Technology Blows

Technology Blows Episode 15 Keurig
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Dan Slimmon: Good morning listeners. I hope you're all feeling bright-eyed and jittery and ready for today's edition. If Technology blows a Techno pessimist podcast hosted by me. Amateur, Dante Dan Sliming, where we tell you all about how your favorite technologies ended up being so incredibly shitty. Welcome.

Today I'm joined by an absolute real one. My good friend shall you. Shall. How's things for you today in beautiful Portland, Oregon?[00:01:00]

Xiao: It's actually surprisingly sunny this week and amazing. Uh,

Dan Slimmon: Oh yeah.

Xiao: yeah. And also there's Portland, so there's espresso coffee everywhere, and I just got myself a latte to hear about. Today's episode, which see how that goes.

Dan Slimmon: Yeah, that's great. Um, yeah, you're, so, uh, when I, when I contacted you about being on the show and asked, I was like, do you have a decent mic? Or I, I can ship you a mic if you need a mic. And you were like, uh, well, you know, let me see if there's a recording studio nearby somewhere. Right. And it turns out there's like within blocks of your house, there's a coffee shop slash recording studio.

Xiao: Yeah, I mean, it's Portland, so put a cup of coffee on it, I guess is the new slogan.

Dan Slimmon: Yeah. Uh, yeah. It was like the most Portland fucking thing I've ever heard. Xiao. Um, and the coffee's good there.

Xiao: [00:02:00] Uh, yeah, it's, I mean, it's kind of amazing what you can do with the, this, uh, espresso machine inside a food car pod. yeah. So it's pretty swank setup. They have like these recording studios and then a food car pod outside. So. You can

Dan Slimmon: Oh, hell yeah.

Xiao: uh, mouth noises inside your recordings if you want.

Dan Slimmon: Thank you. Thank you in advance. on behalf of my listeners, and it's very appropriate that you're at a coffee shop slash podcasting studio in Portland, because today we're talking about Keurig. Keurig is a company that makes coffee brewers, which brew a single cup of coffee at a time from a little single serving disposable pod. It offers consumers a marginal increase in convenience in exchange for horrific ecological damage, which is just the American way. Right. That's just, you know, love it or leave it right. Shall

Xiao: Yeah. Yeah. You gotta, you gotta get the place worse than where you, uh, started from, you know?

Dan Slimmon: that's [00:03:00] right. right. It's, it's called Manifest Destiny.

Xiao: Yeah.

Dan Slimmon: anyway, what do you, what do you, how do you make, how do you make coffee at home?

Xiao: Uh, I mean, I have, you know, a drip brewer, you know, you grind up some coffee, you put it, little paper filter, the machine puts some hot water and you're done. I mean, it's seems pretty simple.

Dan Slimmon: Yeah.

Xiao: Uh.

Dan Slimmon: and you're able to hold down a job, know, you're able to like, that doesn't take all of your time all day just making Coffee

Xiao: luckily I have one of these coffee machines where you press one button and you don't actually pour the water on there constantly, as some baristas do here, so,

Dan Slimmon: Exactly, exactly. I'm, mine's, mine's the same. I do the same thing. I have a, um, I, I don't remember what brand mine is, but it's, um, it's got like a little filter. It's got a permanent filter so I don't have to use the paper ones.

Xiao: mm-hmm.

Dan Slimmon: but otherwise it's the same. And incidentally, it's the only clock in my office that the only clock in my kitchen that works [00:04:00] reliably.

Uh, there's a clock. There's like three clocks in my kitchen, but that's the only one that holds a correct time, which is really cool.

Xiao: I wish I could say the same about my, uh, coffee machine. It is perpetually on a different time because it doesn't even have flash. It just shows a different time. I don't know why. Okay.

Dan Slimmon: It's on Folger's time. It's a whole other state of mind. Sh you gotta get into

Xiao: Yeah. It, it's always seven something.

Dan Slimmon: Yeah. so yeah. So the podcast studio they've got, they've probably got pour over, they got fancy coffee drinks and stuff there because there's like at least a do a dozen ways.

There's, there's a, there's a several dozen ways to make coffee. Right. And we've been

Xiao: Yeah.

Dan Slimmon: as a species for like 600 years. We figured out all the ways to make coffee or so we thought,

Xiao: Right. And I mean, I don't wanna get kicked out of Portland for making fun of fancy coffee or anything, but like, they do taste better, I will say, like a nice pour over with a single origin. Like, I, I can't enjoy that. But also I'm also [00:05:00] fine with re microwaving my coffee because

Dan Slimmon: Yeah.

Xiao: too lazy to go make another cup.

Dan Slimmon: There's no shame in that. you're, you can't, you're probably not that. I mean, there's probably some people in Portland who don't even drink coffee. ,

A brief history of making coffee
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Dan Slimmon: So we, we, we know how to make coffee and, and coffee. So, all right. Coffee comes from, uh, originally from Northeastern Africa and the Middle East. So in, in Ethiopia, coffee was being cultivated by the 13 hundreds, and by the 14 hundreds it was in Yemen being cultivated. People in Yemen have, were known to drink it in order to like, stay alert for evening prayer. Um, you gotta, you know, they're just gonna be, they're gonna be talking about God a lot to you. You're gonna need a, a little bit of a pick me up, I think.

Xiao: So from the very start, coffee is, uh, you know, to force you to do stuff for the man.

Dan Slimmon: That's

Xiao: However you define the mayor.

Dan Slimmon: That's right. Except the man is a loss sometimes, but either way, you're gonna need to drink some coffee. [00:06:00] Yeah, that's a great point. Um, that I, I certainly drink it for that reason. And, uh, and so then, so then later, uh, coffee spread out to the, to, to the, from the Middle East, spread out to Europe and the rest of the world through the magic of colonialism, uh, which brought us all this lovely bean juice to drink.

And, and like I said, there are lots and lots of ways to make coffee, for our purposes today, we're most interested in the use of electricity to make coffee. Um, and so the first occurrence of that is in the early 19 hundreds, we get the invention of the electric percolator. ever used a percolator.

Xiao: Uh, yeah, that's the thing. You put on a stove top and

Dan Slimmon: Exactly.

Xiao: bubbles the water up, right? Yeah.

Dan Slimmon: Exactly. So it's a, it's a big coffee pot with an electric, well, the electric one, you put some, you put some heat at the bottom, um, and the electric one uses an electric heating element at the bottom built into the base. [00:07:00] Uh, right. And so the heating element is right under a tube with a sort of like inverted funnel at the bottom of it. So when the steam, when it, when it boils the water at the bottom, the steam bubbles go up into the funnel and push water up through the tube. And it gets all the way of the, the bubbles push the water all the way to the top of the percolator and they go Perk, perk, perk against the roof of the coffee pot. Hence the name Percolator. Perks. It's a perk. It's kind of, it's a cute name. It's a percolator. It makes your coffee go. Perk, perk, perk.

Xiao: Yeah. Uh, what's. I'm assuming the regular non-electric version has been used for ages for this, or did they invent this technique with like, they're like, oh, we can use electricity.

Dan Slimmon: we can use Electrify, right? Um, it's just for the heating part. Right. So, but

Xiao: Yeah.

Dan Slimmon: been using percolators not that much longer. [00:08:00] Um, I know they, I know like Old West and if you needed to make coffee in the old West, you'd use a percolator, but it'd be a stovetop percolator.

Xiao: Mm-hmm.

Dan Slimmon: Um, you know, you, it wasn't, wasn't, can't have been too much before that because you need pretty precise machining techniques to make it

Xiao: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That all that good steam has to stay in there and not into your face when you're, uh, doing this.

Dan Slimmon: Um, I mean, that'll wake you up.

Xiao: Yeah.

Dan Slimmon: So, so yeah, the water, the water hits the roof, drips back down, and then, and then it goes back, it cycles around through this tube. Right? Uh, and so when you're, when it goes from making this perk, perk, perk to, into starting to like gurgle, then it, it means all the water, the water's all hot, and it's, the coffee's ready to go Now, um, my in-laws use an electric percolator that I think they've had since the 1970s, and they can make pretty good coffee in it.

But when I use it, it, the coffee comes out [00:09:00] bitter and gross. Um, I think I'm not stopping it soon. I don't know if they have some trick, uh, that they, they won't tell me. Uh, so, uh, or they don't know that they're doing. But anyway, um, 'cause the problem with percolators is that like the coffee. The coffee can go through multiple cycles of heating rising and then dripping back down, back through the grounds, and then it gets heated up again and goes back.

Right. So like a lot of the, the beans get over extracted and that makes the coffee bitter, right?

Xiao: I remember used to, I used to own a Stovetop percolator and had the same problem. Like I could never figure out, like like when you stop it and.

Dan Slimmon: Yeah.

Xiao: You know, it's like connected to the part where the coffee bean grounds are actually, are the metal part of the percolator. So it always feels like I'm burning it no matter what I'm doing.

Uh, yeah, very complicated.

Dan Slimmon: Um, yeah. So, [00:10:00] uh, we, we were done with that by, by 1972. We were like, this sucks. We're not doing this anymore. And that's when we get the first electric drip brewer, uh, which was a brand called, know what the first brand of electric drip brew coffee brewers? It's still around.

