was going bring them up. Oh yeah. Yeah. Okaykay, tellell us about Cometer. Yeah, Cater is an interesting company that does single serveving coffee and they come in these small, I believe they're aluminum capsules. They look very they look like pods, essentially. it's a very familiar shape, but inside is essentially a frozen coffee concentrate. they brew it a concentrated form. It's very proprietary, but essentially they're using liquid nitrogen to freeze coffee at ideally peak freshness. And then you store these pods in the freezer and then in the morning to make this coffee, you drop a frozen pod into your cup, add hot water, and it dilutes down to that drinkable ratio Ver, very similar in the sense that it takes you fifteen, twenty seconds in the morning to like assemble this. Is it good coffee? What do you think? It's pretty dang good. Commenter like Wow. Well, it's very tasty, but also they have gone like off the bat immediately the route of not doing a bulk of the coffee like sourcing and roasting themselves Like they immediately went into the partnership and licensing category. and so they opted to work with like some of the best roasters in the world specifically to put really high end coffee into these tiny like instantaneous capsules. Yeah. Mosa, haveave you ever had Cment your coffee? I have not. It' actually it is pretty good. Wow. It's very expensive. I forget the price but it is painfully expensive to think of even something kind of like instant coffee. Yeah. But it is, I would say of these things that you can make with almost no effort. and in one minute, it's probably the best one I've ever had. I've not tried them all, but it is head and shoulders above Kig, for sure. Okay. But anyay, so I think this idea of how do we do this better has not Right And KRig even continues to push on this. made they made promises about becoming energy efficient and recyclable and doing all this stuff. and the deadline was twenty twenty and they didn't meet that. And then they did meet that, but then they were legally challenged for whether they actually met that. So Kureig, I would say, has made a lot of promises, which have come to varying levels of truth And yet all the time This company just continues to sell like crazy They sell tons of brewers, they sell tons of c cups The numbers continue to go up about the percentages of them in households I mean, they have just abbsolutely conquered America in particular as a coffee drinking world. And actually this might be a good moment to pause because I think the fact that it is a mostly American thing is sort of interesting. And I wonder I wonder if either of you can maybe try to explain what is unique about American coffee culture versus coffee culture elsewhere. I think unlike Italy or Austria or something like that, our coffee culture has not been rooted in excellence. And it has been something that we I mean, think about Things like chock full of nuts or folgers or whatever. I mean, if you drink a cup of that right now, you'd be like, o my Godd, what is this? you know And I feel like that's what our grandparents were drinking. and so shad out to my father in law. dr it every day. It might be in the same maybe slightly better category. And so I feel like Americans prize convenience over you know, the ritual or culture of drinking coffee and taking the time to do it and with somebody else over a standing table in a cafe Yeah. I was going to say too, very similarly, like to me, I think like the Kirig is very emblematic of like just our coffee drinking culture in general, where it's like very much prioritized by high caffeine, like a very capitalist productivity driven society. And so you want your coffee to be very utilitarian, You want it to be fast and convenient. And you're also like taking it to go most of the time Like the US has, especially when it comes to like coffee shops, a really interesting culture where it's like a majority of how people interact with coffee shops, especially in cities is like in it to go fashion, where they're getting large cups of coffee and taking it out into the workday immediately. Whereas you know a lot of like European countries, Italy, as you mentioned, Melissa, too, theirir coffee culture is so rooted in the routine and kind of the like the pause and moment of having time with your coffee rather than just like viewing it as a tool to like get you to the next thing in your day. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, Kurig in all of those things makes perfect sense. A thing I've been trying to figure out is like, do we blame Kurig for all of those things, or is it just a symptom of all of those things, right? Yeah, I just think it harnessed it Yeah And Kureig makes us look ourselves in the mirror. As What am I doing? Kureig is America. So and actually to that point, that's actually a really funny way to think about what happens to Kureig over sort of the decade before now, which is that Kirig kind of gets a bunch of weird ideas that maybe the way that we do coffee is the way we want to do everything So they make this machine called the Kurig Cold Which is gonna to go and make cold beverages. You can make a Coca colola with a Kurig, which I would argue just completely misunderstands the thing that we're doing here. This is no. That machine cost three hundred seventy