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How Nespresso's coffee revolution got ground down

116 points by ohjeez 6y ago

gumby 6y ago
> “People prefer the taste of things when they think they have made a choice about it.” This is a great story about origins, marketing, and pivoting your product.
alpineidyll3 6y ago
Nespresso's machines definitely occupied a cost niche, but were too troublingly wasteful for me. Fellow addicts looking to decapsule-- but not interested in buying a 2k machine which will be killed by scale in 1 year can check out Flair (https://www.flairespresso.com/ https://www.flairespresso.com/) It makes professional grade shots, has no unnecessary waste, and has nothing to really break.
- 6nf 6y ago
  This looks nice and I bet with a little bit of experience you can make a great coffee. It's not as convenient as capsules though. The capsule machines just takes two seconds to pop in a capsule and once you press the button it's all automatic. This thing doesn't even boil the water for you.
  - alpineidyll3 6y ago
    I find it makes better espresso than a 2k automatic machine. A typical electric kettle next to it does the trick, takes the same amount of time and is easy to fill. It absolutely is a lil messier and more work, but there's something to the ritual of it.
- edgefield0 6y ago
  You can buy a high quality nespresso machine for about $100. I agree the capsules are wasteful, but so are lots of other things, such as bottles and cans, cardboard boxes, ziplock bags, driving a car, and flying. What's especially wasteful about nespresso capsules? It seems like another version of straws that's easy to target but doesn't really address root problems with our consume until you drop mentality.
  - julianz 6y ago
    But it's only going to make stale coffee, which tastes horrible. Count me out.
  - PascLeRasc 6y ago
    Many of us also avoid using single-use plastics and driving too. Sure it's not a huge difference but it does add up.
- ntsplnkv2 6y ago
  The ones investing in 2k machines would not be using water that causes that kind of scaling, or they can easily have it descaled. To others, if you are not familiar with espresso, avoid manual espresso machines - even with consistent top quality semi-auto machines good espresso is not easy, let alone adding even more play into it with a lever machine. I recommend not getting a home espresso machine at all unless you are really into it. Moka pots, pour over, aeropress are all far far easier, much cheaper, and far less finicky. Save the espresso for a trip to your neighborhood cafe instead - they'll make it far better without the hassle.
  - donut 6y ago
    I recall hearing of an Italian saying, something like this: Either get a mocha pot at home, or get a real espresso machine and open a coffee shop.
    - lultimouomo 6y ago
      I think this is much less true now than it was 10 years ago. On the positive side, capsule-based espresso machines do deliver consistent, good quality coffee at home, better than you would get with a consumer espresso machine using pre-ground coffee that you keep in a vat for a couple of weeks. On the negative side, I am often disappointed by the quality of espresso in (Italian) coffee shops. It used to be that the quality of coffee was paramount for a coffee shop, and a good barista either learned how to get good coffee quickly or went home; now it seems this is perceived as a much less important part of the trade, and you regularly get restaurant-quality (as in very mediocre) coffee in coffee shops. Not sure if Nespresso played a role in this too, as less people are walking to a shop to get their coffee.
      - Heliosmaster 6y ago
        (italian here) completely agree. It's not very easy to find a coffee shop where the espresso doesn't taste burnt. I have the feeling the baristas have good technique, but the machines don't get cleaned / serviced enough. Or maybe it's just me, trying more and more different coffee places around europe.
- softwaredoug 6y ago
  We use Nestles capsule recycling, which claims to compost grounds and recycle aluminum pods...
- peteretep 6y ago
  > but were too troublingly wasteful for me Were you unable to recycle your pods?
  - maccard 6y ago
    Recycling should be a last resort, and it's a marketing effort by Nespresso to make them seem cleaner than they are. In reality, they sell small dose (5g) coffee in plastic lined aluminium, in non-recyclable coated cardboard. Despite their claims of how green they are, only 30% of their pods are recycled [0] [0] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-16/most-nespresso-coffee-pods-not-being-recycled/11708910 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-16/most-nespresso-coffee...
    - peteretep 6y ago
      This seems to be such a mean take as to almost feel disingenuous — the low recycling figure is down to consumers not returning pods. I do return pods, so presumably nearly 100% of the pods I use are recycled. Cardboard is biodegradeable. I’m unsure why you feel the need to point out the pods are plastic lined.
      - maccard 6y ago
        If customers aren't returning pods, what are they doing with them? Cardboard is biodegradable, but waxed cardboard is lined with plastic meaning it needs to be handled separately, and if your recycling center doesn't handle it, it goes in the trash where it doesn't biodegrade because it's coated in plastic. The reason the plastic lined pods are important is because it means you can't just chuck them in your household recycling, they have to be sent back to Nespresso. Anyone who doesn't send them back to Nespresso is throwing them in the trash, or throwing them in household recycling, where they're separated from and put in regular waste.
- crispyambulance 6y ago
  The best set-up for someone who likes espresso is simply a no-frills prosumer espresso machine, a separate good quality grinder, a few other minor things, and some training in dialing in your process. There exist machines that literally do everything including grinding the coffee, but these yield disappointing results. With regular descaling, backflushing, and sometimes repair or upgrades an espresso machine will easily last more than a decade.
- berberous 6y ago
  The Cafelat Robot is a similar manual espresso machine: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=11ZSXVZbQbA https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=11ZSXVZbQbA
- pandaman 6y ago
  The main problem with home espresso is not the machine. Professional machines are expensive because they are specced to make shots in quick succession and also handle a lot of shots before requiring service, a machine for a couple shots per day and 5+ years life can be made for couple hundred bucks or less. The grind is the problem that has not been solved yet. You need uniform and adjustable grind size and there is no cheap way to make a mill for that. Entry level espresso grinders are starting with hand-cranked ones at $200+, a decent electric one will be at least $500 and the good one will be $1000+. Just the replacement burrs for mine are $250 and these are not some one-off hipster burrs, they are mass-produced for commercial machines. Making precise shapes out of hard steel is very expensive. So there are essentially two solutions for at home espresso-like drink: various pods (ESE is apparently from 70s and was designed for commercial use, I imagine very light one) and machines with a pressure valve on the exit from the portafilter (essentially all machines you can buy in department stores), those take pre-ground coffee and use the exit valve to create espresso-like "crema". It's not espresso because there is no noticeable pressure difference over and under the grounds and espresso needs the layer of coffee to provide enough resistance to get to 7-9 bars on top of it. I think some pod systems could be more like espresso, at least in principle.
  - hocuspocus 6y ago
    I might buy a Niche at some point, but you can get a pretty decent grind with a $250 Baratza Virtuoso or Nuova Simonelli Grinta. I don't know how much coffee you grind, but unless you run a coffee shop, replacing burrs shouldn't really happen until after several decades.
    - pandaman 6y ago
      Yes, for home use you don't need to replace burrs often. However, you need a pair of burrs to make a grinder and the grinder cannot be cheaper than the burrs.
- simonebrunozzi 6y ago
  > killed by scale What does it mean? Also, can you tell us more about Flair? Very curious.
  - mcyukon 6y ago
    Not the OP, but he means hard water full of minerals (Mostly calcium and magnesium)that accumulate and eventually clog the lines.
    - simonebrunozzi 6y ago
      Thanks for clarifying.
- pibi 6y ago
  Italian here: I'm a proud owner of a Kamira (https://en.espressokamira.net/ https://en.espressokamira.net/). Great taste, effortless, no waste, cheap. What else?
  - wenc 6y ago
    Just curious, how is this different from a Bialetti apart from the design? I'm looking on the website and can't seem to find a description of how it produces pressure and how much. A real espresso machine produces 8-9 bars of pressure for extraction, and a Bialetti is about 2 bars, so it's not technically espresso.
    - pibi 6y ago
      Kamira works at 3 bars. It can make one or two espresso at the same time, but no more than that. The design is the opposite of a Bialetti's Moka, where the water is pouring into the coffee from the bottom. On a Kamira, the water is coming from the top, preserving the oils and the cream to being burnt. It's also very quick, you can have your cup of coffee within a couple dozen of seconds. Not very hot in this case, but still very tasteful.
  - jiggunjer 6y ago
    It looks like a cup of coffee foam?
bdcravens 6y ago
I have a Nespresso, but the novelty of home espresso quickly wore off. They also do regular coffee pods for the machine I have, but I ended up going back to the Keurig for its easier to find consumables.
- chipotle_coyote 6y ago
  At least in my experience, Nespresso makes decent -- not amazing, but decent -- espresso pretty consistently, but a Keurig rarely makes a decent cup of brewed coffee. The Nespresso is brewing pretty much the same way a non-capsule espresso machine would, but the Keurig is not brewing the same way a non-capsule coffee brewer would.
- peteretep 6y ago
  I do wonder if we’d drink as much if I couldn’t easily walk to three of their retail locations.
- travelton 6y ago