Xiao: Uh, I Is it like Dr. Brew or some stupid like that?

Dan Slimmon: close. You're so close. It's um, he didn't go to medical school. He didn't go to, he, um, he, he dropped outta medical school, so he never got doctor. Instead, we just call him Mr. Coffee. Uh, they should have called it Dr. Coffee. They, it's not like, they're not like, they actually had to prove he was a doctor.

Why not are gonna

Xiao: Yeah,

Dan Slimmon: Dr. Coffee more than Mr. Coffee.

Xiao: I mean, this was probably around the time when doctors were prescribing you cocaine and shit, right? So like

Dan Slimmon: true.

Xiao: why not Dr. Coffee?

Dan Slimmon: Yeah. Yeah. Dr. Coffee is [00:11:00] comparatively responsible. Um, yeah. Well, I think we were up to laudanum by, by 1972. Anyway, uh, so, so the, so Mr. Coffee solves the un the uneven brewing problem we were just talking about because the, you, you just have one reservoir for clean water and then you heat that up and then it, it drips down one time through the grounds, uh, so that you're not like re reheating back up, partially brewed coffee. And so. Uh, so that's, that's really good. You get much better coffee at home. You get a much more even brew. the, the, the, the other, the thing though is so percolator is not fast. Neither is, neither is the mr. Coffee. It takes, takes a while. It's more convenient. You get pretty good coffee, but, um, but you, it it's pretty, it's not fast, right?

It still takes about 10 minutes to brew a pot of coffee with a drip machine, and then you gotta clean out the chamber. You gotta wash the, you know, you gotta do all this work. Uh, but, but [00:12:00] people still do it and they don't mind doing it because they get to have coffee at the end. It's pretty, which is pretty good.

Xiao: Yeah. I mean, none of that seems really all that difficult, to be honest. Like it's, it's coffee. It's like you don't need to like deep clean it.

Dan Slimmon: Yeah, I, yeah, I, I do actually occasionally, like once, like a couple times a year, I actually like run vinegar and water, like white vinegar through my coffee machine and then rinse it out a bunch of times just to like descale it. Um, right, but that's,

Xiao: Right? But I mean, like in between like making pots of coffee, like, you know, just a little soap and water and you're good. You're not like, you know, spending like, yeah. So does, does not seem like something that needs a lot of improvement to be honest.

Dan Slimmon: you know what, maybe you're Xiao. and then, and then sort of in parallel to, uh, this home coffee making technology, we also see the development of commercial [00:13:00] coffee dispensers, like, uh, coffee vending machines. The first of these was a, was a machine called the Quick, quick Cafe, spelled of course, K-W-I-K-K-A-F-E. Um, 'cause if you're selling a product, you can't use the letter Q. It's illegal. Uh,

Xiao: How are you gonna get that domain name, otherwise?

Dan Slimmon: how are you gonna get that name on the 1965 internet? Uh, people will know

Xiao: I,

Dan Slimmon: cafe. That's nothing. Uh, yeah. And so, so the, these, these vending machines can make coffee in like five seconds, it's instant coffee.

Xiao: Hmm.

Dan Slimmon: yeah.

Xiao: That's why they always taste terrible. Yes.

Dan Slimmon: Yes. Oh yeah. Uh, yeah. It's, it's, it's, it's disgusting. It's, it's instant. Coffee is coffee that's been brewed and then dehydrated after it's been brewed. So, so you just add hot water and bam, you have coffee. But the problem was it tastes like [00:14:00] gutter piss, like nobody drinks instant coffee for their enjoyment.

It's, it's the soylent powder of coffee.

Xiao: Yeah, I, I will say they are nice backpacking, but that is probably the only time I've ever, uh, enjoyed instant coffee.

Dan Slimmon: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's exactly, that's the exact use case. Uh, or it's like backpacking. You know, milit, the military is a great place for, for instant coffee. If you're like, if you need to go far and you don't wanna lug a bunch of beans with you, but you need coffee, that's what instant coffee is for. I don't know why you'd put it in a vending machine.

I don't know why you would buy it from a vending machine, but they're, that's how they work.

Bob Stiller and Green Mountain Coffee Roasters
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Dan Slimmon: So, okay, so, so the 1970s Mr. Coffee's coming onto the scene, and then there's a man named Robert p Stiller known to his friends as Bob. Bob Stiller. Bob Stiller is a [00:15:00] businessman who later earned the honor of being na, the namesake of the Robert p Stiller School of Business at Champlain College in Burlington, Vermont. You've been to Burlington, right?

Xiao: Yeah. Yeah.

Dan Slimmon: Burlington's a beautiful place. Uh, I, I was born there, actually. I have a long personal connection to, to Burlington, and, um, in April of 2024, I, I watched the solar eclipse from Burlington, which was an incredible experience. Um, listeners, if you get a chance to visit Burlington, Vermont, go check it out.

You're gonna love it. Anyway, Bob Stiller, he was, sorry. I don't know why, but I had to talk about it. I just, every time Burlington comes up, I have to fucking sell the shit outta Burlington.

Xiao: Well, you don't want people to have a wrong idea with this Bob character sponsoring, uh,

Dan Slimmon: well, he's not even, so Bob Stiller was okay for a while. He, he, um. You know, in 1972, he co-founded a brand called Easy, wider. ever use Easy Widers?[00:16:00]

Xiao: I can't even imagine what that's for.

Dan Slimmon: Well, I'll tell you, I, I personally contributed many dollars to Easy, wider, during the mid two thousands in college. It's a brand of rolling papers, which I used to roll joints with. Um, and they were, they were really good papers. You know, they lived up to their name. They were easy to use, check, and they were wider than most other rolling papers.

So check, you know, pretty, pretty good papers. Good job, Bob Stiller making those. Um,

Xiao: Checks out with, uh, Burlington, Vermont.

Dan Slimmon: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. He, he's like, he was sort of a hippie guy. I mean, uh, he's into transcendental meditation in the seventies. And, this is the kind of guy that he, he was up until later in the story, we'll talk about it.

But, uh, but he's, he's, um, he, I'm not the only one who liked Easy's because his company did very well. And in 1982, Bob Stiller had enough [00:17:00] money to found a new company called Green Mountain Coffee Roasters.

Xiao: Oh, this place?

Dan Slimmon: Mm-hmm. That one you've heard of.

Xiao: Yeah.

Dan Slimmon: yeah. So guy is really good at, um, making very popular businesses that sell one or the other kind of, um, drug drug paraphernalia.

So, It started as a chain of coffee shops with, with sort of like a hippie ethos. And you know, they had like solar panels on their factory roof. They had eco-friendly paper cups. They served Fair Trade Coffee from about the earliest time that Fair, fair, fair Trade Coffee as a concept existed. Um,

Xiao: Wait, how, how is this gonna turn into Keurig? Uh, like did they get bought by craft or what, what? This seems the opposite of the ethos here.

Dan Slimmon: they um, well Keurig's, about to get bought by Green Mountain Coffee Roasters actually. And, uh, [00:18:00] and Bob, uh, Stiller is about to find out that having a shitload of money is a lot more fun than composting your coffee beans. Um,

Xiao: no,

Dan Slimmon: yeah.

Xiao: that is a terrible progression of the storyline.

Dan Slimmon: It's a perfect, it's a perfect indictment of the hippie ethos. I think. Uh, it's like, it's like an exact microcosm for, um, what happened to a lot, a large, most of that whole generation. Uh, so it's really cool. Yeah. And, and they grew, they were growing fast, you know, uh, throughout the seventies and, and or throughout the, the eighties.

Uh, and it seems like Bob Stiller was pretty good at running the, the, like the, he was pretty good at the nuts and bolts of running a company, right? He's like pretty, pretty competent.

The founding of Keurig
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Dan Slimmon: And we'll leave Bob Stiller there for a moment with his rapidly growing coffee business, making inroads throughout New England and turned to another character in our story, John [00:19:00] Sylvan. So, in the mid eighties, John Sylvan had recently, has recently graduated from Colby College with a degree in engineering, and he's working in a semiconductor. he's doing marketing in, in a semiconductor company in, uh, Norwalk, Massachusetts. He's like, uh, he's just above an intern level in the, like 1985 in this, at this semiconductor company.

And when you're low on the totem pole like this, you sometimes have to do random jobs that nobody else wants to do. So one of these random jobs that they give to John Sylvan is sometimes when the coffee delivery guy comes to deliver the coffee beans to the office, the office manager will be like, Hey, John, Sylvan, go around the office and get everybody to chip in money so we could pay for this coffee. You know, which sounds like the

Xiao: Okay. What

Dan Slimmon: system. Why do they do it this way?

Xiao: they, they, they didn't have a coffee budget for some beans or,

Dan Slimmon: [00:20:00] Right. The company apparently did, absolutely did not wanna pay for coffee. Uh, but they couldn't even get it together to be like. Oh, the coffee's going to come today. It's Tuesday. Right? Every time, apparently, every time the coffee came, they were like, oh no, somebody brought us coffee. Now we have to find money for it.