dollars. Oh It was an enormous failure and it went away in less than a year. It was so bad that Kurig ends up refunding everybody who had bought one Oh my God. It was such a disaster. But there was also there was a time when you could make soup in a cure egg.ike they had this thing about like, okay, we have built a system by which we can force water into stuff What can we force water into? And that is not what Kirig is. Kirig was a coffee machine, and I think they have finally at long last begun to learn that. There's also a bunch of weird corporate shenanigans happening. So Kureig gets bought by Green Mountain, becomes Curig Green Mountain, which then becomes acquired by a private equity firm and merged with Dr. Pepper Snapple, which forms the company, Kurig, Dr. Pepper, which is now the at the kind of the moment We recorded this being split back into two. So Kureig has gone through this wild series of corporate mergers and is now actually going to go back out into being its own company. And the company bought pizz and is now attempting to be kind of a coffee conglomerate under the Kurig name. So Kurig may be do for a very different run in a different direction of the coffee world, but has been through an awful lot and has just sold so much coffee along the way. Like this company for all the mess that it's had has continued to be a huge hit And Morgan, you kind of alluded to this earlier, but one of the interesting problems that Karic has had is that their machines actually last a really long time Unfortunately And in a k cup world, in a world where you're just trying to sell a lot of cake cups, this is largely good news, but I think The company is trying to do more futuristic things and do different things and come up with more environmental ways to do things. And they've had to find ways to be sort of incredibly backwards compatible to like These things that we just put in this brand new machine that Travis or prodroducer bought an hour ago will work in the very first one that they ever show. Oh my God. It's a big deal This this ends up being I think a real P problem for Curing because even if you want to move forward You kind of can't Because if you stop selling the K cups to all the people who bought the old Kirigs, you risk losing a customer entirely. and all of the money you're making is from these cake cups. So they've put themselves in kind of an odd position. And I bring this up because the place I want to leave this story before we get into the version history questions. is with K rounds. Do you guys know about K rounds No. I don't know about K rounds no. Yes. Oh this makes me so happy. Okay. So in twenty twenty four, and remember, Kirig a few times has had big ideas about how to do more environmentally friendly things, right? Like they understand Environmental problems are a drain on the brand They make people not want to buy or use Kigs. Even there's like we've been sort of talking about this moral conflict of being a Kurig drinker. One of the real things is like I'm creating a tremendous amount of waste every time I do it and people feel that So Kuric has been looking for ways to solve this for forever. They make a lot of complicated environmental promises. There are the reusable K cups, which I think it sounds like you've used Melissa. and they like that's it'solution and the problem all at the same time. Right They're pretty terrible. Yeah. And it's like by the time I'm grinding my own coffee and putting it in What am I doing here? Yeah That's exactly it.'m like I'm like mashing in this little thing and it's like what is this? Yeah. But so in twenty twenty four your egg? comes out with this huge announcement And it's essentially like we've fixed it We have come up with the new thing And it's called K rounds. And I'm just gonna I'm going to play you one small part of what amounts to like a six minute long infomercial for K rounds. Okay Here it is. As we were developing the K rounds, we went back to basics, went and watched how a Barista would make the finest coffee. Barist doesnt tamp down the coffee before they pull an espresso shot. And we thought, what if we took that a little bit further and actually compacted the coffee enough to have it hold itself together? That that way you don't need that plastic cup anymore That plastic cup limited how much coffee you could pack into it, the amount of pressures that the vessel could withstand when brewing, breaking free of that constraint. It gave us a lot of opportunity to build better and different brewing technology The K rounds are going to be available in an espresso shot size, a double shot size, a traditional coffee size and even a slightly larger pod for a tall, refreshing cold coffee. So that's K rounds. K rounds are they look like basically a little round brownie of coffee. But what it is is incredibly condensed coffee grounds. that are designed to not like they said, not need a container, or not need a shape. you can just take it out and put it in Morgan, you're a barista. They said They said this is baristas. They hit me with your reactions. What do you think I was fascinated by that. I was very curious when they were talking about the type it sounds like that like those are made At least some of them for espresso style beverages, if I was understanding that correctly, which is kind of interesting