Last year K-Cups accounted for most of Keurig Green Mountain’s $4.7 billion in revenue—more than five times what the company made five years prior.
* * * As a twenty-something Bostonian in 1992, John Sylvan didn’t have a particular passion for coffee.
As he explains the appeal now, “It's like a cigarette for coffee, a single-serve delivery mechanism for an addictive substance.”
And like printer cartridges or razor blades, the Keurig business model was predicated on another type of dependence.
It’s digital rights management, the coffee equivalent of Steve Jobs’ attempt to fill iPods only with music sold through iTunes.
Using them is extremely wasteful and irresponsible; they are a stupid way to make coffee that simply cannot be sustained.
Keurig has said it was at work on a solution to the waste problem since back in 2010 when Carpenter first visited. »