  After using my Nespresso exclusively for about 2 years, I've recently added a Keurig to the mix. I agree with you... It is convenient to order Nespresso pods, but I'd rather pick up pods at the grocery store. Additionally, I mistakenly purchased a Nespresso Vertuo, which has a much more limited selection of pods compared to the original Nespresso pod design. The Keurig has so many pods, my local grocery store has a huge section of Keurig options.
laurentdc 6y ago
> The Nespresso system made every customer feel like a connoisseur: you had to make a choice every time you put a capsule in the machine, even if it was just between black or purple. Ironically this is what turned me off. After borrowing a Nespresso machine from my brother and buying ~50 different capsules to try out I got stuck in analysis paralysis and decided to go back to my trusted Bialetti moka. If anyone's curious out of all the variants I've tasted my favourite were two of the cheapest off brands, Kimbo Armonia and Starbucks Blonde - the rest just felt either too "fruity" or too "acidic" for my taste.
- chipotle_coyote 6y ago
  The Starbucks Nespresso capsules are actually made by Nespresso, IIRC -- and ironically they're so far the only "third party" brand that I've liked. (Peet's Nespresso capsules aren't as good and they're actually more expensive than the first party ones, and some cheaper ones I got at Bed, Bath & Beyond whose name escapes me were just terrible.)
totetsu 6y ago
As much as I hate these pods, I think something like this tech could be used to bring profits from coffee closer to coffee growers. There is a ridiculous amount of middle men in between growers and drinkers. If you can get a factory that can make a product that stays fresh when shipped globally, close to where the coffee is grown. I think some Dutch company was doing this in Kenya.
- ak217 6y ago
  In the US, I highly recommend checking out https://swroasting.com/ https://swroasting.com/ if you're interested in having fewer middlemen in your coffee supply chain.
- herendin2 6y ago
  That's a very interesting idea. Any idea of the name of that Dutch company?
  - totetsu 6y ago
    I think i am remebering this podcast https://theoryofeverythingpodcast.com/2019/12/wake-up-and-smell-the-coffee/ https://theoryofeverythingpodcast.com/2019/12/wake-up-and-sm... which covered African Coffee Roasters https://twitter.com/acr_ke?lang=en https://twitter.com/acr_ke?lang=en and Coffee Collective https://coffeecollective.dk/ https://coffeecollective.dk/ so maybe it was a Denmark company
hhs 6y ago
> When you ordered capsules, you joined the “Club”, which also meant handing over your contact information. Over time, Nespresso gained a huge database of customers it could market to, as well as a way of recording consumer preferences and buying habits. For customers, the club created the sense that you were part of a sophisticated worldwide cabal of corporate espresso lovers. When I first encountered Nespresso, as a student, around 2006, I remember feeling like I was finally part of the global elite everyone kept complaining about. “What Nespresso have done is create a lot of benign bullshit around coffee,” said Rory Sutherland. “But people enjoy the bullshit.” There’s a lot in there from the author. It’s marketing and building an ecosystem. Surprised this doesn’t happen with other drinks like carbonated water.
- executive 6y ago
  https://sodastream.com/ https://sodastream.com/
  - fermienrico 6y ago
    Is it only me or I find marketing around "eco-friendly" not genuine and just a ploy to get you to buy their products? Like you go to Marriott hotels, low and behold there is a sign on the bathroom towel that says "Please help save the planet" by reusing the towel. Sure it helps, but that's not the reason why they put that sign up. It is to save costs of laundry. If they really want to save the planet, how about cutting down private jets for their executives? It never feels genuine and unless the product/service is directly contributing help to the environment - like an advertisement for a Solar panel company or a Wind Turbine brochure.
    - bmarquez 6y ago
      You're not the first person to think of this, it even has it's own term. The hotel example isn't as extreme though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwashing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwashing "Greenwashing efforts can range from changing the name or label of a product to evoke the natural environment on a product containing harmful chemicals to multimillion-dollar marketing campaigns portraying highly polluting energy companies as eco-friendly. Greenwashing is therefore a "mask" used to cover-up unsustainable corporate agendas and policies."
Finnucane 6y ago
A $5 plastic Melitta pour-over filter holder and a kettle make better coffee than any machine.
- chipotle_coyote 6y ago
  They don't make better espresso than any machine. Pourover is not espresso.
  - perl4ever 6y ago
    I don't know what it is technically, but if I wanted something more like espresso, I would use a moka pot instead. Not capsules.
    - chipotle_coyote 6y ago
      Fair, although moka pot coffee is indeed "espresso-like" more than espresso. They don't have the pressure to brew espresso the same way an actual espresso machine does. I think they make great coffee, particularly for Cuban-style cafe con leche, although nowadays I'd probably do that with my Aeropress because it's faster and can do a strong, espresso-like coffee pretty well. But it's still not espresso. :) A Nespresso machine certainly isn't the pinnacle of coffee perfection -- I've just found that it makes a decent and very consistent espresso, lungo or Americano for me. There are times, particularly in the evening, when I just don't want to mess around with grinding and brewing, and I'd much rather have a Nespresso coffee drink than a Keurig one.
    - so33 6y ago
      Nespresso isn't technically espresso either, as Wirecutter points out (https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-nespresso-machine/ https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-nespresso-ma...). That being said, I was under the impression moka pots require a lot of cleanup. For drip, there's a lot of competition, notably the AeroPress, that's only slightly less convenient than the Mr. Coffee machine. But I'm not aware of a product like that for espresso-like drinks.
webwielder2 6y ago
I think the Guardian may have pinpointed the least pressing question of our times.
- glxxyz 6y ago
  They were also slightly over-egging it with 'coffee revolution'; it's a slightly different way of making coffee. I work for a company too frugal to buy an espresso machine and Nespresso is perfect for me at work. Cheaper and quicker than the cafe downstairs, decent taste, and we recycle into a bag and drop them off at the local Nespresso store. It's not a revolution though.
peteretep 6y ago
> In 2013, the most recent year it released figures, Nespresso’s revenues totalled $10.8bn. > In the summer of 2020, buffeted by Covid-19, Nespresso trundles on. In a recent email, a spokesperson reported “mid single-digit growth” This article has failed to do anything other than convince me that the Nespresso is one of the most impressive products every launched, and has room to take on the US still.
- gambiting 6y ago
  Really, I hate how "single digit growth" is somehow a failure nowadays. Millions of companies everywhere don't even grow year or year - businesses which found their niche, which employ hundreds or thousands of people and which just operate in equilibrium state where everyone goes home paid at the end of the day and it's fine. No one considers those a failure just because their valuation isn't doubling year on year.
  - asddubs 6y ago
    If you're not chasing unsustainable growth and are willing to pay any long term price for it, you're not doing capitalism correctly
  - onion2k 6y ago
    If a company isn't growing by at least the equivalent of inflation then it's shrinking, and that can't happen for very long before it can't cover its costs. Even when inflation is close to zero, interest on debt means that a company that isn't growing won't be able to service it's creditors forever, and it'll fail. There are plenty of reasons why 'growth at all costs' is a stupid goal, but there does have to be some growth for a business to survive.
    - Thorentis 6y ago
      Well, a company in equilibrium has the option of increasing its prices inline with inflation. Which is the very definition of inflation. I don't think growth (in terms of more customers or more product sold) is required to stay in business. You just need to stay competitive in the market and keep meeting costs.
lsllc 6y ago
I have a Nespresso machine and TBH, being able to have a quick ristretto or two literally inside a minute before flying out the door in the morning (pre-COVID19!) was nice -- yet terribly wasteful with the pods. Usually, it's drop coffee ... in fact my 10 year old $35 Mr. Coffee machine broke recently and I had to (shock horror) resort to a cafetière & kettle (the $30 Mr. Coffee burr-grinder thankfully still worked!). You know what? It's fantastic, 4 minutes and push the plunger. Great tasting coffee ... maybe the Mr. Coffee stays dead. In either case, at least the only environmental impact is bio-degradable coffee grounds (maybe paper filter) and energy to heat water (and grind coffee!).
myrandomcomment 6y ago
We have one of the ~$400ish red machines at home for 6 years now. It gets used maybe once a week. Every morning we grind beans, and use a French press. We have our normal coffee bean but we love to try different beans. The ritual of making the coffee in the morning is part of the joy I think. Putting the kettle on, the smell of the beans being ground, the smell from pouring the water on the grounds and stirring them. It’s a comfortable part of the morning. It’s a constant in a world that needs it now.
- MaximumYComb 6y ago
  Are you child free? I wake up and just hope for 5 minutes of peace to enjoy a coffee where I can sit, read and drink coffee. Making coffee using a French press would take all that time. Nespresso is a quick thing and I get to enjoy a few minutes of peace before chaos.
  - msh 6y ago
    I think you got a point here. My reasoning for the machine is kind of the same.
  - myrandomcomment 6y ago
    No, but teenage now. The French press does not really take much time. Night before going to bed setup kettle and grinder. Get up and go to the kitchen, hit the button on the kettle, hit grind. Dump coffee in press. Water is done in 4 minutes. Pour on coffee, stir. Go grab a shower or the like, come back and press down and pour.