because that's like very much not what Kirig has historically done that's been in like Nespresso territory. One of the major concerns that I automatically have off the bat is like coffee freshness. The minute coffee starts to oxidize, the minute you have it like stored open air, like you're losing flavor quality and also like brewing potential super, super quickly. So as fun as that was, I have so many I have so many questions I must ask But I I think they're adorable I mean, it does like if you on on the very surface of it The idea seems like it sort of makes sense, right?s you w so long kind of, you know? Yes. Yeah. So Kureig showed these off in twenty twenty four. and this is a big deal. and this was part of a new system called Alta Kirig was coming out with. And this is going to be the most all in one thing Kurig has ever shipped. This is sort of the like the ultimate Kig And this is also importantly Not backwards compatible. like this is a break in the Kureig system. This thing has not shipped. It's been two years. There was just an update very recently from Kureig that said it is estimated to be shipping this fall, twenty twenty six. I would say most Kureig watchers are deeply skeptical of that. KRig is saying they're beta testing this, which is a very funny way to think about what you would do with a new way of making coffee. But it's out there. this is apparently Is this the like to phase this out? If not phase it out at least like really move every new Kuric buyer two K rounds. likeike that Kurig wants you to see this as not only Kurig being good and better and new company But also this is now the way that you do it. This is kind interesting to me because this also isn't like totally new technology or a method of making coffee. I'm forgetting the name of the brand right now, but there is like in market currently. I believe they're a European brand that makes what they call like coffee balls and it's that same principle of like just a compacted coffee ball that goes into their proprietary machine Codless and then bruise I've never seen coffee balls before. This is awesome. So amazing name. So good. trruly. Yeah. and I do think we're at this idea of experimenting again with how do we make coffee that is convenient and better feels like it's starting to happen. And I guess this is where, you know we talked at the beginning about how this sort of third wave coffee is coming I think Starbucks in a lot of ways is like early to identifying this idea that, oh, what if a coffee shop was a place you could go and hang out on purpose and really made a huge business out of that and then lost that thread a little bit and is now trying to get it back, it seems. But you have this huge rise in great coffee in the United States and this huge rise in ultra convenient at home coffee. And now it does feel like there is this increasing idea of like, what if we can bring those two things a little bit closer together that like, I don't know, I feel like I see more and more people every day being like the Aero press is amazing. and it's like, People are willing maybe now to do a little bit of work in service of better coffee, or maybe pay a little more money in service of just as easy, better coffee. I don't know, Morgan, you're the most steeped in this world of all of us. is this gotta keep using coffee puns by. No, please please I love it. I'm eating it up. This is awful Do you see those things sort of running at each other right now? I think so. I think like we're seeing definitely especially in like my generation, which is like a pretty young coffee drinker, like there's this push back towards like maybe more analog, like more tactile routine methods of brewing coffee. And I think that is just A little bit part of like the natural cycle of behavior. It's like we go super heavy into convenience and there's always like the reaction of that and then the pendulum just keeps swinging back and forth. But I also think quite a bit of it has to do with COVID as well. Like there was during COVID when you couldn't have excellent coffee at the coffee shop anymore, because they were closed There was this giant swing of manufacturers and companies making really easy accessible ways to make truly wonderful, delicious coffee at home really easy in the same way that Kirk did, but now that coffee is just so much more tasty and better in like every single like step of the supply chain. And I think that was a lot of people's and like my generation's introduction to brewing coffee at home. And so now when you know, Kig's kind of coming in with this new method. It's like they're already kind of written off for being an old school method of brewing, but because there's been this like giant shift that focuses towards the home user, again outside of the cafe, it's like there's just so many different options that turns out they're not too hard to use and people are willing to go that extra effort, especially if it means they get to have like a really special moment brewing their coffee. Like there's kind of this reaction of likebe maybe we don't want the like go go go super speed like convenience focused coffee anymore. Melissa, you were nodding to that, what do you think I feel like the other thing that's coming to pass now is that everything is becoming more expensive. And so even though we're past