I do not know how many of you use or are familiar with the Keurig single cup coffee brewer but we have one and find it great. Dee, my wife, and I have very different tastes in coffee – I love the Bold (read strong) coffees and Dee is on the other end of the spectrum (read weak – like a mocha). So we had a choice, brew two pots of coffee daily or up until about a year ago drive from our Arizona residence 11 plus miles each way to Fountain Hills to get two very different brews at Starbucks. In Minnesota during the summer it was a little better only about 4 miles each way to Caribou Coffee. At either location the tab was usually a little over $6.00. Enter the Keurig and the K-Cup and now no long trip for coffee and the cost per cup ranges from $0.42 to about $0.85 – and no gas expense.
What got me to thinking about this today is an article from the on-line Wall Street Journal that contained a Power Point presentation by an investor in Green Mountain Coffee Roasters – the corporate entity that owns Keurig and the K-Cup – highlighting what he saw as challenges for the company. The article is at http://linkd.in/qKXbTW and contains a 110 slide presentation. But what struck me about Mr. Einhorn’s presentation was the points he missed. When he calculated the relative cost per cup compared with traditional brewed coffee he assumed that all of the coffee brewed each time was consumed. Think about it, how many times have you dumped a half a pot or more down the drain? Second he utilized the standard price for K-Cup offerings but forgot about places like CostCo where I purchase an 80 cup package that yields a cost per cup of $0.42 not the $0.63 to $0.85 in his comparison and this for one of their higher end coffees. Thirdly, he missed the real competition, at least at our house, Starbucks and Caribou with cost of $2.00 to $4.00 per cup. As an aside, there is a reusable and refillable insert that allows one to use any coffee with the Keurig and with that all bets are off. However, the brews from the K-Cups are so good that I have not been tempted.
As I read and reflected on the article I was struck by how easy it is to miss the forest for the trees and that is something that we all can identify with and do well to avoid.
Loren Berg's Blog 
Loren, good points about using a Keurig coffee maker and K Cups. We have found the same results as far as saving from throwing away parts of pots of coffee etc since you have the convenience of making a cup at a time. Our Keurig is not one of the newer models but it does have a 1 full cup button and a half cup button. We find that after using the 1 full cup button we can also use the half cup button with no change in weakness of the coffee. So, we can get 1 1/2 cups out of each K-Cup.
C2