- alexmingoia 6y ago
  Spot on. Coffee is much tastier freshly ground. Try roasting your own beans. It’s fun and you can do it on the stove with a pan. It’s quick too.
  - _emacsomancer_ 6y ago
    An old bread machine and a heatgun works well too
sien 6y ago
It would be interesting to see how much impact better espresso machines and cheap grinders are having on Nespresso. A decent burr grinder, a Nanopresso and a milk frother is much cheaper than a Nespresso and does something as good. $AUD 10 Aldi beans with that is cheap and excellent.
- maccard 6y ago
  I can't comment on the actual numbers for Australia, but in the UK at least, there are online shops like hasbean that will roast & grind for you for roughly the cost of a bag of premium supermarket coffee. It'll save you the outlay of a grinder (and it's ground with a grinder that will be far more consistent than what you buy).
  - askvictor 6y ago
    But freshly ground coffee is so much different to pre-ground. Once ground, it starts oxidising immediately, so will start to affect the taste pretty quickly.
    - Lio 6y ago
      Apart from being fresher, the grind is also one of the ways you control the pressure you extract at in an espresso machine. Depending on the machine you can either time the shots, use a pressure gauge or just look at the flow coming out and verify by taste. It's not much more complicated than if the pressure is too low the shot will taste sour. So you adjust the grinder to grind larger. If it's too low the shot will be overly bitter. So then you grind smaller. I'm told the ideal pressure is 9 bar but really taste is the real test. Once you have the grinder dialed in it will probably be fine for the entire batch of beans and only need tweaking when the next batch comes in. (Although if you may have to tweak it as the bag ages.)
    - maccard 6y ago
      My experience is 3-4 day old ground coffee was still notably better tasting than freshly ground coffee with the hunk of a grinder I used to use. It obviously depends on how much you drink (our house goes through about 1 bag per week), but as a starting point it's likely to be better than pre ground supermarket coffee, and more accessible than a decent burr grinder. Telling someone who uses a Nespresso to shell out 50 bucks for a Hario skerton, and spend a couple of minutes cranking the hand grinder is probably not going to be the most successful conversion path!
softwaredoug 6y ago
I’ve seen a couple comments that nespreso is wasteful. It’s worth pointing out the relatively easy to use capsule recycling and composting program. You fedex bags of used capsules and they recycle and compost then (supposedly) https://www.nespresso.com/us/en/how-to-recycle-coffee-capsules https://www.nespresso.com/us/en/how-to-recycle-coffee-capsul...
- Symbiote 6y ago
  That still seems wasteful compared to the alternatives.
  - d4rti 6y ago
    To be fair to Nespresso, there are some potential environmental benefits from only boiling the required quantity of water, and reduction of waste coffee (i.e. in the pot and undrunk). It's not easy to determine if these outweigh the waste of the pods themselves. (I'm no Nespresso shill, I grind and Aeropress - I think my biggest source of waste is on power from boiling too much water)
    - slim 6y ago
      coffee and water are not garbage. you can grow plants in them alone without spending any added energy
      - d4rti 6y ago
        Boiling more water than you need at that time is a waste of energy.
- cranekam 6y ago
  Each capsule contains 5-7g of coffee (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nespresso https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nespresso), so that's roughly 35-50 capsules per 250g bag of ground coffee. Even if the recycling scheme was used by all consumers (highly unlikely) these things are still vastly more resource intensive than alternatives.
brandonmenc 6y ago
Since there seems to be a lot of hate for the Nespresso, I'll chime in: I currently have a Nespresso, Aeropress, V60, a few Moka pots, and probably a couple other devices I've forgotten about. The Nespresso is super convenient and not bad tasting, but I put sugar in my espresso - a grave sin according to coffee snobs in America - so ymmv. Sometimes I want a shot of coffee but don't want to wait for the Moka pot. Yes a Moka pot is convenient - versus an actual espresso machine - but it's lightyears away from the Nespresso in that respect.
zwaps 6y ago
I think I am one of the few people who enjoys all sorts of coffee. I have had Espresso in many citys in Italy, all the hip Third Wave coffees, but I can still enjoy a Nespresso, a drip machine, Mokka, Turkish coffee, DeLonghi or Jura type coffee or Aeropress. I even find Starbucks has its own taste. They all taste different. I just don‘t get the people who insist coffee can not be bitter and Starbucks roast is the devil. The sneering I get from people who think there is exactly two ways one should enjoy coffee, as super tricked out Espresso, or as mild tea. Seriously. Yes I have had „good“ coffee. Lots of it. I even had a lot of bad „good“ coffee. I sometimes have serious nostalgia for good bad coffee and no one will take it away from me!
- esperent 6y ago
  There's nothing wrong with the taste of Nespresso (it's a little weak for me, but that's personal preference). The reason why coffee pods are awful and need to die is the sheer, disgusting amount of pointless waste they create. Every single cup of coffee requires a small, non-degradable, hard to recycle piece of plastic. Making coffee with a normal espresso machine is so easy. You can learn how to do it in 5 minutes (not barista quality, but at least as good as Nespresso). If you think that cleaning up the mess from a coffee machine is too much work, you are just lazy. The only benefit I can think of is that you don't need a sink nearby. But in every case where I have seen a Nespresso machine, there is a sink within at most a two minutes walk.
  - peteretep 6y ago
    > it's a little weak for me, but that's personal preference Have you tried the 12 and 13 out of 10 intensity capsules?
    - hocuspocus 6y ago
      They're roasted darker and ground finer, but it's still nowhere close to a proper double shot pulled from 15-20g of coffee. Also while the single-origins are good, the arabica and robusta blends are pretty awful in my opinion.
  - 6y ago
fredsted 6y ago
I used to have a pod machine, and just found it didn't make very good coffee. It didn't really taste like espresso. In fact, it didn't taste very good at all. After that, I started using a french press, which was nice, but I like espresso more, and so I got a Sage Barista Express. Great machine, no plastic waste, once you learn to use it you can create coffeeshop-quality drinks at home for very little money–plus you can experiment with different beans. The difference between a proper espresso and pods is huge.
syspec 6y ago
The article reads like a hit piece. They kind of raise a question, but never really show that it's grinding to a halt. According to the article itself Nespresso is still growing: > In 2013, the most recent year it released figures, Nespresso’s revenues totalled $10.8bn. > In the summer of 2020, buffeted by Covid-19, Nespresso trundles on. In a recent email, a spokesperson reported “mid single-digit growth”
peter_d_sherman 6y ago
>"In 2013, the most recent year it released figures, Nespresso’s revenues totalled $10.8bn."
- AgloeDreams 6y ago
  I wish I could 'fail' that badly.
toyg 6y ago
You can take the Nespresso machine out of my dead cold hands. It improved my life significantly: no more ground coffee spilling all over, no more cleaning and drying the mocha every day, no more having to worry about the right amount of coffee or water, whether I’m drinking too much, why I didn’t get crema... It’s slightly more expensive than simple mocha but still dramatically cheaper than anything you find in coffee shops (outside Italy at least), and worth the peace of mind. Now they have a saas-like offering so I don’t even have to worry about how much I spend, it’s automatically budgeted and withdrawn and I just make an order every few months. The only criticism I have is that most of their varieties are not 100% Arabica, and often it’s hard to find out if their “special editions” are. Robusta is bad for your blood pressure, but sadly it’s cheaper so it ends up in most mixes. This said, I think their last batch was almost entirely Arabica flavours so maybe they are improving. If you care, I’ve done a bit of analysis two years ago that covers all classic varieties (I really should update it) at http://blog.pythonaro.com/2018/04/nespresso-blends-comprehensive.html http://blog.pythonaro.com/2018/04/nespresso-blends-comprehen... (Oh, and fuck Vertuo. I’m happy to read it was an attempt at courting Americans, because from here it looked like just a simple money grab to raise the cost of capsules and maintain exclusivity on the format. No thanks.)
- SergeAx 6y ago
  Pure arabica could give your coffee sour taste, especially if roasted lightly. 10-15% robusta balances that. +1 to fuck Vertuo. If someone wants their coffee by gallons - let them get a dripper or kettle plus family-size bag of instant powder.
ToFab123 6y ago
Every cup of coffee also produces one piece of plastic garbage. This is one of the most wasteful machines and anyone that cares about the environment should throw that machine in the garbage.
- peteretep 6y ago
  > Every cup of coffee also produces one piece of plastic garbage You didn’t read the article and you’ve misidentified the product.
draw_down 6y ago
People who prefer brewed coffee over the Nespresso are coffee snobs. Those who prefer Nespresso over it’s cheaper competitors are... just savvy consumers, I presume
michelb 6y ago
Having tried many machines and manual ways of making coffee, is there a real difference between says a Nespresso, Mokka, or a top-of-the-line Jura? I mean, given the same beans etc, is a Jura noticeably better tasting?
- pizza234 6y ago
  I don't remember drinking a comparable coffee from a fully automatic machine. Also keep in mind that the top of line Jura has two boilers, which make it twice as expensive, but not necessarily better. I suppose that they're generally targeted to shops; I've seen it only once or twice in a consumer context. There is a potentially significant difference between a Nespresso and an automatic machine, which is qualitative and adhoc grinding. Producing "nespressos" is fully vertically integrated. They have control over the coffee beans, the grinding process (which can potentially be high quality), and the machine. I doubt that a fully automatic sports a high-quality grinder (I guess that most, if not all, don't have an acceptable quality one). Regarding moka, there's no comparison. It makes a watery coffee. It's very popular because it's the cheap and easy way to make an "espresso".