Xiao: you know, that's, that's just what happens. You know, this ship just comes up from Brazil and it lands when it lands and you need to read the telegraph, uh, polls to figure it out.

Dan Slimmon: There's a guy on a donkey and he's got, he's gotta get that, you know? He's gotta keep that donkey moving. It's burning a hole in his pocket. Get, we gotta pay for this coffee right now. I don't know. I don't know. So that's one. That's one problem that this office has is they have a shit stupid coffee delivery system.

Another problem is that. The coffee in this office is usually terrible because it just sits around on the hot plate for hours and gets baked black and it smells like paint thinner and nobody wants to drink it. Um, right, because nobody ever [00:21:00] like makes coffee when coffee needs to be made so and so, so John Sylvan starts to think, what if you could walk into the office kitchen and just make one single cup of coffee? Wouldn't that be great? You know, then we, he'd never have to deal with like that, that psychopath Deborah from accounts who brew hazelnut coffee in the regular coffee pots. And then so one time you took your first sip of coffee at a big meeting and spat it all out, all over the boardroom table 'cause it was hazelnut flavored, right? Um, and we would be free from the paint thinner and 'cause each cup of coffee would be freshly brewed. It was a nice, nice little fantasy.

Xiao: Yeah, I mean I can definitely see the benefit of that. Uh,

Dan Slimmon: Yeah,

Xiao: yeah. But I mean also, can't they just brew a new pot of coffee, just like, you know, like a small four cupper. Have a friend talk through some engineering problems. I'm sure [00:22:00] there's plenty engineering problems that they could have two people with two mugs of coffee talk over.

Dan Slimmon: that's a great point. Xiao, um, it because because like they didn't really have a problem. They didn't really have a problem with the coffee technology. Right. They have a, they have a problem with the office culture.

Xiao: Right. Like, you know, it seems like the whole point of having like a coffee at a office is you get some interactions with your coworkers.

Dan Slimmon: Yes. And this is why I think, in a weird way, I think the, the origins of the Keurig coffee brewer. Because this is the guy who's gonna go on to invent Keurigs. The, the problems can be traced directly to the dissolution of labor, solidarity in the United States. Because like, if, if we see our coworkers as, as, as comrades, we're working shoulder to shoulder with our coworkers, then it's not so difficult to keep the coffee fresh.

You just make [00:23:00] coffee when coffee needs to be made and you make new coffee when the old coffee's too old. Right? It's just like you, you, you help each other by doing things that need to get done. It's only when we see our coworkers as like strangers who are competing with us, you know, a lot of whom we hate, um, that it makes sense to invent a single serving coffee machine.

Xiao: Right. Exactly. It's like, you know, like even if you didn't wanna waste coffee, you could go, Hey Dan, let's go get some coffee and like, make two cups. It's, it's fine. Like

Dan Slimmon: and

Xiao: drip coffee's. Yeah.

Dan Slimmon: and I and and large groups of people at the company that we worked at together did many times. It was a social thing.

Xiao: Yes. Anyway,

Dan Slimmon: anyway,

Xiao: this entire reasoning makes me angry about why he needed, like, I need coffee just for myself, and no one else can have this.

Dan Slimmon: Yeah. I mean it's, it's mutually assured piss [00:24:00] water because everybody's in the office is thinking that way. Um. He's not even a coffee guy. Like, he doesn't even like coffee that much. He's just like, wishes it didn't taste so bad. Um, so, so anyway, he, he quits his job by the early nineties. He's quit his job and he's building a contraption in his house that is like a cross between a Mr.

Coffee and a pressure cooker. And he calls up his old college roommate, Peter Drag. D-D-R-A-G-O-N-E-D, Dragone D Dragone,

Xiao: Sure. Uh, I don't know. I mean, what sounds more badass? I'm sure that guy would like it.

Dan Slimmon: Peter, Peter Dragony. Um, well you don't have to say his name that many times so I can, I can say Dragony. So Peter Dragony, uh, at this time is working as director of finance for Chiquita, you know, the, uh, banana producer overthrew the Guatemalan government in 1954.

Xiao: Oh no. It's all the [00:25:00] worst. Imperial companies all combined.

Dan Slimmon: Yeah. Yeah. I, it, it doesn't, it doesn't enter into the story, but I just like to mention that every time Chiquita banana comes up, 'cause it's important for everybody to know. Um, yeah. Uh, anyway, he quits his job and he goes to, he, he, John Sylvan calls, calls up Peter Dragony and he is like, Peter, listen, I've got this amazing opportunity for you. I've invented a metal box that can sometimes make a substance that's technically coffee, but also sometimes explodes and launches jets of boiling hot bean gruel in a 270 degree arc all over my apartment. And Peter's like, hell yeah, man. This sounds wicked profitable. I'm in.

Xiao: I mean, why not like send it to all your enemies, like it's great.

Dan Slimmon: Yeah. Yeah. I've invented a non-lethal bomb, uh. Yeah. I, I don't know. Uh, but they're [00:26:00] in, they're, they're like, hell yeah, let's do it. They're equal partners. They're, they're, they're gonna do it. Um, the name by the way, which is how they, how the, how they pronounce it. Keurig. Uh, it's, it comes from Dutch. Uh, it's, it's just like the first marketable seeming word John Sylvan found when he opened up a Dutch to English dictionary to the entry for excellence. Um, 'cause like most words in Dutch are not marketable. They're like duction. You can't sell that. They Keurig. That's pretty marketable. Um, as far as I can tell, it means something more like elegant or dainty. And in Dutch it would be pronounced, I think re uh, here, let's listen to the Google Translate Lady. Say it. (clip)

imagine trying to get Americans to say Keurig. That way they'd shove you in a fucking locker. So we call it

Xiao: yeah, yeah. [00:27:00] I mean, while we're destroying, uh, coffee, let's destroy another language. Why not?

Dan Slimmon: Oh yeah, that's, that's what eng that's what we do in English. So, so, um, so yeah, Keurig is what they call it. So, so they're, they're working very hard to build this single serving coffee brewer for like a decade. They're traveling all over trying to sell these things to offices. Uh, one time they bring it cross country for a demo, and their experimental little coffee pods explode all over the baggage compartment of the, of the airplane. Nowadays, they'd be pulled off the plane and strip, strip searched and beaten. But this was a pre nine 11 world, so, you know, they got to go free.

Xiao: Wait, so they started trying to sell these when it was still like a coffee bomb in the making.

Dan Slimmon: Um, well, so I think they had got that problem worked out, but the pods were, the pods are now sealed and, uh, they have like, uh.

Xiao: Oh,

Dan Slimmon: you,

Xiao: I see.

Dan Slimmon: a sealed thing, when it goes under a pressure, um, when there's like a pressure [00:28:00] differential in the airplane, like a, like a packet of chips sometimes does.

Right?

Xiao: Yep.

Dan Slimmon: but as, so I don't know if you can Keurig pods on a plane now. Somebody should look into that. Um, at one point in the nineties, John Sylvan is sitting in his parked car in Brookline, Massachusetts, and he starts to feel lightheaded and he starts to have heart palpitations and tunnel vision. And he ends up going to the er and a doctor checks him out for like serious problems. They, they're, they X-ray his chest, they don't find anything wrong with his body. And then the doctor asks him, do you drink coffee? He's like, uh, yeah, I, I drink coffee. Oh, how many cups of coffee do you drink a day? Um, like 30 to 40.

Xiao: What

that is an insane amount of coffee.

Dan Slimmon: He's, because he's testing it. 'cause he's, he is, it's his job to test, to taste the coffee and test it when [00:29:00] it comes outta the machine. So he, he's drinking like 40 cups of coffee a day,

Xiao: Yeah, but like this is a solved problem. Like coffee roasters do coffee cupping where they spit out the coffee after tasting it.

Dan Slimmon: I guess.

Xiao: It is a known problem.

Dan Slimmon: that. Uh,

Xiao: Okay. Um,

Dan Slimmon: open up like a free coffee stand in front of your, in front of your office and just, just give, give people free coffee, no guarantees that it won't taste terrible. So he

Xiao: yeah.

Dan Slimmon: caffeine poisoning, which is something I didn't even really know you could get.

Xiao: Yeah. I mean, how did he not have heart palpitations before this day?

Dan Slimmon: Right. I, I get, I get heart, I have heart palpitations right now just thinking about drinking 40 cups of coffee. I don't know. That's what, that's business. That's what you gotta do. If you want to be in business, we're not serious enough to understand. so, so at this point in the nineties, like they're not even [00:30:00] up to, like the early aughts, Keurig is, is not even thinking about making devices for homes that people could use to make coffee. They're, they're their coffee, their, they're office focused only their first unit is like way too big for a home countertop and it costs $900 and it has to be hooked up to a water line. So. It's just for offices. And so like to the extent that the founders are thinking about environmental impact at this point, and they, and they are thinking about environmental impact, uh, but they're, they're able to convince themselves that their invention is environmentally neutral because it limits the number of like Dunkin donuts runs that people have to do from the office.

