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.