COVID, it feels like Paying seven dollars and sixteen cents for a cup of regular coffee is a lot of money to do every day. I think that We'll see more people who will say yes, coffee is a need, but a coffee shop is a luxury or if not a luxury, not a necessity. and that We'll see people going to homebwing again. Yeah, that's interesting. I think that's right. Okay. That's a good place to stop for this one. Let's take a quick break and then we're going to go back and we're going to do the version history questions and we're to decide once and for all if this thing's any good. We're I'm Manning. I'maddisonkinner, I'mv Yov.'m Cori Mooore. want to train like a Red Bull athlete. Tell us your fitness goals this summer to enter the Red Bowull Athlete challenge. You'll get to try each of our workouts for a chance to win an ultimate Red Bowull experience. Did you have what it takes I just Venmoe you for rent. Nice. Now I can instantly spend it whether I'm checking out online with VMo or using a Veno debit card Say more The more exactly because the more you do with them M, the more you get Like earning up to five percent cash backack with Ben Mostash on a bundle of brands So order more pizza. The math demands it. Cet the Venmo debit card. Venmo dash bundle terms and exclusions apply. See terms of Venmo. me slash dash terms. Venmo check out Not available at all merchants. VenMo Master card issued by the Bankcor bank NA All right, we're back. It's time for the Vversion of History questestions. the eight questions we ask about every product to see if we can figure out its true legacy. The first one is the time matrix which is a very simple concept that makes perfect sense to everybody and nobody ever has any questions about it that maps idea versus time. Was this the right idea at the right time, the wrong idea at the wrong time or somewhere in between. Melissa, I'm curious for your thoughts on where Kurig belongs on this graph. I say it belongs in the center The center right of right idea right time I feel it on, right idea, right time U not like the peak, but pretty close because People are paying more attention to coffee, as we said, and there's movement in specialty coffee peopleople are still at work making bad coffee and it feels like it was like a a maelstrom of possibilities. Yeah, I think so. Morgan, what do you think? I tend to agree with that. Like I think like execution and like long like separating out kind of this like environmental like aspect of the K cups and all of that, I think like the right time for sure and also right idea. like they they were really ahead of the curve on like what like specifically America needed in terms of coffee makers. Yeah, I'm torn on this one because I think separating out the environmental piece, you're absolutely right. It's hard to split the two. Right. But I think the environmental story here is so important and winds up being so important in the history of this company that I feel like I kind of want to shove it further down towards wrong idea that it's like it got it got a bunch of this really right But it got one really important piece kind of wrong. and like maybe destroyed the planet as a result. Yeah, that makes sense. They made people make horror movies about Kake cups destroying the planet. Yes. I think it can't be Any other than mostly right idea right time because it did. I think if they hadn't done it when they did it, somebody would have figured out something like this a few years later. becausecause again, this thing where you look at your office coffee pot and you're like, this sucks I wonder if I can do better surely occurred to other people and surely would haveccurred to more of them after. But But yeah, I feel like they just They whifft on one part of it the w being a great business and a bad thing for the world. It's like for them as a company, it was right time, right idea. For the rest of the world, it was right time, maybe wrong idea. Yes.. That is totally fair.. So I think where we have it now, which is like a mostly right idea, right time with like a gentle nudge into wrong idea, this feels right to me. Are we good with this? We're good. That feels good Okay, cool. questQestion number two Was this peak anything I have a couple to offer you and then I'm curious if you guys have ideas. Was this peak office coffee? Have we have we bested Kurig when it comes to office coffee? I kind of don't think so. For the pricep There's definitely better machines that make better coffee out there, but like they've just built the system so well at the price point that they're at. it's kind of hard to kind of hard to compete with that. I also feel like it's so matches how people exist in an office. Yeah. Like this is again, where I go back to the funny thing about Keig is I think it is it absolutely got every single thing right when it comes to your office coffee maker. Where like I want coffee when I want coffee. I don't want to go get coffee just because somebody made it. and if I don't get it right now, it'll be gross and burned I am now fully in control of this thing and I can make exactly as much as I need and no more. That sort of cadence of how people make coffee feels like they got it exactly right. I also feel like this is like the far end of like the dot com boom where people had like coffee and drinks and ping