And they're, whenever they go to Dunkin Donuts, they're getting the styrofoam coffee cups. Uh, so, you know, it limits the number of disposable coffee cups that have people have to, to toss out is the idea.

Xiao: Okay, so instead of tossing a giant styrofoam cup, we're tossing, I'm assuming this is, they're still using the plastic little KC cups at this point for this Keurig, or, yeah,

Dan Slimmon: [00:31:00] Yeah.

Xiao: like, we'll trade a big styrofoam cup for a little plastic cup with organic stuff that'll never decomposed because it's inside plastic.

Dan Slimmon: Yeah. Uh, don't worry. They, they really, they fixed the environmental story and it's totally fine. Now. They, they solved all these problems. So that's it. That's the whole episode. Um, no, no. It gets worse. So, uh, Keurig starts to get investors, and this is where Bob Stiller comes in. So he starts to get investors in the midnight, they start to get investors in the mid nineties.

One of their first investors is Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, uh, which is Bob Stiller's company, the rolling papers guy from before. And, and it quickly becomes clear that John Sylvan is not capable of playing nice with the new investors. I'm not sure exactly what he disagrees with them about. He's been kind of tight-lipped about this part of, of the, of the adventure.

But it sounds like Bob Stiller wants to take Keurig in a, in a different direction, perhaps, perhaps a more [00:32:00] profitable direction, perhaps a, a less environmentally neutral direction. uh, that may have had something to do with Sylvans departure because in 1997, Sylvan gets forced out of Keurig, sells his stake for $50,000. Which,

Xiao: That's it.

Dan Slimmon: yeah, he gets $50,000 for his, for all his stock. Uh, whoops. that's, he's, he's, he sounds a little bitter when he talks in interviews now, which I understand because, uh, I don't think he's very bitter. But, but like, uh, all you get is $50,000 you've like accidentally ruin the, uh, ecosystem and you all you get is $50,000.

It seems like a bad deal.

Xiao: Yeah, I mean, you should at least, you know, ruin the environment for a little bit more than that.

Dan Slimmon: Yeah. You could get way more than that for ruining the environment. It's a hot market. Uh. So Peter Dragony also exits around [00:33:00] this time, but he keeps his shares and eventually he gets rich. He's like some sort of finance guy now.

The K-Cup
---

Dan Slimmon: Uh, alright, so, but let's talk about the, let's talk about this pod. Let's talk about the pod pods, you know, the pod's where it's at.

So the pod is the thing that, that actually Keurig makes its money on, right? The, the machines, they sell the machines for cheap. Sometimes they even lose money on the machines, and that's, that's okay. That's part of the plan because they make that money back selling an absolutely unconscionable number of these pods at a, at a great margin. Um, it's like how if in a, the Scantron episode, Scantron

Xiao: Yeah.

Dan Slimmon: machines for cheap, they sell the, the sheets for, for a good markup, uh, razor, razor blades,

Xiao: Yeah. And they try and stop you from making, uh, those reusable things, right? Like I remember there was a company that made reusable K-cups and then they disappeared. I'm assuming they got sued out of blood. Didn't.

Dan Slimmon: They may have gotten [00:34:00] sued. They may have gotten bought. There were a few of them. Keurig. Keurig spent the, the mid two thousands, we'll, we'll get to it, but they spent the mid two thousands running everybody who could possibly be in competition with them out of, out of business. And that was, that was a large part of it.

They did, they did do some lawsuits. Um, so it's totally possible. Uh, yeah, they do not want, well, their, their patent, so like their patent is from, the patent is filed in 1992. so they have until 2012 to. a big profit on it and like corner that market. And it's already, uh, it's already like 2000, what, six.

By the time they get bought by Green Mountain Coffee Roasters. So they're running outta time. Um, anyway, the patent, so the patent is patent, uh, 5 3 2 5 7 6 5. Application filed in September, 1992 by John Sylvan and Peter Dragony. And they had to, they'd set out to build this like single sage, single [00:35:00] beverage brewer where the coffee's actually brewed on demand, right?

It, it was never gonna be, they didn't want instant coffee like they have in the coffee vending machines because they wanted people to like be willing to drink it. So the process for brewing this coffee needs needed to work fast. Like a first, A person needs to be able to go through the whole process of making coffee within about one minute, ideally less than one minute. You know, I think it takes about 30 seconds nowadays to, to brew a a Keurig coffee once you've done it a few times.

Xiao: this one minute just something they impose them themselves or they're just like, oh, companies are not gonna buy this if like we're getting their workers to like take two minutes out of their workday for coffee.

Dan Slimmon: that's possible. 'cause they were really selling it on the basis that like people would spend more time in the office and not, and so they'd be more productive. So that's probably a large part of it. Um, another large part of it is just, you can only make one at a time. [00:36:00] So if it takes, you know, if it takes five minutes to make a regular pot of coffee and you can serve five people with it, then it needs to take one minute to make a Keurig pot pot of, uh, cup, cup of coffee if it only serves one person. Otherwise, it's, you're wasting more time. yeah. So that it needs to be done fucking fast, uh, which you can't do if you're scooping beans, grinding beans, setting up filters, pouring water. users do not have time for shit like that. So to make the process fast, the sylvan and drag want to use highly pressurized water to help the brewing process go faster. And so they invent this single serving coffee pod as we know it. The K-cup is fully sealed for freshness. It's rigid enough to not squish when you puncture it with a needle. Uh, it, it, it doesn't melt or explode when it's filled with boiling hot, pressurized water. Uh, so pretty, you know, [00:37:00] took some, took some doing to make that happen.

Xiao: Yeah, I didn't realize it was, uh, pressurized and everything. I thought it was just like,

Dan Slimmon: It's

Xiao: uh, like a drip coffee type thing. Yeah, that makes sense. To make it go faster.

Dan Slimmon: They thought they were gonna have to, so I, I, according to Keurig now, their, um, their coffee brew at like 0.95 atmospheres or something. It's, it's about room pressure that it, when the patent, when they filed the patent, they thought they were gonna have to use like highly pressured, highly pressurized water. Uh, but um, nowadays they don't do that. I don't know what happened there.

Xiao: Yeah, that it almost sounds like it would've been a better product, 'cause then at least it would've been like you get espresso ish.

Dan Slimmon: It goes,

Xiao: Yeah.

Dan Slimmon: rather than the, the, the Keurig, which just goes like, uh, anyway, I don't know that they, they didn't, they decided they didn't need to use the high, the high pressure. [00:38:00] so it has three compo. The pod has three components. I, I, um, it has a base, which is a little flat bottomed plastic bowl with a flat lip across the top edge. Uh, it's got a cover, which the patent envisions as like a domed lid that seals to the lip of the base, but the modern K-cup just has that piece of foil instead of a lid. Right? And then finally, um, which is basically just a little paper cup that hangs down, partway into the base and is filled with some coffee grounds, and it gets, like, in with, with the lid. When the lid gets sealed into the pod, the edge of the, the, the filter gets sealed in there. So it, it won't, it doesn't move. And it's, and it's packed with coffee grounds. That's all K-Cup is. I bought one at the corner store and took it apart at my kitchen table to confirm that's all that's in there. Um, the guy at the corner store raised an eyebrow when I paid for a single decaf [00:39:00] Keurig cup and then just shoved it in my pocket instead of using their machine to brew it. Uh, I've, but um, I'm sure you've seen Stranger Things. It's a corner store.

Xiao: Yeah, I'm, I'm sure that's not the weirdest thing that guy's seen that day.

Dan Slimmon: Definitely, definitely not, definitely not. yeah. Uh, uh, a convenience store in East Rock, new Haven, you see very different, very different people all day. the guy, the guy with the guy who shoved a decaf curated coffee pot in his pocket, you don't even remember. So I'm, I'm, it's all right. Uh, yeah, but I took it apart, you know, that's, that's what it is.

And, and the lid, uh, and. Uh, they also, like, they flush it with nitrogen gas right before they, right before they seal it so that the coffee stays doesn't get stale. Right.

Xiao: Okay. I mean, that's, that's actually more than I thought they would do for those K-Cups. So I, I mean, at least they're like, we're [00:40:00] gonna try and make this like, uh, I mean, I've never had a K-cup that tasted amazing, so I don't know where all this technology's doing, but like, at least they thought about trying to make it good.

Dan Slimmon: It doesn't, it, they never needed it to taste amazing. Right. They just needed it to not taste like piss. And it doesn't, Keurig coffee doesn't taste like piss. It tastes like, like read the Wikipedia page on coffee and then made, I don't know. It tastes, it tastes like, uh, it tastes normal. It tastes like as central, like five out of 10 coffee, right?

Xiao: Yeah.

Dan Slimmon: maybe four outta 10.

Xiao: yeah, I mean, you know, it will, I will say it is nice when I've stayed at Airbnbs where it's like, okay, like there's a coffee machine, quote unquote, and

Dan Slimmon: Yeah.

Xiao: a tiny space and that's all they can fit, which is fine. Like it has its uses, but

it's kind of annoying that [00:41:00] like.

People are starting to use K-Cups just like in daily life now,

Dan Slimmon: yes.