- zwaps 6y ago
  They all taste noticeably different.
gadders 6y ago
If Investment Banking is anything to go by, these aren't going away any time soon. Normally each desk of traders has one shared machine for people to shotgun espressos when they need to.
dghughes 6y ago
I like the concept of Nespresso but as others have said the waste is the problem. You have to wonder though it seems like a simple problem to solve. In my region a local businessman used potato starch to make "paper" plates. If Nespresso could make biodegradable pod cases that would solve the waste problem. This article is timely for me I've only just discovered how to make great coffee. I've had a French press and a cheap coffee bean grinder for decades. With a little knowledge I finally made a really good cup of coffee. Nabob beans $4 and a few minutes makes great coffee. It's so great that I went from milky lattes and double-doubles to drinking it black. It's amazing how much a tiny bit of milk or sugar muffles the taste great coffee. 30g coffee beans freshly ground, 450g water, 5 minute brew. It's so simple with a French press no filters no electricity no pressurized steam.
- wiether 6y ago
  As a french person, I wasn't aware of what was a "French press". With the help of Google I've seen that I perfectly know what it is, but we don't call it that way here and furthermore it's not a popular way of making coffee. But thanks for the knowledge !
  - richjdsmith 6y ago
    I spent a solid week looking for one in Martinique. I was finally told that they are on occasion refereed to as Italian Presses, but am still unsure if this was true.
  - SergeAx 6y ago
    Got to New York for the first time, had awful jet lag, found a place for breakfast at 5:30 in the morning. Asked for Americano coffee. The whole diner made big eyes, like "what do you mean?!".
  - dghughes 6y ago
    I'm in Canada I urge you to start a new trend and call it a << Canadian Plunger >> or something like that. lol
wonderlg 6y ago
Nespresso is great until you realize that you’re paying a huge premium to avoid using a spoon out of a coffee bag. IMHO, it’s only slightly better than using that next-gen juice machine we all know. I have a small espresso machine at home and a 5€ coffee dispenser: 2 flicks and you’re ready to brew.
ThomPete 6y ago
I eat and drink pretty well. Expensive wines, organic food, barista made coffee, I go (went) to Michelin restaurants, drink good whiskey, I enjoy a good barista made coffee and few things are as nice as getting it in a nice café. I've also had espresso machines and done the whole thing proper. These days I just have a Nespresso machine which makes great great coffee and if I run out i just drink instacoffee. Once in a blue moon I will have coffee beans lying around and I will make coffee press. There are coffee puritans out there but they are just not the majority. Nespresso coffee with the right machine and the right flavour is just as good as any barista made coffee. And with regards to waste, Nespresso offers free recycle bags if people want to be environmentally friendly their is nothing to hinder them (my guess is that most don't really care) Nespresso offers a great product, great service I don't think there is any risk of them going out of business anytime soon.
m0llusk 6y ago
Some scientists brewing herbs for research found Nespresso machines to be almost perfectly efficient. In my work with residential maintenance I find Nespresso machines extremely common but also frequently broken. They are not easy or cheap to repair so often there is an upgraded unit which also breaks. This raises significant issues with durability and design for disassembly. Going for cheap with a high end product may end up cursing the line over time. What I find enduring are the older type of Cuisinart brewers which are made of relatively robust components that are easy to replace. They are nowhere near as good but endure actual use much better.
tguedes 6y ago
I always thought Keurig was the first to come up with using the pods to hold the ground coffee but it seems based on this article that it was actually Nestle. Why did Keurig become the default standard in the US?
- hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
  Keurigs generally make brewed coffee (i.e. the water is not under pressure), which is overall more popular than espresso in the US, which is what Nespresso makes.
- TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
  Nespresso pods costs a lot more than any Keurig-compatible pod I've seen.
- TheSoftwareGuy 6y ago
  This is talked about in the article. The Nespresso didn't quite catch on in the US like it did in europe. Americans generally prefer to drink larger quantities of coffee, often in the car. This does not lend itself well to espresso. As such, K-cups got much more traction
  - AgloeDreams 6y ago
    Yup, plus the K-Cup machine is higher profit and lower cost to build than a Nespresso machine. The BoM for Keurig is incredibly low for the selling price, something like $12 on a $130 machine. They flipped the razor and blades model and managed to make massive profit on both the razor and blades. I'm starting to see evidence that Keurig is struggling now however, They have launched much cheaper models and are all over the place looking for hits including ground coffee. I think they realized that they are known for 'meh' coffee and know that that brand wont get them to where they want to be next.
wooger 6y ago
Pre-ground coffee is limited in quality, as it'll always be stale when it goes into a mass production process as used by Nespresso. You need to be grinding only <15 minutes before brewing to get the best flavour. Likewise, you really want to be using beans within 2 weeks of them being roasted, which will never happen either. Nespresso suffers from old stale coffee, plus each pod contains nowhere near enough coffee grounds to make even a vaguely strong cup of coffee. Separate to all the waste issues, the coffee is weak and tasteless and to be honest, I'd prefer a high end instant coffee vs. Nespresso any day, as I can at least make it stronger. To get nice coffee you need to start with fresh beans, and use enough of them. I find a quick filter coffee to be much preferable 100% of the time.
- ceejayoz 6y ago
  > You need to be grinding only <15 minutes before brewing to get the best flavour. Because of oxygen, which the Nespresso pods are sealed against.
- newacct583 6y ago
  Unpopular opinion: the snobbery in the first two sentences is misdirected. Those absolutely are not requirements for most coffee drinkers. I mean, I do the food snob thing for a lot of items, but coffee just barely qualifies relative to areas where there is genuine variability (tea, cheese or wine, say). For 95%+ of drinkers, coffee is coffee and the only really signficant distinguishing qualities are the roast (which persists on a shelf) and brew strength. Note that I'm not saying that there aren't coffee snobs who feel strongly about this. I'm saying that the nature of the product is that there will never be enough of them to matter.
nottorp 6y ago
What revolution? Capsules are wasteful and expensive and you have no idea what's in them. No capsules for my home use thank you. I considered getting a fancy expresso machine that grinds the coffee for you in place at the press of a button, but I decided against it because I'm likely to overdose on coffee with one. Filter coffee is good enough for me thank you.
- CloudNetworking 6y ago
  Pretty much everyone and his mother in Europe has a capsule coffee machine. P.S.: I won't comment about the filter coffee remark as it's clearly bait ;)))
  - nottorp 6y ago
    Nope. Even from my coffee snob friends, only one has had a capsule machine and abandoned it anyway. And he's the kind that owns 3 different french presses to start with.
    - CloudNetworking 6y ago
      Is that in Europe? I mean, I don't know anyone that does filter coffee in Europe to be honest. Not trying to be snobby, it's just different habits I guess (e.g. a watery black coffee is known as "Americano" in most places in Europe I've been)
- kirykl 6y ago
  Per pound of coffee Nespresso is indeed very expensive (when measured against the volume of ground whole bean needed for a cup)
trekrich 6y ago
because its shit coffee.
doodpants 6y ago
Informative article! I'm not a coffee drinker, and I never even heard of Nespresso until the George Clooney ads started in the US (which according to the article was in 2015). I've been under the impression that Nespresso was an upscale rip-off of Keurig; didn't know it had been around since 1986!
- EdwardDiego 6y ago
  Apparently he did those adverts to fund his Darfur satellite monitoring.
SergeAx 6y ago
> Nespresso’s getting close to saturation point, and there’s lots of competition I would love to give a shot to aforementioned competitors, which would offer comparable coffee quality, equipment price, fully automated brewing process and variety of blends within walking distance in any major city on the planet. Nice boutique-style retail store with competent personnel would be appreciated.
- hocuspocus 6y ago
  Since most patents expired, 3rd party brands started manufacturing compatible capsules in aluminum (plastic copies have existed for a longer time, but Nespresso fights that). The fact you need to go to a Nespresso shop and/or order online is actually fairly annoying. Most people want to buy coffee alongside their groceries. That's probably biggest reason behind the Starbucks partnership.
  - SergeAx 6y ago
    Ah, you mean competitors are selling capsules, not the entire ecosystem. So, I believe that's how success looks like)
    - hocuspocus 6y ago
      Except it's like printers, Nestlé is losing money on most Nespresso machines, so if users start buying significantly fewer original capsules it'll threaten the ecosystem.
mD5pPxMcS6fVWKE 6y ago
I like powdered instant coffee with condensed milk, now kill me.
- _emacsomancer_ 6y ago
  At least this produces far, far less waste than Nespresso-style. And, depending on exactly how they process it, may end up 'fresher' than coffee brewed from old ground coffee.
banku_brougham 6y ago
Its not as good as freshly ground beans. <insert clip of Baron Harkkonnen>

