Wall Street Journal Notes Growth In Coffee Pod Sales
Posted by TheShot on 20 Jul 2006 | Tagged as: Beans, Consumer Trends, Home Brew, Machine, Restaurant Coffee
An article published in yesterday’s The Wall Street Journal noted the growth of coffee pod use in the U.S. for both office and home: Wall Street Journal Notes Growth In Coffee Pod Sales @ Vending Market Watch News at AMonline.com.
Customized and convenient, coffee pods have been pushed by the industry as an alternative to the office Bunn warmer. Office workers get to choose among a wide variety of pre-packaged coffee “pellets” to individually suit their tastes — each can be a Kenyan roast, an espresso, a cinnamon latte, or anything else that can be flavored and hermetically sealed in a plastic cup. And these self-contained pods, and their brewing devices, minimize the clean-up needs typically associated with handling coffee. Restaurants are also getting in on the act — since they can’t seem to hire a decent barista to save their lives — so many big-machine manufacturers are accommodating with one or two-group lines for pod brewing.
But the coffee industry is also doing a full court press on the home market. Some of the notable home pod machine pushers include Philip’s and Douwe Egberts‘ SENSEO “concept”, the sick marriage between Braun shavers and Kraft Foods known as Tassimo (whose print ads make good coffee look like a diaper change) , and Big 4’s own Nestlé and their Nespresso (which is experiencing quite handsome profit margins) . The marketingspeak for each inevitably states that they “produce the perfect cup of espresso, cappuccino or latte”. However, after tasting the resulting product from one of these, it’s clear that uttering such a statement confirms that these manufactures have never experienced a perfect cup of anything.
More Convenient Ways to Make Mediocre Coffee
That’s the major downside I see in these pods and their machines. For the common coffee consumer who is only casually interested in the beverage (whom makes up the great majority), you could argue that they are raising the standards bar compared to the Bunn warmer. But in many other ways, the standards are being lowered — much in a similar way that the super-automated espresso machines that infiltrated Starbucks in recent years essentially installed a glass ceiling on their beverage quality. The big tradeoff of these pods is that you can’t vary the strength of the shot, and most of all that the resulting shot is always — as Luigi di Ruocco of Mr. Espresso put it to me last year — “missing something”.
And since this is all about better access to better coffee, pods represent both a step forward and a step backwards. They’re a home run for convenience and flexibility. But for flavor, they’re a one-hop ground out to short. While the coffee grades are better these days, vacuum-sealed, pre-ground coffee has inherent limits — making pods little more than a packaging convenience over your dad’s can of Folgers. (Nespresso, as an example, produces a flavor called “Ristretto”!)
Until the pod people can create a beverage out of these contraptions that doesn’t sacrifice flavor, this new coffee format will remain a diversion for creating more of the ever-more-ubiquitous “adequate” coffee. The results are even less encouraging with respect to the “espresso” word.
7 Comments »
on 23 Jul 2006 at 10:04 am -05:00T 1.TheShot.coffeeratings.com » Drink makers want America to buy coffee to go said …
[...] TheShot.coffeeratings.com « Wall Street Journal Notes Growth In Coffee Pod Sales Drink makers want America to buy coffee to go [...]
on 02 Sep 2006 at 7:00 pm -05:00T 2.TheShot.coffeeratings.com » Coca-Cola’s next ‘real thing’ said …
[...] The brand is called Far Coast (the corresponding Web site also appears poised for a launch), and they have been testing it in Toronto for hot drinks such as coffee, tea, and lattes. But instead of Coca-Cola’s usual retail play to consumers, its focus instead appears to be on a pod-based system for restaurants to brew individual cups. [...]
on 11 Sep 2006 at 4:08 pm -05:00T 3.TheShot.coffeeratings.com » Users, vendors not fans of coffee pods said …
[...] According to an article in today’s Frederick (MD) News-Post, the coffee pod revolution isn’t exactly winning over fans en masse just yet: Users, vendors not fans of coffee pods - The Frederick News-Post. [...]
on 06 Nov 2006 at 6:23 pm -06:00T 4.TheShot.coffeeratings.com » Nespresso coffee shops around the world: Why? said …
[...] Here’s an item in today’s news: Nestle reportedly to open luxury coffee shop in Brazil - MarketWatch. In some parts of the world, Nestlé’s Nespresso system, at least on the surface, appears to be making money hand-over-fist for them. Part of Nestlé’s strategy has been to open up Nespresso stores in places such as Geneva, Zurich, Vienna, Paris, and Moscow. [...]
on 21 Mar 2007 at 6:55 am -05:00T 5.Espresso News and Reviews - TheShot.coffeeratings.com » Consumer Delusion: ConsumerReports.org’s buyer’s guide to espresso makers said …
[...] As when SFist Jeremy Nisen skewered a Los Angeles Times article that attempted to comparatively review coffees last year (“Know Your Coffee Reviewers”), this oversimplified approach is disingenuous and counter-productive. How can you reasonably compare one machine that can use fresh coffee beans with a pod machine that must use the requesite packets of stale, pre-ground beans — without taking all these other factors into account? [...]
on 09 Apr 2007 at 1:15 pm -05:00T 6.Espresso News and Reviews - TheShot.coffeeratings.com » Nespresso controls brand with boutiques said …
[...] Yet Nestlé has been very savvy at positioning these machines and their pod “system” globally as an upscale brand. (Contrast with Kraft Foods’ home pod coffee system, Tassimo, which has been a financial disaster.) Today’s Los Angeles Times featured an article on Nestlés marketing strategy for the Nespresso, which has included branded boutiques for showcasing the devices: Nespresso controls brand with boutiques - Los Angeles Times. (Last year we wrote about one such Nespresso boutique in Lisbon’s Chiado District, including George Clooney’s Portuguese ads for the stuff.) [...]
on 04 Jun 2007 at 9:57 pm -05:00T 7.Espresso News and Reviews - TheShot.coffeeratings.com » The Expansion of Coffee Bars is Expected to Change the way French People Traditionally Drink their Coffee said …
[...] messages. And despite the public expansion of coffee bars, coffee sales are flat. However, coffee pods are the coffee retailer’s holdout for potential new business. (Though in this case, pods and [...]