Xiao: where it's like they could have a regular coffee, but it's a K-Cup.

Dan Slimmon: Yes. And, and that b and b, before they had Keurig machines, they could have come up with, there was some other, we had, we had something for this

Xiao: Mm-hmm.

Dan Slimmon: there was the, you know, there might be a coffee shop across the street. They might have, like, there's, there's a lot of different ways to make. To, to, to make people who stay in your b and b happy. Um, yeah, it certainly doesn't necessitate this catastrophe. so the lid is sealed against the base, airtight with an adhesive, like I said. And so when you use, so you use the cur Keurig machine, you put the P pod, you put the pod in the little pod shaped slot. You pull down a lever and it goes kunk. And then that seals the machine shut and pierces the pod with two needles.

One needle goes into the pod from above, one comes in [00:42:00] from above, from below, and then you press brew. And when you press brew, the, the top needle shoots hot water into the grounds, extracts the coffee rapidly. Coffee goes through the filter and into the empty base. And then the needle at the bottom sucks the coffee out and Spits it into your mug. Yum. Coffee. and, and so that's pretty straightforward.

The K-Cup will absolutely never be recyclable
---

Dan Slimmon: Um, but they, they, they, uh, they specify the, the, the K-cup the patent. They specify the K-cup base has to be made of polystyrene or could be made of polystyrene, ethylene, vinyl, alcohol, and polyethylene, is three plastics.

That's a lot of plastics. But apparently it wasn't enough because Keurig actually ended up adding a fourth kind of plastic in development for reasons that are obscure. And so this mix of plastics has ensured that these things will absolutely never be eco-friendly.

Xiao: Wait, so there's, it's [00:43:00] not just one plastic, it's like multiple layers of different plastics in these cups.

Dan Slimmon: of layers of different plastics. Yeah.

Xiao: Wow, that feels over-engineered. But who am I to say? Maybe this is what causes their KC cups to not explode. Hot coffee all over your faces.

Dan Slimmon: It is. I I think they could not, I think they were unable to achieve what they achieved without this many plastics, uh, which which, which is sad because, know, if you have four plastics all alloyed together, you, that's not a recyclable thing. You have built something that can never, ever be recyclable at scale.

Xiao: Right, like even if someone was like, I'm going to disassemble this K-Cup, scoop out the grounds and compost it, and then try and recycle it. Not possible.

Dan Slimmon: not really possible. Um, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll talk about how they've, so they've tried to, know. It, it's, it's, [00:44:00] it was, it was always been a pipe dream. Um, it, and, and so each time you, each time you drink one, you throw a K-cup in the trash. If you end up making dozen, a dozen coffees throughout the day, you've thrown a dozen K-cups in the trash and. Probably so is everyone else in your office. So you your, your trash is just full of these unrecyclable garbage things. Um, so this wastefulness, this non-recyclable is, is, has remained an albatross around Keurig's neck to this day because every time Keurig gets mentioned in the press, even if it's an article about how incredibly successful this Keurig brand is, the writer always has to say something about how wasteful the pods are and how they're not recyclable. Reporters are constantly asking them about this. They just can't get any like, purely positive press, right? No matter what they do. And they, they, no matter what they do, they can't make the product environmentally friendly. It's just not possible. It's not that kind of [00:45:00] object. I, I don't know. I just feel like if you're a consum as a consumer, if you can't get it together to brew a pot of coffee in a drip machine, or if the only way you'll drink coffee at home is if your grandson buys you a Keurig machine for Christmas. you just don't like coffee that much,

Xiao: Yeah, this all goes back to the, like, this does not feel like a problem that needed to be solved. Like someone that only needs one cup of coffee and don't want to make it, maybe, maybe they're more of a tea person. Maybe they should branch out and try some other hot beverages.

Dan Slimmon: Try some other hot beverages. There's lots of things that can perk you up in the morning.

Xiao: Yeah,

Dan Slimmon: legal or illegal Pick your poison. I I People,

Xiao: yeah,

Dan Slimmon: Yeah, I just like stopped all these people who don't really like coffee enough to brew. It could just stop drinking coffee. And then maybe Keurig could just sell the pods directly to the landfills. Make [00:46:00] a, that's a, that's a business model.

Xiao: yeah. Why not?

Dan Slimmon: Um, everybody's about growth.

Keurig's meteoric growth
---

Dan Slimmon: so for a while at least, nobody's heard of Keurig. Nobody's writing about them. But in 2006, Keurig gets acquired by green Mountain Coffee Roasters, like we talked about. And this is, there's a marked shift in Keurig's focus at this time from the office market to the home market. The, the corporate mission becomes brewer on every counter and a beverage for every occasion. Which is, which is a horrible vision. And in order to achieve this horrible vision, they're gonna need to make the machines way smaller and way cheaper, which takes about six years of research. and it's around this time, this from 2006 to 2012, that Bob Stiller is just living it the fuck up man.

He, he buys, he buys and renovates 164 foot yacht. He snaps up Tom Brady's old apartment on the [00:47:00] upper west side of Manhattan for a cool 17 and a half million smackarooneys, uh, along with at least two properties ar in and around Palm Beach, Florida, totaling around 18 million additional smackarooneys. And, uh, here's, so he's, he's this like former composting, you know, Deepak Chopra loving, rolling paper man, who's finally gotten some real spending money and is instantly transformed into a complete asshole. gotta love it.

Xiao: Yeah, I mean. At least that's one guy that's destroying the environment the right way by enriching himself.

Dan Slimmon: Yeah. At least have some fun with it.

Xiao: Yeah. Uh, that's, that's crazy. That's, I wonder what that transformation's like for like, just like everyone close to him even being like,

Dan Slimmon: Bob,

Xiao: what, did you have a stroke? What, what, what happened here?

Dan Slimmon: did you have a near death experience and decide that what really matters in life is being [00:48:00] mega rich?

Xiao: Yeah. That's.

Dan Slimmon: Yeah, it's wild. Uh, but tragically, Bob Stiller's love affair with billionairehood was cut short in May of 2012. 'cause like all this money he's been spending is not actually his money. got, he's got a ton of Green Mountain stock, he, it's in lockup.

He can't sell it. So instead he's, he's. Uh, he had to have that yacht right Fucking now, right? So he's taken out huge loans with the, with his Green Mountain shares as collateral on the loans. Uh, but in 2012, the value of the, of the stock plummets. And be fine if he hadn't taken out the loans, but now the banks are the loan, them, the money are like, Hey, um, we'd like more collateral, please, Bob.

And Bob's like, well, I don't have any more money. All my money is borrowed from you and I don't think I can make a profit selling this yacht in the next month. So, well, I don't know what you want me to do. And the banks are like, well, why don't you just sell some of your [00:49:00] Green Mountain shares? Why? You know?

And Bob's like, well, I can't sell my Green Mountain shares. They're in lockup. That would be illegal. And the banks are like, that sounds like a you problem. Tough, tough shit. so Bob ends up losing a huge amount of money. He's no longer a billionaire. He gets forced out of the leadership of, of Green Mountain. Which, I love. I love this

Xiao: Yeah.

Dan Slimmon: a, like, you don't get to see billionaires losing everything anymore. It's, it's really refreshing.

Xiao: Yeah. That's crazy that like he like, well one, that there was consequences actually for someone that rich for once. But also like, this makes me wonder even more about what happened to him to go from like, you know, this crunchy hippie dude to like, I'm just gonna like accumulate all this like yachts and.

Like wealth porn

Dan Slimmon: Tom

Xiao: and then to lose all of it. Yeah. [00:50:00] Without even being able to keep any of it.

Dan Slimmon: I know. He's, he's, um, he's a very, he's a fascinating character and the, the Champlain College School of of Business is still named after him. If you wanna know more about Bob Stiller, you could try reading his, um, his 2020 business book that he wrote, that he's been hawking or about how to run a successful business.

Xiao: Does it end like right at the yacht by it is like, and that's how I got my yard at the end.

Dan Slimmon: I would assume so. I, I would assume so. I haven't, when, whenever he's on interviews that whenever he does interviews, the reporter always has to say, um, this is Bob Stiller. Bob became a billionaire in the 19, uh, in the, in the early two thousands with Keurig. They can't say This is billionaire Bob Stiller, because he's not.

Xiao: Ooh. Yeah, that's, that's awkward.

Dan Slimmon: Fascinating guy. So, so Bob Stiller is succeeded as CEO by Brian Kelly, a former [00:51:00] Coca-Cola executive. And this is right about when Keurig's value goes stratospheric right after that dip that, that bankrupted Bob Stiller. The, the line starts going way, way, way up between, uh, in the 27 months from June, 2012 to September of 2014, green Mountain's stock price rises by a factor of eight. The, the Keurig machine is so successful in that, in 2014, green Mountain Coffee Roasters changes its name to Keurig Green Mountain, which incidentally is a juxtaposition of two things that can't really coexist in the world.

Xiao: Look, as long as they paint those K-cups green,

Dan Slimmon: Oh,

Xiao: we will have entire dump of a Green Mountains.