pong tables in their office. This just like a really remote. Well, we have this good coffee maker. Like it's like an every person's amenity on some level. Totally. And improving it. Yeah. Yeah, there was definitely the The startup boom where everybody was like bringing in Stumpptown cold brew concentrate. but I don't know that that, I don't think we can count that next to No no cur. This is just like reiring out of like at least we have this Exactly. This is better than like the gross stuff somebody made this morning. Y. Also is this peak Easy coffee. Yes. Has there ever been an easier way to make coffee than Kurig? Instant Is that even coffee though? I know. I know I's just sort of retro or something. Yeah. L. I feel like instant like, not that one is like actually worse or better than the other, but like Kirig has this like like doing it in a machine that quickly just like I feel like psychologically feels so much better. Yeah. N for nothing. Kirig also heats up the water for you In true true actually, great point. Do of the time. know what I mean? I got things to do Question number three, if you could time travel back and develop it yourself. So we're putting you in the Boston apartment withith John and Peter in the eighties and nineties, couldould you make the product more successful I mean, I would have wanted to have like met design team designing it. Yeah. Like the design part is the part that I feel like if you make it a coveted item that it would and that you could essentially rotate it like This is a cira twenty ten and this is a circa twenty twenty and it's like became like a collector's design thing. That's a good one. Th then that would have made it Cool. yeah. What is it the moocha pot? Is that a thing that has become like a real design object that just have in your house because it looks ab. Absolutely. What if Kuric had pointed at that a little bit? I mean, and there's so many collabs with designers and Bileetti that you know you can get like a fancy one. so absolutely. I'm now imagining like a supreme brand of Kurig I might try that. I swam C. It would have worked honestly.ight you're not wrong. Exactly. Morgan, what do you think? I think and I don't know how they would have done this necessarily. You know, it's thinking about like the hot water, the pressure, like achieving all of those things Plastic is the obvious and like easy answer, but it's like if there could have been a way to incorporate a more environmentally friendly pod product early on. Even utilizing like a pod system early on that was like easier to take apart and actually recycle because it's like people got trained onto just being able to toss them, just being able to get rid of them so early on that then when they retroactively introduced recycling systems, like easier ways to take them apart it's like, well people are't People already have their systems and their ways of actioning. like as much as you can, you know tell them that they can do it differently. It's like we don't we don't like to change, especially in those those small routines. I know I was thinking about this too, because I think the obvious one for me is go back and like grab John by the Lapels and be like, this is an environmental disaster, do better. But it also seems like the last fifteen years since this has been very obvious to everybody that it's an environmental problems, suggest that it's a much harder problem to cleanly solve, then we realize like for all the ways in which it is just a ruthless corporation trying to make money Kurig would have solved this problem already if there was an easy way to do so because it just would have been an unassailable victory for them to do so. and So that suggests that there is not S just sitting out there that John could have picked up off the shelf that he didn't. And also there must be like a financial demographic of like this is the income range of people who are making cure eggs. And if if we improve this product so it was more recyclable, then it would kick out X percent of people who normally buy it. Totally. Yeah, they already had trouble convincing people that this was worth the cost because it's I mean, it was like three or four times the price of just making a cup of coffee with Fldgers, beans that you bought at the grocery store. And so That was, yeah, I think if they had made it any more expensive It might have changed the way the thing worked at all from the very beginning Yeah, it's a tricky one. I do like the idea of hire a designer. Aolly place. That's a good way. All right, question number four, the question here is will the youth ever make it cool again? And I think this is a fun one for this one Be Kur eigs are so ubiquitous. There is nothing about it at all that is like a fun hipster way to make coffee. And Morgan, I say this with all possible love, you are a hipster who likes to make coffee. Oh for sure. makes hipster coffee Is can we make Kurig cool again You know, it's it's hard. I think my like gut instinct is no. And I think the way that they could have possibly come around and made Kurig cool again is if they did have that like kind of history of heritage design that Melissa was just mentioning where it's like, you know People kind of come back around to maybe an older model of coffee system that they grew up with and has a retro feel that's