116 points by ohjeez 6y ago

> “People prefer the taste of things when they think they have made a choice about it.” This is a great story about origins, marketing, and pivoting your product.

alpineidyll3 6y ago

Nespresso's machines definitely occupied a cost niche, but were too troublingly wasteful for me. Fellow addicts looking to decapsule-- but not interested in buying a 2k machine which will be killed by scale in 1 year can check out Flair (https://www.flairespresso.com/ https://www.flairespresso.com/) It makes professional grade shots, has no unnecessary waste, and has nothing to really break.

6nf 6y ago
This looks nice and I bet with a little bit of experience you can make a great coffee. It's not as convenient as capsules though. The capsule machines just takes two seconds to pop in a capsule and once you press the button it's all automatic. This thing doesn't even boil the water for you.
- alpineidyll3 6y ago
  I find it makes better espresso than a 2k automatic machine. A typical electric kettle next to it does the trick, takes the same amount of time and is easy to fill. It absolutely is a lil messier and more work, but there's something to the ritual of it.
edgefield0 6y ago
You can buy a high quality nespresso machine for about $100. I agree the capsules are wasteful, but so are lots of other things, such as bottles and cans, cardboard boxes, ziplock bags, driving a car, and flying. What's especially wasteful about nespresso capsules? It seems like another version of straws that's easy to target but doesn't really address root problems with our consume until you drop mentality.
- julianz 6y ago
  But it's only going to make stale coffee, which tastes horrible. Count me out.
- PascLeRasc 6y ago
  Many of us also avoid using single-use plastics and driving too. Sure it's not a huge difference but it does add up.
ntsplnkv2 6y ago
The ones investing in 2k machines would not be using water that causes that kind of scaling, or they can easily have it descaled. To others, if you are not familiar with espresso, avoid manual espresso machines - even with consistent top quality semi-auto machines good espresso is not easy, let alone adding even more play into it with a lever machine. I recommend not getting a home espresso machine at all unless you are really into it. Moka pots, pour over, aeropress are all far far easier, much cheaper, and far less finicky. Save the espresso for a trip to your neighborhood cafe instead - they'll make it far better without the hassle.
- donut 6y ago
  I recall hearing of an Italian saying, something like this: Either get a mocha pot at home, or get a real espresso machine and open a coffee shop.
  - lultimouomo 6y ago
    I think this is much less true now than it was 10 years ago. On the positive side, capsule-based espresso machines do deliver consistent, good quality coffee at home, better than you would get with a consumer espresso machine using pre-ground coffee that you keep in a vat for a couple of weeks. On the negative side, I am often disappointed by the quality of espresso in (Italian) coffee shops. It used to be that the quality of coffee was paramount for a coffee shop, and a good barista either learned how to get good coffee quickly or went home; now it seems this is perceived as a much less important part of the trade, and you regularly get restaurant-quality (as in very mediocre) coffee in coffee shops. Not sure if Nespresso played a role in this too, as less people are walking to a shop to get their coffee.
    - Heliosmaster 6y ago
      (italian here) completely agree. It's not very easy to find a coffee shop where the espresso doesn't taste burnt. I have the feeling the baristas have good technique, but the machines don't get cleaned / serviced enough. Or maybe it's just me, trying more and more different coffee places around europe.
softwaredoug 6y ago
We use Nestles capsule recycling, which claims to compost grounds and recycle aluminum pods...
peteretep 6y ago
> but were too troublingly wasteful for me Were you unable to recycle your pods?
- maccard 6y ago
  Recycling should be a last resort, and it's a marketing effort by Nespresso to make them seem cleaner than they are. In reality, they sell small dose (5g) coffee in plastic lined aluminium, in non-recyclable coated cardboard. Despite their claims of how green they are, only 30% of their pods are recycled [0] [0] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-16/most-nespresso-coffee-pods-not-being-recycled/11708910 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-16/most-nespresso-coffee...
  - peteretep 6y ago
    This seems to be such a mean take as to almost feel disingenuous — the low recycling figure is down to consumers not returning pods. I do return pods, so presumably nearly 100% of the pods I use are recycled. Cardboard is biodegradeable. I’m unsure why you feel the need to point out the pods are plastic lined.
    - maccard 6y ago
      If customers aren't returning pods, what are they doing with them? Cardboard is biodegradable, but waxed cardboard is lined with plastic meaning it needs to be handled separately, and if your recycling center doesn't handle it, it goes in the trash where it doesn't biodegrade because it's coated in plastic. The reason the plastic lined pods are important is because it means you can't just chuck them in your household recycling, they have to be sent back to Nespresso. Anyone who doesn't send them back to Nespresso is throwing them in the trash, or throwing them in household recycling, where they're separated from and put in regular waste.
crispyambulance 6y ago
The best set-up for someone who likes espresso is simply a no-frills prosumer espresso machine, a separate good quality grinder, a few other minor things, and some training in dialing in your process. There exist machines that literally do everything including grinding the coffee, but these yield disappointing results. With regular descaling, backflushing, and sometimes repair or upgrades an espresso machine will easily last more than a decade.
berberous 6y ago
The Cafelat Robot is a similar manual espresso machine: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=11ZSXVZbQbA https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=11ZSXVZbQbA
pandaman 6y ago
The main problem with home espresso is not the machine. Professional machines are expensive because they are specced to make shots in quick succession and also handle a lot of shots before requiring service, a machine for a couple shots per day and 5+ years life can be made for couple hundred bucks or less. The grind is the problem that has not been solved yet. You need uniform and adjustable grind size and there is no cheap way to make a mill for that. Entry level espresso grinders are starting with hand-cranked ones at $200+, a decent electric one will be at least $500 and the good one will be $1000+. Just the replacement burrs for mine are $250 and these are not some one-off hipster burrs, they are mass-produced for commercial machines. Making precise shapes out of hard steel is very expensive. So there are essentially two solutions for at home espresso-like drink: various pods (ESE is apparently from 70s and was designed for commercial use, I imagine very light one) and machines with a pressure valve on the exit from the portafilter (essentially all machines you can buy in department stores), those take pre-ground coffee and use the exit valve to create espresso-like "crema". It's not espresso because there is no noticeable pressure difference over and under the grounds and espresso needs the layer of coffee to provide enough resistance to get to 7-9 bars on top of it. I think some pod systems could be more like espresso, at least in principle.
- hocuspocus 6y ago
  I might buy a Niche at some point, but you can get a pretty decent grind with a $250 Baratza Virtuoso or Nuova Simonelli Grinta. I don't know how much coffee you grind, but unless you run a coffee shop, replacing burrs shouldn't really happen until after several decades.
  - pandaman 6y ago
    Yes, for home use you don't need to replace burrs often. However, you need a pair of burrs to make a grinder and the grinder cannot be cheaper than the burrs.
simonebrunozzi 6y ago
> killed by scale What does it mean? Also, can you tell us more about Flair? Very curious.
- mcyukon 6y ago
  Not the OP, but he means hard water full of minerals (Mostly calcium and magnesium)that accumulate and eventually clog the lines.
  - simonebrunozzi 6y ago
    Thanks for clarifying.
pibi 6y ago
Italian here: I'm a proud owner of a Kamira (https://en.espressokamira.net/ https://en.espressokamira.net/). Great taste, effortless, no waste, cheap. What else?
- wenc 6y ago
  Just curious, how is this different from a Bialetti apart from the design? I'm looking on the website and can't seem to find a description of how it produces pressure and how much. A real espresso machine produces 8-9 bars of pressure for extraction, and a Bialetti is about 2 bars, so it's not technically espresso.
  - pibi 6y ago
    Kamira works at 3 bars. It can make one or two espresso at the same time, but no more than that. The design is the opposite of a Bialetti's Moka, where the water is pouring into the coffee from the bottom. On a Kamira, the water is coming from the top, preserving the oils and the cream to being burnt. It's also very quick, you can have your cup of coffee within a couple dozen of seconds. Not very hot in this case, but still very tasteful.
- jiggunjer 6y ago
  It looks like a cup of coffee foam?