Dan Slimmon: That would've been, that's then, now that's what I call greenwashing.

Xiao: Yeah, they should. They should pay me in K-cups so that I can never use them.

Dan Slimmon: What am I gonna do with all this space in my

Xiao: yeah,

Dan Slimmon: by 2015, there's a Keurig brewer in almost one in three American [00:52:00] homes.

Xiao: one in three. That is insane.

Dan Slimmon: Isn't that insane? Wild.

Xiao: trying to think of, like my friends, I, I mean, I'm, they must be weirdly distributed. That's all I'm gonna say.

Dan Slimmon: they're mostly distributed, I would imagine in the middle of the country is just a, my guess. Uh, in Canada it's even more, I think Canada it's like 40%.

Xiao: Okay, so that part I can actually understand. I did a road trip up through Canada and like some of those parts are like insanely remote, where like you can't get anything there and it's like, okay, like I get it. If like your only access to coffee is like, you go to Costco once a year and you have to buy these sealed things so they don't go bad, but like, yeah.

Dan Slimmon: One in three American homes. [00:53:00] Uh, yeah. It's, it's just, it's a very like gee whiz, sharper image kind of product. Uh,

Xiao: Mm-hmm.

Dan Slimmon: like, I can't prove this, but I think the number of people buying Keurig brewers for themselves is pretty small. It's, it's mainly a gift that people give to other people, right? Um, you need, you need, like, you need to get a Christmas gift for your dad and, you know, your dad drinks like pre-ground Folgers that he makes in a rickety old Mr.

Coffee that he hasn't washed in years. So you decide to drag him into the 21st century with a, with a shiny new Keurig machine, right? Uh. And, and, and it's perfect. This, this is like exactly the, the right kind of consumption for a thing like Keurig. Because if, if you're considering buying a Keurig machine for yourself, might think holistically about the, the place of coffee in your life, uh, about like what a Keurig machine would be replacing for you, you want to give that up.

You might think about how expensive the coffee pods [00:54:00] are. Um, the, the New York Times estimates the cost of K-cups at about $50 per pound of coffee as opposed to about 20, $20 per pound for traditional coffee. You,

Xiao: that is. Yeah.

Dan Slimmon: it's right. Uh, yeah. And people are just, oh, well you just set up an Amazon, you just like set up an Amazon recurring order for it and they just keep coming. right. So, but if, if you're, if you're getting a Keurig for yourself. have to think about all that stuff. But if you're getting your, a Keurig as a nifty, as a gift that's nifty for somebody to open at Christmas. Like you don't have to consider any of that. You're just buying it for your friend or your loved one.

You're buying them the gift of modern convenience. Um, I dunno, I just think that the, the, the absurd popularity of Keurigs as a gift really shows how little we think of each other.

Xiao: Yeah, that's, that makes a lot of sense actually. It's like, here you go. Now find a place for this on your countertop. I did my part with a giant box with [00:55:00] the ribbon on it.

Dan Slimmon: exactly. Isn't it shiny?

Xiao: Yeah.

Dan Slimmon: isn't it? You're welcome.

Xiao: Yeah, man, I, I mean, it's like the Scantron thing all over again. It's just like, I can't believe how much they're overcharging for these cups.

Dan Slimmon: And you can do that if you own all the factories.

The disingenuous "Grounds to Grow On" program
---

Dan Slimmon: So they're, they're growing right? And, and they, uh, their image problems are just getting exponentially worse. They're constantly reported on how bad their, their environmental, uh, uh, impact is. So to combat this, in 2011, Keurig launches the Ineptly named Grounds to Grow on program. Very clunky name. Uh, do, do not like it. They should have hired somebody to come up with a better name. The, the, the, the, this is a program where they'll ship you empty boxes for your office that you can toss your used K-cups in. when the box is full, you pack it up and you ship it off to [00:56:00] Keurig facility and they'll recycle the pods for you.

Xiao: But like how, if it's all these plastics that are not recyclable,

Dan Slimmon: Great question, Xiao. So it's the, the way they do it is they make the false claim that they're recycling the pots. they do is they, to get them all at the facility, they disassemble the K-cup, they compost the coffee grounds, and then they take the leftover plastic base and the foil lid, and they throw 'em in a big incinerator run by a company called Co Covanta, uh, to, to, to turn 'em into electrical energy.

Xiao: uh, I'm, I'm sure the people around there are. Like loving the fact that they're just burning plastics

Dan Slimmon: Well, all the

Xiao: right next to

Dan Slimmon: Uh,

Xiao: bad can come of that.

Dan Slimmon: Yeah, I

Xiao: Well,

Dan Slimmon: I didn't have time to talk about Covanta, but they've, they've been racking up emissions fines and labor relations fines [00:57:00] also. Um, none of this is, none of this is good.

Xiao: yeah. I mean it's, it's not exactly surprising what your business model is. We will take your plastic and then burn it.

Dan Slimmon: And we've constructed a, we've constructed a, a model where somebody will say, thank you, thank you for burning my plastic. Here's,

Xiao: Yeah.

Dan Slimmon: millions of dollars.

Xiao: Yeah. Okay. That, that is wild. Okay. That is, that is one way to recycle, I guess.

Dan Slimmon: yep. Yeah. Recycling with quotes. So, yeah. So in, in, in their, in their 2013 sustainability, it's not like it's even that big of a. Even if it were an eco-friendly process. In their 2013 sustainability report, Keurig proudly announced that 4.7 million K-cups were recovered that year through their grounds to grow on program. that's 4.7 million with an m. This is out of the 8.3 billion with a [00:58:00] b K-cups that were made that year.

Xiao: Wow. Okay.

Dan Slimmon: So they re, they reclaimed about a 20th of a percent of these things from landfills and instead, uh, put them through an incinerator to, to, to settle as, as dust in, in our cities and lungs.

Xiao: Okay. That's, that's, uh, that's amazing that they even brought that number up in their report.

Dan Slimmon: Yeah, just don't mention

Xiao: Like, yeah. They might as well be like, yeah. Uh, Mary in Portland, she like disassembles the K-cups and dumps the grounds in her, uh, in her,

Dan Slimmon: In a

Xiao: know, vegetable garden, like every day.

Dan Slimmon: Yeah. Yeah.

Xiao: She brought at least three boxes last year.

Dan Slimmon: Hey, everybody's gotta put in the work. Um, that's how, that's how we do grounds to grow on. I mean, it, was never, the point was never to like actually be eco-friendly. Right. I, but they must have

Xiao: Yeah.

Dan Slimmon: from the, they're engineer, they have [00:59:00] engineers working there. They must have known from the very beginning, this was never gonna do anything.

But they get to, now they get to talk to, every time a reporter asks them about their environmental problems, they can say, oh, well we have this grounds to grow on program, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Xiao: Yeah. Which is amazing that they didn't have a snappier name because it is only for marketing.

Dan Slimmon: Right. Come up with something good.

Xiao: Yeah.

Dan Slimmon: They came up with a better name for it eventually. But it's still not

Xiao: but like presumably they just like are keeping this going, recycling, like, I don't know, 0.01% of their cups still.

Dan Slimmon: Yeah. At most. At most.

Xiao: Yeah.

Dan Slimmon: Yeah. Uh, well, so they, they eventually, they get, they get like. Local recycling programs to, to do it. But most of the, most recyclers in the country still don't accept K-cups. Or they, they're salty about it because,

Xiao: Right.

Dan Slimmon: but one of the, one of the problems [01:00:00] with it is they, like, they, they're, they're too small and, um, and like and so they like gum up the machines.

They get like, they shatter and they get into the machines and they make the machine stop working,

Xiao: Right. Congrats. Your multimillion dollar plastic recycling machine now has coffee grounds in it and is rested. You're welcome.

Dan Slimmon: Oh, no, no, no. If you do wanna recycle them, you still have to, um, peel the lid off yourself, uh, dump the, dump the grounds out and put the pod in your recycling bin, which

Xiao: Yeah, I'm, I'm sure everyone that's that sees a flyer from their town that's like, you can now recycle K-cups, uh, do that religiously, rinse them out without reading any of the fine print of what you need to do.

Dan Slimmon: I, I'll do, I'll do a, I'll do an episode on recycling. So that's a big, it's such a big topic, but I gotta do an

Xiao: Yeah.

Dan Slimmon: [01:01:00] sometime. 'cause there's a whole scam there. Not, I'm not

Xiao: Uh,

Dan Slimmon: is as a whole is a scam, but it's like there's some, there's some bad, bad uses of technology.

Xiao: yeah. Anyway, like I, I still, I can't believe like municipalities that run recycling centers are willing to go along with this idea of like,

Dan Slimmon: yeah,

Xiao: tell people you can toss K-cups in there and like, now they gotta hire some poor schmuck that's like raking through all the plastic recycling stream to fish out K-cups with the, uh, foil still on there.

And man, it seems like a nightmare.

Dan Slimmon: it is a

Xiao: But anyhow, I guess at least they got their greenwashing on.