different than what it looks like now. But like the problem is kind of right in front of us like on screen with the two Kuree cooffee makers where what they're selling today looks functionally the exact same as what they were selling originally. And so you don't have that kind of fun retro you know, sweeping back to like the nineties, like it there's there's none of that like feel to it to come back to. I was thinking about this too because one of my sort of immediate thoughts when I started thinking about this question is like, oh Update and rerelease the first one, right? Like Kurig cllassic or whatever. And then I looked at it, it's like nobody would clock that as at all. Kig it looks like every other Kurig everly.. It's so funny. And I think if you start doing you know, Taylor Swift branded Kurigs now, everybody just rolls their eyes again's like easy Kig. Yes. not now Unless you go like the Thomas' Thermmos route, you know, like the how people were collecting those Thomas' cups and found like, like accoutreamments set you're like, think like sleeves and things you connect to it and things that you collect, like maybe you could go that route. Okay, now you're making me think instead of doing the Kurig machine You make a Kurig mug and then try to make it super cool on TikTok so that all the kids want the Kurig mug. Yes Hydrok style Yeah exactly. exactly. Yes. All right, well we've solved it. Kiric, you're welcome. Quest number five, this is actually totally bizarre one for this because it hasn't changed a bit What feature of this product should every current version have I would argue there is something to There is literally only one button that just says brew. Likees. even even now it's like three buttons But there is something lovely about the fact that you put the pod in, you smack it on top and it makes you coffee I mean, that strong difference. I just don't think it actually is real. I think it's like a total panacea. So I do wonder. Yeah. I think it's just like that one button Yeah. Morgan, what do you think? Any toad? They haven't changed much It's so hard I was going to say it's so hard to so hard to answer. I mean, one button, yeah, but it's like Not much to pull from. I still want it to be a more satisfying button experience like a bell Even though that. Or like like a crank you pull it's like coffee time.. Y, exxactly.. And it should say coffee time as you pull it. That's a good. I take my answer back, that's what I want actually. We want the coffee time mine. I do. This is good. We can do this. I think the three of us are starting our co They're gonna hire happening. This is Consultancy fees All right, three more questions. These are the Vversion History Hall of Fame questions. Any product has to pass all three of these tests s get into the hfame Question number one, did this product do something truly new? No. No, interesteresting. Tell me why. I mean, it plays with the vessels of how you're brewing coffee, but it's still just brewing it coff. You could make your You can make your coffee Bw one cup of coffee if you really wanted. That is true. putut coffee in thing, pour water on thing. Yes is not a new Yeahes, notot a new solution to a problem Morgan, what do you think? I'm want to give Kirig more credit than that. I lean towards yes. Well I agree that it is just just making coffee, but I think the speed at which it achieves filter coffee, which is like a time frame that usually was just for espresso and filter coffee was automatically like couple minutes minimum to getting it down to like sub one minute functionally. Like I feel like that was that was kind of like new new and innovative. Well The person who's recently brewed from a Kurig, there are some models where it takes a minute for it to heat up. So it actually ends up taking the same amount of time as That's fair Reular pot. That is true. If you're starting with the water too, then you have to go fill up the water thing and it's like this takes like three minutes. You know what like, I gotta go. stuff to do. Yeah. I can order Starbucks so much faster than All right, I'm going tie break this with, I'm going to say yes, just because I wanted to pass this test so we can keep the tension going for the other version. valid. But I take both of your arguments in good faith. Question number two, was the Kurig either remarkably good or remarkably bad? I will spoil it. I think this is where it fails the test because I don't think it was either. I don't think it tried to be either Do you know what I mean? Like I don't think being remarkably good was actually Kig's goal in a way that makes me find this product so fascinating. It's like They started from Pan Simplification, convenience, how do we strip away all of the ways in which you can screw this up? I never found anything where the goal is like, let's make terrific coffee And I think that's fine It just, it just wasn't the goal. It's like, how do we make non horrible coffee was the goal? Yes. And it ends up you put Kuri kind of right in the middle of every single coffee spectrum you could think of. I agree with that take. I think it makes remarkably passable coffee, which is what it set out to do, But even if they did an excellent job at achieving their goal, their goal itself wasn't excellent. So it's very hard for me to say it was remarkably