bdcravens 6y ago

I have a Nespresso, but the novelty of home espresso quickly wore off. They also do regular coffee pods for the machine I have, but I ended up going back to the Keurig for its easier to find consumables.

chipotle_coyote 6y ago
At least in my experience, Nespresso makes decent -- not amazing, but decent -- espresso pretty consistently, but a Keurig rarely makes a decent cup of brewed coffee. The Nespresso is brewing pretty much the same way a non-capsule espresso machine would, but the Keurig is not brewing the same way a non-capsule coffee brewer would.
peteretep 6y ago
I do wonder if we’d drink as much if I couldn’t easily walk to three of their retail locations.
travelton 6y ago
After using my Nespresso exclusively for about 2 years, I've recently added a Keurig to the mix. I agree with you... It is convenient to order Nespresso pods, but I'd rather pick up pods at the grocery store. Additionally, I mistakenly purchased a Nespresso Vertuo, which has a much more limited selection of pods compared to the original Nespresso pod design. The Keurig has so many pods, my local grocery store has a huge section of Keurig options.

laurentdc 6y ago

> The Nespresso system made every customer feel like a connoisseur: you had to make a choice every time you put a capsule in the machine, even if it was just between black or purple. Ironically this is what turned me off. After borrowing a Nespresso machine from my brother and buying ~50 different capsules to try out I got stuck in analysis paralysis and decided to go back to my trusted Bialetti moka. If anyone's curious out of all the variants I've tasted my favourite were two of the cheapest off brands, Kimbo Armonia and Starbucks Blonde - the rest just felt either too "fruity" or too "acidic" for my taste.

chipotle_coyote 6y ago
The Starbucks Nespresso capsules are actually made by Nespresso, IIRC -- and ironically they're so far the only "third party" brand that I've liked. (Peet's Nespresso capsules aren't as good and they're actually more expensive than the first party ones, and some cheaper ones I got at Bed, Bath & Beyond whose name escapes me were just terrible.)

totetsu 6y ago

As much as I hate these pods, I think something like this tech could be used to bring profits from coffee closer to coffee growers. There is a ridiculous amount of middle men in between growers and drinkers. If you can get a factory that can make a product that stays fresh when shipped globally, close to where the coffee is grown. I think some Dutch company was doing this in Kenya.

ak217 6y ago
In the US, I highly recommend checking out https://swroasting.com/ https://swroasting.com/ if you're interested in having fewer middlemen in your coffee supply chain.
herendin2 6y ago
That's a very interesting idea. Any idea of the name of that Dutch company?
- totetsu 6y ago
  I think i am remebering this podcast https://theoryofeverythingpodcast.com/2019/12/wake-up-and-smell-the-coffee/ https://theoryofeverythingpodcast.com/2019/12/wake-up-and-sm... which covered African Coffee Roasters https://twitter.com/acr_ke?lang=en https://twitter.com/acr_ke?lang=en and Coffee Collective https://coffeecollective.dk/ https://coffeecollective.dk/ so maybe it was a Denmark company

hhs 6y ago

> When you ordered capsules, you joined the “Club”, which also meant handing over your contact information. Over time, Nespresso gained a huge database of customers it could market to, as well as a way of recording consumer preferences and buying habits. For customers, the club created the sense that you were part of a sophisticated worldwide cabal of corporate espresso lovers. When I first encountered Nespresso, as a student, around 2006, I remember feeling like I was finally part of the global elite everyone kept complaining about. “What Nespresso have done is create a lot of benign bullshit around coffee,” said Rory Sutherland. “But people enjoy the bullshit.” There’s a lot in there from the author. It’s marketing and building an ecosystem. Surprised this doesn’t happen with other drinks like carbonated water.

executive 6y ago
https://sodastream.com/ https://sodastream.com/
- fermienrico 6y ago
  Is it only me or I find marketing around "eco-friendly" not genuine and just a ploy to get you to buy their products? Like you go to Marriott hotels, low and behold there is a sign on the bathroom towel that says "Please help save the planet" by reusing the towel. Sure it helps, but that's not the reason why they put that sign up. It is to save costs of laundry. If they really want to save the planet, how about cutting down private jets for their executives? It never feels genuine and unless the product/service is directly contributing help to the environment - like an advertisement for a Solar panel company or a Wind Turbine brochure.
  - bmarquez 6y ago
    You're not the first person to think of this, it even has it's own term. The hotel example isn't as extreme though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwashing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwashing "Greenwashing efforts can range from changing the name or label of a product to evoke the natural environment on a product containing harmful chemicals to multimillion-dollar marketing campaigns portraying highly polluting energy companies as eco-friendly. Greenwashing is therefore a "mask" used to cover-up unsustainable corporate agendas and policies."