Dan Slimmon: Yeah, you gotta do something. Um, it, it helps, it helps, it helps the environments in people's imaginations, and that's what matters. So, uh,

The K-Cup patent expires, Keurig tries DRM
---

Dan Slimmon: so Keurig is hugely successful from, uh, through about 20 14, 20 15. But one of the tricky things about Keurig's business [01:02:00] model is you, they, they're selling the machine at a low margin, like we said, and they're, they're making it back up on the pods. Um, if you can pump out billions of cheap coffee pods and sell them at a huge profit margin, so can anybody else. Right. And, and to make matters worse, your competitors can just, can just make pods. You know, you have to make the machines, these, which are very expensive to make customers already have Keurig machines.

And so your competitors can massively undercut you. And this is exactly what happens. So, um, when the K-Cup patent expires in 2012, companies move in right away and they start selling their own Keurig compatible pods for like 20, 30% less, which is an existential threat for Keurig. They cannot survive without the huge sales volume on the pods.

They, otherwise, they're just making machines that lose money. Uh, so, so they need, they need to solve this, [01:03:00] but they've got a few tricks up their sleeve. Uh, four tricks. In fact. Trick one, vertical integration. make sure nobody can make competing pods because Keurig owns all the suppliers and distributors, or at least has exclusivity agreements with them. Great smart Trick two, horizontal integration, which just means any competitors you can't lock out. You, you buy up. Trick three, Sue, anybody that you can't buy, which Keurig does, for example, in 2012 to Stern Foods, a, a Canadian brand, which was making a competing kind of pod. And then there's trick four, the dirtiest trick and least effective of all. So in the fall of 2014, KGM Keurig Green Mountain launches their newest home brewer. The Keurig 2.0, which is a, a beautiful, sleek, shiny device with a fancy color. LCD display looks great on a, it looks great at [01:04:00] a Williams Sonoma.

Looks great at a, at a sharper image. Uh, and the really cool thing about the Keurig 2.0, the, the like disruptive innovation that it brings to the market is that if you try to brew a pod not licensed by the Keurig Green Mountain,

Xiao: no.

Dan Slimmon: the fancy color display will tell you, quote, oops, this pack wasn't designed for this brewer.

Please try one of the hundreds of packs with the Keurig logo.

Xiao: Oh no.

Dan Slimmon: What'll they

Xiao: So now they got like RFIDs and like some other bullshit on these K-cups now.

Dan Slimmon: They haven't talked about, they haven't, they, they never said, well, how it worked well. But yes, it's, it's, it's, it's DRM. Your coffee has DRM. Now

Xiao: Right? Because like these two needles cannot possibly poke through any other piece of foil,

Dan Slimmon: you might get bad coffee. The, but the coffee might not be up to Keurig quality standards. We're protect that. That was their, that was their main [01:05:00] justification. It's like, we're protecting you from imitators that might have bad coffee or like, not have as high safety standards as our licensed pods do.

Xiao: right? So like how long till they start, like. Putting expiration dates on these pods and go, oh, you bought this box more than three weeks ago. Better get a new fresh box for that fresh coffee taste.

Dan Slimmon: they, well, they did have, they did force people to get fresh ones because, uh. People. So people would go out and buy these new Keurig machines and they'd get home. They, because they're, you know, we've, we've made people u accustomed to buying the newest model of every gadget they own, right?

And so they go out and they buy the new Keurig and they get home and they go to make coffee. And it doesn't even work with the pods they already have.

Xiao: Oh man. How are they coming up with these like, actual things that like I'm trying to make fun of and like they're even worse. [01:06:00] Like, how does your, how does your product not even work with your own product?

Dan Slimmon: they should make you CEO of Keurig. Uh, you've got better ideas than fucking Brian Kelly, who in uh, 2015 at addressing this controversy, said, quote, underestimated the emotion behind having old pods. of that emotion is something we learned, and we certainly learned it, and we'll do better next time. Which is such a like mealy mouthed, squirmy way to say this. Like, just say we're sorry we made a mistake. Or even better say, we had to put profit ahead of customer satisfaction, you know? Tough shit. I just wish CEOs would say what they mean sometimes.

Xiao: Yeah, I mean, I mean everyone knows like the whole idea behind it, like, you know, you don't need to hide it behind like corporate speak. It's like, okay, like we get it. You want these machines that only brew your cups and you didn't [01:07:00] think of this five years ago when you made these cups that I have in my like cupboard.

Dan Slimmon: Right. You haven't invented anything

Xiao: Yeah.

Dan Slimmon: since 1992 and now your patents run out, so you've got to, you've got to blame all of us. Yeah, it sucks. Uh, it really, really sucks. I mean immediately, like, just like every other kind of DRM scheme, Keurig's shit was hacked immediately. And I like, just a handful of days after the release of the Keurig 2.0, an anonymous YouTube video was posted, showing how to get around the new protections.

And it's, it's hilariously trivial. You don't even have to know how the protection works. It's built into the K-Cups lid, so you can just simply take the lid from another official K-cup and stick it on top of your illegal pirate K-cup and no more. Oops. Right. Um, the, the video actually goes a step further and they show you how to trim a little slice off an official [01:08:00] pod and tape it to the inside of the machine, right where the sensor is.

Xiao: Amazing. Yeah.

Dan Slimmon: It's really,

Xiao: Well that is, that is ingenious. That makes sense. I guess. I mean, it can't be that complicated 'cause they're manufacturing like what Billions of these K-cups. So you can, you can't have something where it's like, oh, everything's got unique cereal with a, you know, encryption key.

Dan Slimmon: yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's not a microprocessor in

Xiao: Yeah.

Dan Slimmon: yeah, it's, it's wild. I mean, it's a wild story. I, the, the thing got, almost all one star reviews Amazon reviews, and 80% of the one star reviews were about the, the how bullshit the new DRM scheme was. Um, and I could find very little reporting on how the DRM actually worked, but the Verge reported in 2014 that a Keurig representative told them at a trade show, uh, that it had something to do with [01:09:00] infrared light. So I did a quick patent search for the key terms infrared ink and foil, which turned up an international patent for infrared reflective ink, film and tape assigned to a company called Sun Chemical. So I went down the sun chemical rabbit hole bit and lo and behold. Keurig Green Mountain took Sun Chemical to court in 2017. Uh, as far as I can tell, their relationship was never reported in the press, but I found a summary judgment in this court case on Pacer, which has a lot of juicy info. They, so, so, um, Keurig licensed sun chemicals, uh, infrared reflective ink for their new K-Cup DRM scheme.

And then they later sued Sun Chemical because Keurig's competitors had figured out how to make unlicensed pods, that worked in the new machines anyway, so it seems like Keurig suspected that Sun Chemical had violated their exclusivity agreement and sold their special ink to [01:10:00] Keurig's competitors. it's not clear whether they actually did that or not. Most of the records from the court case are sealed, so we'll never know. Uh, but I, I suspect that's what happened.

Xiao: Okay, so it's just like, okay, we got some IR reflective ink and as long as you got like three red dots here or whatever, like it'll work.

Dan Slimmon: Yes. Uh, who knew? Well, why, how could that possibly be broken by, by hackers,

Xiao: You can't see with your bare eyes. It's not possible.

Dan Slimmon: will know. Nobody will know how it, what it, what it, nobody will look inside the machine and be like, oh, there's a, there's another photo tube in here. What's going on with that guy?

Xiao: Yeah. But, okay, so at this point, like, are all curig cups still got this like

Dan Slimmon: I

Xiao: IR reflective thing? Oh yeah.

Dan Slimmon: phased it out, um, because it wasn't [01:11:00] working anyway, so why keep it?

Xiao: Alright.

Dan Slimmon: I, I don't, I haven't tested one.

like basically within, within the year they had rolled back the Keurig 2.0 fucking bombed and they rolled back the whole concept. 'cause everybody hated it so much. so this is,

K-cups for noodle soup
---

Dan Slimmon: so this is why by September of 2015, Keurig is hurting, uh, the, the DRM thing has made everyone hate them and also didn't work. they're still getting constant bad press about how their discarded pods are congealing into a huge floating continent in the Pacific Ocean. But they still have a secret weapon. Uh, here, Xiao, I'm gonna play you this promotional video from July of 2015

Xiao: Wait, is that Noodles? What?

What? No, what [01:12:00] that is,

Dan Slimmon: What you're hear, what

Xiao: that is horrifying.

Dan Slimmon: Shout just went insane in 30 seconds from watching a single YouTube video. Sohow tell the people what was in the video.

Xiao: Uh, I guess instant noodles from Campbell's, but brewed in a K-Cup somehow. I, I, I think my mind's still broken of like, like one that they would think that anyone would want to do this, but two, like, I don't know. Actually I've, I've lost my train of thought. This is,

Dan Slimmon: Why build

Xiao: this is, this is insane. Like

Dan Slimmon: It is. It is. It's insane. Yeah. So, so the, it's a, it's a broth. They put like a broth powder in the K-cup, and then you put the noodles in your mug and you brew the soup right into your mug, and you drink the noodle soup out of your mug.

Xiao: right, it's like [01:13:00] instant ramen, but like split up so that you have like the flavor packet all gunking up your K-Cup tubes.