good. I also like, you know, they made something that was packaged in a way that was really cool and worked really well for people. And so it's hard for me to say it was remarkably bad. You know, we have the I think where it slips into the bad territory is when we get back into that discussion about the environmental aspects. L that's the really bad part to me. But everything else about it that's like's pretty good I think what you're touching on is essentially the like hallmark of fast food, which is good enough. Exactly. Ttally. Yeah. Yeah. To me, I was thinking about this as we were drinking the coffee. I feel like no one has ever had a cup of curig coffee and been like, gosh, that's better than I expected. That.'s just And that's fine. Again, like that's not the goal. I think most people have not had a cup of curried coffee and been like, well, that's trash which was the goal. And I think that fails this test, but is also sort of a success story of Kig. Whereas like to go back to Cmenter, I actually have this distinct memory of the first time I had a cup of Cmenteer coffee And I had the moment of being like, well, that's better than I thought it was gonna to be. And it was like an honest to God, pretty good cup of coffee out of a little round frozen thing. in my freezer. Yeah. I have never had that feeling with a carry a cup of coffee. Absolutely. It is a purely utilitarian experience. and that's fine but it fails this test. Yeah, whichich is fun because I think it's gonna pass this one which is haall of Fame question number three, did it change history? Is there a world before curing and a world after it Yeah, I absolutely think so. I mean, just if you're if you're saying that one in three households in America have this, I mean, it's like It's like a vacuum cleaner or I mean, any kind of gadget that you have in your house. it's It's wild that so many people have it. And it also speaks to what we talked about earlier is that people have multiple, I mean, it makes sense for Morgan to have multiple like coffee brewing items, but it's really interesting at what point we started collecting ways to brew coffee in our house I agree, Morgan, what do you think? Absolutely. I think like in a lot of ways, Kirig has kind of gone the Xerox route where just even the brand name has become so synonymous with like pod coffee makers. like you might have an off brand or whatever, but you're gonna probably still call it a Kirig or refer to it as such. Totally. it is, I think even people who have nespresso machines, they're Kirigs. Yeah. And I'm sure nespresso, hey, it's that But here we are. I think that's right. Yeahah. And I was thinking about this as we were talking like, Is there on it this has to be on the level of like. an oven and a stove, as when you walk into somebody's kitchen, you immediately understand what those things are. Like it is that ubiquitous particularly in American culture, that I suspect the Brand recognition has got to be close to one hundred percent like you know what the thing is when you see it. Absolutely. whichich is a remarkable achievement. againain for better and for worse, as it turns out Kirig, you missed out on being in the Hall of Fame, but only by a little. and you've made me very sweaty, which is I also feel like I should walk my no back. No, hold strong of that. hold strong. Yeah hold fast. I guess you were right. Okay. I think not getting in Only missing by a little is the right choice. Okay. Totally passable. feels on brand for this. Okay. It did fine. It did fine. If there's ever a vers history Hall of Fame that is like pretty good, it makes it in with flying colors. The good enough Hall of Fame. Yes, exactly. will be branded curated All right. We are done here. Thank you, Morgan and Melissa. This has been tremendously fun. Thank you. This's been a blast. You can follow all of Melissa's stuff at Eater, you can follow all of Morgan's stuff. Morgan drinks coffee, every platform everywhere everyverywhere. You're also training for a barista championships, yes? I am. The twenty twenty six championships are happening in June. so this is either For me, it's before, but maybe for you it'll be after. Best of luck. We're very much looking forward to it. We're rooting for you Exactly. Cering squad over here. We appreciate it. We'll be there. Thank you all for watching and listening. And as always, the best thing you can do to support all of this, to make sure we get to keep buying old weird gadgets on eBay is to subscribe to the Vge Verge dot com slash subscribe Thank you for watching and listening. We'll see you next time Version History is a production of the Verge and the Vox Media podcast networ. It's produced by Victoria Barios, River Branson, Eric Gomez, Owen Grove, Brandon Keefer, Travis Larchuck, Andrew Morino, and Alex Parkin. Our editorial director is Kevin McShe. Studio support from Matthew Heffren and Joe Nebris. Our theme music is composed by Brandon McFarlland You can follow the dedicated Virion History podcast feed for all of our episodes as soon as they arrive, and you can watch full episodes on our new YouTube channel at Virion History podcast. And to support everything we do and get access to this and all of our other podcasts ad free, become a paid subscriber to the Virge Your package says deelliver. but delivered where exactly