Finnucane 6y ago

A $5 plastic Melitta pour-over filter holder and a kettle make better coffee than any machine.

chipotle_coyote 6y ago
They don't make better espresso than any machine. Pourover is not espresso.
- perl4ever 6y ago
  I don't know what it is technically, but if I wanted something more like espresso, I would use a moka pot instead. Not capsules.
  - chipotle_coyote 6y ago
    Fair, although moka pot coffee is indeed "espresso-like" more than espresso. They don't have the pressure to brew espresso the same way an actual espresso machine does. I think they make great coffee, particularly for Cuban-style cafe con leche, although nowadays I'd probably do that with my Aeropress because it's faster and can do a strong, espresso-like coffee pretty well. But it's still not espresso. :) A Nespresso machine certainly isn't the pinnacle of coffee perfection -- I've just found that it makes a decent and very consistent espresso, lungo or Americano for me. There are times, particularly in the evening, when I just don't want to mess around with grinding and brewing, and I'd much rather have a Nespresso coffee drink than a Keurig one.
  - so33 6y ago
    Nespresso isn't technically espresso either, as Wirecutter points out (https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-nespresso-machine/ https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-nespresso-ma...). That being said, I was under the impression moka pots require a lot of cleanup. For drip, there's a lot of competition, notably the AeroPress, that's only slightly less convenient than the Mr. Coffee machine. But I'm not aware of a product like that for espresso-like drinks.

webwielder2 6y ago

I think the Guardian may have pinpointed the least pressing question of our times.

glxxyz 6y ago
They were also slightly over-egging it with 'coffee revolution'; it's a slightly different way of making coffee. I work for a company too frugal to buy an espresso machine and Nespresso is perfect for me at work. Cheaper and quicker than the cafe downstairs, decent taste, and we recycle into a bag and drop them off at the local Nespresso store. It's not a revolution though.

peteretep 6y ago

> In 2013, the most recent year it released figures, Nespresso’s revenues totalled $10.8bn. > In the summer of 2020, buffeted by Covid-19, Nespresso trundles on. In a recent email, a spokesperson reported “mid single-digit growth” This article has failed to do anything other than convince me that the Nespresso is one of the most impressive products every launched, and has room to take on the US still.

gambiting 6y ago
Really, I hate how "single digit growth" is somehow a failure nowadays. Millions of companies everywhere don't even grow year or year - businesses which found their niche, which employ hundreds or thousands of people and which just operate in equilibrium state where everyone goes home paid at the end of the day and it's fine. No one considers those a failure just because their valuation isn't doubling year on year.
- asddubs 6y ago
  If you're not chasing unsustainable growth and are willing to pay any long term price for it, you're not doing capitalism correctly
- onion2k 6y ago
  If a company isn't growing by at least the equivalent of inflation then it's shrinking, and that can't happen for very long before it can't cover its costs. Even when inflation is close to zero, interest on debt means that a company that isn't growing won't be able to service it's creditors forever, and it'll fail. There are plenty of reasons why 'growth at all costs' is a stupid goal, but there does have to be some growth for a business to survive.
  - Thorentis 6y ago
    Well, a company in equilibrium has the option of increasing its prices inline with inflation. Which is the very definition of inflation. I don't think growth (in terms of more customers or more product sold) is required to stay in business. You just need to stay competitive in the market and keep meeting costs.

lsllc 6y ago

I have a Nespresso machine and TBH, being able to have a quick ristretto or two literally inside a minute before flying out the door in the morning (pre-COVID19!) was nice -- yet terribly wasteful with the pods. Usually, it's drop coffee ... in fact my 10 year old $35 Mr. Coffee machine broke recently and I had to (shock horror) resort to a cafetière & kettle (the $30 Mr. Coffee burr-grinder thankfully still worked!). You know what? It's fantastic, 4 minutes and push the plunger. Great tasting coffee ... maybe the Mr. Coffee stays dead. In either case, at least the only environmental impact is bio-degradable coffee grounds (maybe paper filter) and energy to heat water (and grind coffee!).

myrandomcomment 6y ago

We have one of the ~$400ish red machines at home for 6 years now. It gets used maybe once a week. Every morning we grind beans, and use a French press. We have our normal coffee bean but we love to try different beans. The ritual of making the coffee in the morning is part of the joy I think. Putting the kettle on, the smell of the beans being ground, the smell from pouring the water on the grounds and stirring them. It’s a comfortable part of the morning. It’s a constant in a world that needs it now.

MaximumYComb 6y ago
Are you child free? I wake up and just hope for 5 minutes of peace to enjoy a coffee where I can sit, read and drink coffee. Making coffee using a French press would take all that time. Nespresso is a quick thing and I get to enjoy a few minutes of peace before chaos.
- msh 6y ago
  I think you got a point here. My reasoning for the machine is kind of the same.
- myrandomcomment 6y ago
  No, but teenage now. The French press does not really take much time. Night before going to bed setup kettle and grinder. Get up and go to the kitchen, hit the button on the kettle, hit grind. Dump coffee in press. Water is done in 4 minutes. Pour on coffee, stir. Go grab a shower or the like, come back and press down and pour.
alexmingoia 6y ago
Spot on. Coffee is much tastier freshly ground. Try roasting your own beans. It’s fun and you can do it on the stove with a pan. It’s quick too.
- _emacsomancer_ 6y ago
  An old bread machine and a heatgun works well too

sien 6y ago

It would be interesting to see how much impact better espresso machines and cheap grinders are having on Nespresso. A decent burr grinder, a Nanopresso and a milk frother is much cheaper than a Nespresso and does something as good. $AUD 10 Aldi beans with that is cheap and excellent.

maccard 6y ago
I can't comment on the actual numbers for Australia, but in the UK at least, there are online shops like hasbean that will roast & grind for you for roughly the cost of a bag of premium supermarket coffee. It'll save you the outlay of a grinder (and it's ground with a grinder that will be far more consistent than what you buy).
- askvictor 6y ago
  But freshly ground coffee is so much different to pre-ground. Once ground, it starts oxidising immediately, so will start to affect the taste pretty quickly.
  - Lio 6y ago
    Apart from being fresher, the grind is also one of the ways you control the pressure you extract at in an espresso machine. Depending on the machine you can either time the shots, use a pressure gauge or just look at the flow coming out and verify by taste. It's not much more complicated than if the pressure is too low the shot will taste sour. So you adjust the grinder to grind larger. If it's too low the shot will be overly bitter. So then you grind smaller. I'm told the ideal pressure is 9 bar but really taste is the real test. Once you have the grinder dialed in it will probably be fine for the entire batch of beans and only need tweaking when the next batch comes in. (Although if you may have to tweak it as the bag ages.)
  - maccard 6y ago
    My experience is 3-4 day old ground coffee was still notably better tasting than freshly ground coffee with the hunk of a grinder I used to use. It obviously depends on how much you drink (our house goes through about 1 bag per week), but as a starting point it's likely to be better than pre ground supermarket coffee, and more accessible than a decent burr grinder. Telling someone who uses a Nespresso to shell out 50 bucks for a Hario skerton, and spend a couple of minutes cranking the hand grinder is probably not going to be the most successful conversion path!

softwaredoug 6y ago

I’ve seen a couple comments that nespreso is wasteful. It’s worth pointing out the relatively easy to use capsule recycling and composting program. You fedex bags of used capsules and they recycle and compost then (supposedly) https://www.nespresso.com/us/en/how-to-recycle-coffee-capsules https://www.nespresso.com/us/en/how-to-recycle-coffee-capsul...

Symbiote 6y ago
That still seems wasteful compared to the alternatives.
- d4rti 6y ago
  To be fair to Nespresso, there are some potential environmental benefits from only boiling the required quantity of water, and reduction of waste coffee (i.e. in the pot and undrunk). It's not easy to determine if these outweigh the waste of the pods themselves. (I'm no Nespresso shill, I grind and Aeropress - I think my biggest source of waste is on power from boiling too much water)
  - slim 6y ago
    coffee and water are not garbage. you can grow plants in them alone without spending any added energy
    - d4rti 6y ago
      Boiling more water than you need at that time is a waste of energy.
cranekam 6y ago
Each capsule contains 5-7g of coffee (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nespresso https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nespresso), so that's roughly 35-50 capsules per 250g bag of ground coffee. Even if the recycling scheme was used by all consumers (highly unlikely) these things are still vastly more resource intensive than alternatives.

brandonmenc 6y ago

Since there seems to be a lot of hate for the Nespresso, I'll chime in: I currently have a Nespresso, Aeropress, V60, a few Moka pots, and probably a couple other devices I've forgotten about. The Nespresso is super convenient and not bad tasting, but I put sugar in my espresso - a grave sin according to coffee snobs in America - so ymmv. Sometimes I want a shot of coffee but don't want to wait for the Moka pot. Yes a Moka pot is convenient - versus an actual espresso machine - but it's lightyears away from the Nespresso in that respect.

