Keurig K-Cup Coffee vs Nespresso

Posted by David Chism | Sat, Mar 31, 2012

 Keurig K-Cup Coffee vs Nespresso
Brief Updat­ed 5/27/2014 (The orig­i­nal post I wrote in March of 2012. Until the Spring of 2014, Nespres­so machines only pro­duced Amer­i­can-style espres­so. Now with the release of their lat­est mod­el: Ver­tuo­Line, they are pro­duc­ing an 8oz cup of cof­fee and an espresso.) I have yet to meet a per­son who has not tast­ed a Keurig K‑Cup cof­fee with­in the last few years. You’ve seen the fan­cy cof­fee mak­ers with sev­er­al dif­fer­ent fla­vors of cof­fee pods to try, right? What is the word on the street regard­ing its taste and over­all func­tions? Do peo­ple like the K‑Cups? It is a resound­ing YES. These machines are still sell­ing like hot­cakes. I attend­ed a few paint con­fer­ences and both had Keurigs with enough cof­fee pods to keep us awake for weeks. Now, the big ques­tion: Have you ever heard of or tried the Nespres­so Cit­iZ? What about their new Ver­tuo­Line? Prob­a­bly not. Nespres­so has been known for many years amongst the elite group of fine cof­fee drinkers for mak­ing qual­i­ty espres­so machines. The gen­er­al cof­fee drinkers out there still stuck on Fol­gers or Cost­co’s 3 Lb bag of Kirk­land would nev­er have known about Nespres­so or its auto­mat­ic cof­fee and espres­so machines. Keurig tried to get the gen­er­al cof­fee drinkers to step it up a notch when they intro­duced their K‑Cup cof­fee mak­ers. They catered to the busy lifestyles of most Amer­i­cans and intro­duced a sim­ple way to make a less messy and con­sis­tent cup of cof­fee. Nepres­so saw the suc­cess of the cof­fee pod busi­ness and intro­duced the CitZ with its cof­fee cap­sule. How­ev­er, they were just a lit­tle too late to have the suc­cess Keurig has had the past few years. Keurig has become the Kleenex” of the pod cof­fee busi­ness. It is becom­ing a stan­dard house­hold item. What is Better? I am a cof­fee snob, so to be hon­est I’ve nev­er liked the way Keurig cof­fee has tast­ed. To me the pods of cof­fee are not fresh, and I can nev­er get the cup of cof­fee to taste the way I want. That was until I stepped into William Sono­ma Christ­mas 2011. I was intro­duced to the Nespres­so CitZ with its tiny lit­tle cap­sule. At first I laughed and thought, Oh great Nespres­so is com­ing out with pod cof­fee!” I did not like pod cof­fee and did­n’t think it would ever work with elite and cof­fee snob­bers like me. Boy was I wrong! Nespres­so is sell­ing their prod­uct to peo­ple who love good cof­fee. Their mar­ket, so far, is not the Keurig folks. Their cap­sules are a frac­tion of the size of a Keurig K‑Cup pod. Why? So it can hold fresh­ly” ground cof­fee in an air­tight cap­sule. It is air that is the sin­gle rea­son cof­fee begins to age and lose its fresh taste. I was told (by a sale peo­ple at WS) Nespres­so roast, grinds and packs its cof­fee into cap­sules and quick­ly ships them to the con­sumer’s home with­in 1 – 2 days (as one com­menter point­ed out, this is prob­a­bly a myth). The cof­fee taste is 10x bet­ter than any cup of Keurig I’ve had, because Nespres­so uses a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent method of brew­ing and pro­duc­ing it’s cof­fee. Their machines use the espres­so style and pump sys­tem, rather than the tra­di­tion­al drip method. In lay­men’s terms, Nespres­so pro­duces more of an Ital­ian espres­so-like cup of cof­fee (rich and strong with more cre­ma). Have I wet your appetite to try a cup of Nespres­so? The cost isn’t much dif­fer­ent. You can pur­chase a Nespres­so CitZ for around $200 (Ver­tuo­Line for $300) where a Keurig ranges from $120 – 249. Three Rea­sons Why I Wrote A Post About Cof­fee on a Mar­ket­ing Website 1) I write about what I love. I love mar­ket­ing, tech­nol­o­gy and cof­fee among oth­er things. I’ll use a blog for an excuse to write about cof­fee any day. 2) I am impressed with how Keurig has dom­i­nat­ed the mar­ket in so lit­tle time with their K‑Cup cof­feemak­ers. They were inno­v­a­tive thinkers. They thought care­ful­ly about what Amer­i­cans want­ed next when it came to cof­fee. Nespres­so did too, but they were just a lit­tle late to make a dent. The mar­ket­ing les­son I’ve learned from Keurig is to always be inno­v­a­tive in your busi­ness. Con­tin­u­al­ly be think­ing how your busi­ness can be bet­ter and pro­duce some­thing that is dif­fer­ent than your com­pe­ti­tion. Nespres­so is a com­peti­tor of Keurig, and it is only a mat­ter of time before Nespres­so may just be able to make their name a house­hold item. Since I first wrote this blog, I’ve seen more and more peo­ple switch to the Nespres­so brand and become more like me: a snob. (I have two machines: Nespres­so Cit­iz and a Miele Espres­so Machine) 3) I want you to go into William Sono­ma some­time and ask for a sam­ple cup of Nespres­so’s cof­fee. My guess is your eye­brows will raise just a lit­tle and it just might make you donate your Keurig to char­i­ty. There is no turn­ing back once’s you’ve had a good cup of joe. It tru­ly is that much better.

About David Chism

David Chism started his business out of a passion for helping small contracting businesses grow, be more profitable and become better known to their target clients. One lifelong hobby of David is using techie gadgets. So this blog is a place where he writes about technology, marketing ideas, just for fun (humor), personal thoughts on small business and more.

     
   
       

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