Dan Slimmon: Mm-hmm.

Xiao: Presumably for your next coffee.

Dan Slimmon: Uh, it's an insane, I had, I had never heard of this, and I was lived such a, I lived such an innocent life before I saw this

Xiao: Wait, so does this exist as a thing or is this just a concept or,

Dan Slimmon: no, man. Uh, they, they did make 'em. They did make 'em, but then, but then they stopped making 'em because it's disgusting. Nobody wanted it. Uh uh. Fucking

Xiao: I, I like to know what the next cup of coffee tastes like after someone

Dan Slimmon: Oh God.

Xiao: this.

Dan Slimmon: Oh God. yeah. I mean, they're trying to solve the problem of the coffee tasting bad when it's made at the office and people let it sit around and they accidentally veted [01:14:00] invented a thing that made it taste like fucking chicken broth

Xiao: Yeah. Okay. This is.

Dan Slimmon: soup. Soup is really the coffee of of foods if you ask me. thi this was the, this was supposed to be like the Hail Mary that was gonna save the brand after the whole DRM thing. I mean, Jesus fucking Christ. Keurig's whole thing is based on the narrative that people are too busy to make coffee and they, they've got like important grownup things to do and they just can't spare a few seconds to make coffee, but like, just make coffee. You have time. It's okay. Just make, just, just make coffee and for God's sake just make soup. do not drink soup from a Keurig machine. Have some goddamn self-respect people.

Xiao: Right. I mean the also, the part of this is that like it's a Campbell's like soup, like

Dan Slimmon: Right.

Xiao: already like you open a can and you add the same can of water in and you're done. Like they [01:15:00] already made like a. It pretty terrible soup product that is dead simple and easy to do.

Dan Slimmon: Exactly. Yeah.

Xiao: uh, this is the I man capitalism like makes me very disappointed sometimes.

Dan Slimmon: so it's, um, it's so depressing. I, uh.

How Keurig thrives on alienation
---

Dan Slimmon: Yeah, I just, I really think, um, are only appealing because of our alienation from one another and, and from our own humanity at a massive scale. Uh, which, which is, which is what capitalism thrives on. Like the, the examples that are always given of Keurig use cases are things like, uh, there's a, there's a husband and a wife and the wife likes hazelnut coffee, but she only ever makes regular coffee 'cause her husband likes regular coffee.

And finally they have a [01:16:00] Keurig machine and they can each make the kind of coffee they like. Or there's an office full of people who can't be bothered to, to lift a finger to make coffee, uh, to, if it's gonna benefit anyone else. Like, like John Sylvans eighties semiconductor experience. Uh, and, and the. So the premise basically is any constraints imposed on your coffee consumption by your relationship with others are bad. And these little nitrogen puffed caffeine packets that make coffee that tastes slightly better than cardboard, we're gonna finally free you from all those unfair constraints of people you love and care about. It's, it's, it's sick.

Xiao: Yeah, that's, that's crazy that it's like, well, instead of maybe trying different things or like having like interpersonal relationships and like talking through something, let's just mediate our way through this with [01:17:00] technology that makes both our lives worse.

Dan Slimmon: Yes. Let's, let's, instead of compromising, let's scatter trillions of plastic pods all over the ocean and land of the earth.

Xiao: Yeah. Well.

Dan Slimmon: so, so

What Keurig has been up to lately
---

Dan Slimmon: despite Spike Keurig's promise in their 2014 sustainable sustainability report that all their K-cups would be recyclable by 2020, that has of course not happened. Keurig has claimed since 2020 that their pods are recyclable, but just recently in September of 2024, they were fined by the SEC for saying their pods are recyclable. Because, because at least a third of recycling facilities in the US refuse to recycle K-cups.

Xiao: Right as they should.

Dan Slimmon: Yeah, right.

Xiao: Like if you're recycling is, we would toss it in an incinerator. It's not,

Dan Slimmon: Um, but [01:18:00] no, we're not gonna do

Xiao: yeah. Yeah.

Dan Slimmon: Uh, yeah, you gotta, like, you, if you, if you wanna recycle these things, you gotta, like, peel it, peel the foil off with your fingernails with the, and get like hot. mixture under your fingernails. Uh, I, you know, like I said, I took one apart and that one

Xiao: Mm-hmm.

Dan Slimmon: and that was hard. Uh, so this is pure, it's pure. Greenwashing always was

Xiao: but they're still, they're still saying they're recyclable even after they got fined by the FEC or

Dan Slimmon: I knew they have a different kind. They have a different name for their program now, but it's still, they're, they're, they're claiming they have some eco-friendly thing they do with it. which is not, which is not true. in, in 2018, Keurig merged with Dr. Pepper Snapple group to become Keurig, Dr.

Pepper, Keurig, Dr. Pepper, and Snapple being sort of the three musketeers of beverages with declining popularity and, um, and even Dr. Pepper and Snapple are [01:19:00] too good for Keurig because in August of 2025, they announced plans to unwind the merger, leaving Keurig to fend for themselves.

Xiao: Wow. That's quite the story that like even, I mean, even Mr. Snapple realizes this is a bad idea. I guess. All those fun facts really do teach, uh, Mr. Snapple some

Dan Slimmon: It's

Xiao: good info.

Dan Slimmon: Snapple. It's, it's, uh, Mr. Coffee, Dr. Pepper and Reverend Snapple.

Xiao: Uh oh. Okay.

Dan Slimmon: Yeah. Um, they, they just, they we could, we, they we're like, they're like, we cannot deal with these fucking guys at, at Keurig. Um, yeah. So, so the, the Keurig machine is, is another one of these inventions where if it had been, if it had never been invented, the world could have just. Gone on doing what it was doing and nobody would've like [01:20:00] missed it in some cosmic way.

Right. As, as Darby Hoover on behalf of the National Resources Defense Council, put it in an article way back in 2010, at some point you

Xiao: At some point you have to ask.

Dan Slimmon: we need this product enough that we need to be trying to find all these different solutions for the components of it? Or can we just go back to the old way that we used to make coffee and it was good enough? Exactly right. Darby

Xiao: Yeah,

Dan Slimmon: Exactly right.

Xiao: that is amazing sentiment. It's like this entire episode is like really pissing me off. It's like

Dan Slimmon: excellent.

Xiao: I knew about the whole like. Environmental thing, obviously, but it's just like how all the reasonings of that led up to, it just makes no sense.

Dan Slimmon: This is why thank you for saying that, Xiao, this is why I make this podcast is to piss my friends off about technological innovation.

Xiao: Well, achievement [01:21:00] unlocked.

Dan Slimmon: I, I just think we need, um, we need better tools as a society for keeping shit like this from coming into being right. we can't just rely on what consumers are willing to pay for as a barometer of what should be produced. 'cause American consumers are so atomized and alienated from one another that we're willing to ignore almost all the social impacts of our buying decisions in exchange for a mild increase in convenience. Uh, so in 2016, the City of Hamburg, Germany flat out banned coffee pods in government run buildings, including many schools and universities citing their environmental impact. You know, let's have some of that energy please. It's the, it's the least we can do.

Xiao: Yeah, I mean, that makes a lot of sense. Like you would think that like. One, like it is [01:22:00] so expensive buying all these pods. Like, you know, if we're gonna like, try and make government efficient, maybe this is the way to do it. Just like, stop buying all these pods. Start like collaborating with each other.

Dan Slimmon: Suddenly

Xiao: Yeah.

Dan Slimmon: money to, to feed all the homeless people in our city where, uh Oh, right. 'cause we were spending all that money on coffee pots.

Xiao: Yeah. And then burning them right next door to recycle them. Causing all these health issues everywhere.

Dan Slimmon: Yeah. It's mind blowing. Um, so shower, you're gonna go out and run, out and buy a, buy a Keurig.

Xiao: Oh yeah. And for everyone I know. 'cause like, I mean, I'm falling behind here on the one in three with Keurig machines around me. I gotta, you know, up that ratio for this, uh, this town.

Dan Slimmon: They're losing market share. You need to buy like 30 or 40.

Xiao: It's just so depressing. I don't know. I don't know what to say.

Dan Slimmon: That's the voice I love to hear from my guests. Um, I just [01:23:00] soak it up. Uh, well, thank you for being a delightful guest. Xiao. And allowing me to, to siphon your life force with this horrible story. It's been a, it's been a pleasure to talk about this ecological shit show with you.

Xiao: mean, I, I wish I could say the same, but, uh, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna stew in that instant noodle in a Keurig video now for the rest of the day. So thank you for that.

Dan Slimmon: yeah, uh, anybody wants to say, it'll be in the show notes. If anybody wants to go see that YouTube video, check it out. It's amazing. Uh, and, and thank you as always to the real heroes, the listeners. Uh, you are heroes and not just because you enjoy this show, but also because you give us the five star podcast reviews that we so desperately want and need.

And also because you tell your friends to listen to this show. So thank you, heroes. If you're not following, tech blows on TikTok or technology blows on YouTube yet, highly recommend hopping on there too. Join us in the 21st century. Until next week, [01:24:00] I'm Dan Slimmon this has been Technology Blows.

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