zwaps 6y ago

I think I am one of the few people who enjoys all sorts of coffee. I have had Espresso in many citys in Italy, all the hip Third Wave coffees, but I can still enjoy a Nespresso, a drip machine, Mokka, Turkish coffee, DeLonghi or Jura type coffee or Aeropress. I even find Starbucks has its own taste. They all taste different. I just don‘t get the people who insist coffee can not be bitter and Starbucks roast is the devil. The sneering I get from people who think there is exactly two ways one should enjoy coffee, as super tricked out Espresso, or as mild tea. Seriously. Yes I have had „good“ coffee. Lots of it. I even had a lot of bad „good“ coffee. I sometimes have serious nostalgia for good bad coffee and no one will take it away from me!

esperent 6y ago
There's nothing wrong with the taste of Nespresso (it's a little weak for me, but that's personal preference). The reason why coffee pods are awful and need to die is the sheer, disgusting amount of pointless waste they create. Every single cup of coffee requires a small, non-degradable, hard to recycle piece of plastic. Making coffee with a normal espresso machine is so easy. You can learn how to do it in 5 minutes (not barista quality, but at least as good as Nespresso). If you think that cleaning up the mess from a coffee machine is too much work, you are just lazy. The only benefit I can think of is that you don't need a sink nearby. But in every case where I have seen a Nespresso machine, there is a sink within at most a two minutes walk.
- peteretep 6y ago
  > it's a little weak for me, but that's personal preference Have you tried the 12 and 13 out of 10 intensity capsules?
  - hocuspocus 6y ago
    They're roasted darker and ground finer, but it's still nowhere close to a proper double shot pulled from 15-20g of coffee. Also while the single-origins are good, the arabica and robusta blends are pretty awful in my opinion.
- 6y ago

fredsted 6y ago

I used to have a pod machine, and just found it didn't make very good coffee. It didn't really taste like espresso. In fact, it didn't taste very good at all. After that, I started using a french press, which was nice, but I like espresso more, and so I got a Sage Barista Express. Great machine, no plastic waste, once you learn to use it you can create coffeeshop-quality drinks at home for very little money–plus you can experiment with different beans. The difference between a proper espresso and pods is huge.

syspec 6y ago

The article reads like a hit piece. They kind of raise a question, but never really show that it's grinding to a halt. According to the article itself Nespresso is still growing: > In 2013, the most recent year it released figures, Nespresso’s revenues totalled $10.8bn. > In the summer of 2020, buffeted by Covid-19, Nespresso trundles on. In a recent email, a spokesperson reported “mid single-digit growth”

peter_d_sherman 6y ago

>"In 2013, the most recent year it released figures, Nespresso’s revenues totalled $10.8bn."

AgloeDreams 6y ago
I wish I could 'fail' that badly.

toyg 6y ago

You can take the Nespresso machine out of my dead cold hands. It improved my life significantly: no more ground coffee spilling all over, no more cleaning and drying the mocha every day, no more having to worry about the right amount of coffee or water, whether I’m drinking too much, why I didn’t get crema... It’s slightly more expensive than simple mocha but still dramatically cheaper than anything you find in coffee shops (outside Italy at least), and worth the peace of mind. Now they have a saas-like offering so I don’t even have to worry about how much I spend, it’s automatically budgeted and withdrawn and I just make an order every few months. The only criticism I have is that most of their varieties are not 100% Arabica, and often it’s hard to find out if their “special editions” are. Robusta is bad for your blood pressure, but sadly it’s cheaper so it ends up in most mixes. This said, I think their last batch was almost entirely Arabica flavours so maybe they are improving. If you care, I’ve done a bit of analysis two years ago that covers all classic varieties (I really should update it) at http://blog.pythonaro.com/2018/04/nespresso-blends-comprehensive.html http://blog.pythonaro.com/2018/04/nespresso-blends-comprehen... (Oh, and fuck Vertuo. I’m happy to read it was an attempt at courting Americans, because from here it looked like just a simple money grab to raise the cost of capsules and maintain exclusivity on the format. No thanks.)

SergeAx 6y ago
Pure arabica could give your coffee sour taste, especially if roasted lightly. 10-15% robusta balances that. +1 to fuck Vertuo. If someone wants their coffee by gallons - let them get a dripper or kettle plus family-size bag of instant powder.

ToFab123 6y ago

Every cup of coffee also produces one piece of plastic garbage. This is one of the most wasteful machines and anyone that cares about the environment should throw that machine in the garbage.

peteretep 6y ago
> Every cup of coffee also produces one piece of plastic garbage You didn’t read the article and you’ve misidentified the product.

draw_down 6y ago

People who prefer brewed coffee over the Nespresso are coffee snobs. Those who prefer Nespresso over it’s cheaper competitors are... just savvy consumers, I presume

michelb 6y ago

Having tried many machines and manual ways of making coffee, is there a real difference between says a Nespresso, Mokka, or a top-of-the-line Jura? I mean, given the same beans etc, is a Jura noticeably better tasting?

pizza234 6y ago
I don't remember drinking a comparable coffee from a fully automatic machine. Also keep in mind that the top of line Jura has two boilers, which make it twice as expensive, but not necessarily better. I suppose that they're generally targeted to shops; I've seen it only once or twice in a consumer context. There is a potentially significant difference between a Nespresso and an automatic machine, which is qualitative and adhoc grinding. Producing "nespressos" is fully vertically integrated. They have control over the coffee beans, the grinding process (which can potentially be high quality), and the machine. I doubt that a fully automatic sports a high-quality grinder (I guess that most, if not all, don't have an acceptable quality one). Regarding moka, there's no comparison. It makes a watery coffee. It's very popular because it's the cheap and easy way to make an "espresso".
zwaps 6y ago
They all taste noticeably different.

gadders 6y ago

If Investment Banking is anything to go by, these aren't going away any time soon. Normally each desk of traders has one shared machine for people to shotgun espressos when they need to.

dghughes 6y ago

I like the concept of Nespresso but as others have said the waste is the problem. You have to wonder though it seems like a simple problem to solve. In my region a local businessman used potato starch to make "paper" plates. If Nespresso could make biodegradable pod cases that would solve the waste problem. This article is timely for me I've only just discovered how to make great coffee. I've had a French press and a cheap coffee bean grinder for decades. With a little knowledge I finally made a really good cup of coffee. Nabob beans $4 and a few minutes makes great coffee. It's so great that I went from milky lattes and double-doubles to drinking it black. It's amazing how much a tiny bit of milk or sugar muffles the taste great coffee. 30g coffee beans freshly ground, 450g water, 5 minute brew. It's so simple with a French press no filters no electricity no pressurized steam.

wiether 6y ago
As a french person, I wasn't aware of what was a "French press". With the help of Google I've seen that I perfectly know what it is, but we don't call it that way here and furthermore it's not a popular way of making coffee. But thanks for the knowledge !
- richjdsmith 6y ago
  I spent a solid week looking for one in Martinique. I was finally told that they are on occasion refereed to as Italian Presses, but am still unsure if this was true.
- SergeAx 6y ago
  Got to New York for the first time, had awful jet lag, found a place for breakfast at 5:30 in the morning. Asked for Americano coffee. The whole diner made big eyes, like "what do you mean?!".
- dghughes 6y ago
  I'm in Canada I urge you to start a new trend and call it a << Canadian Plunger >> or something like that. lol

wonderlg 6y ago

Nespresso is great until you realize that you’re paying a huge premium to avoid using a spoon out of a coffee bag. IMHO, it’s only slightly better than using that next-gen juice machine we all know. I have a small espresso machine at home and a 5€ coffee dispenser: 2 flicks and you’re ready to brew.

ThomPete 6y ago

I eat and drink pretty well. Expensive wines, organic food, barista made coffee, I go (went) to Michelin restaurants, drink good whiskey, I enjoy a good barista made coffee and few things are as nice as getting it in a nice café. I've also had espresso machines and done the whole thing proper. These days I just have a Nespresso machine which makes great great coffee and if I run out i just drink instacoffee. Once in a blue moon I will have coffee beans lying around and I will make coffee press. There are coffee puritans out there but they are just not the majority. Nespresso coffee with the right machine and the right flavour is just as good as any barista made coffee. And with regards to waste, Nespresso offers free recycle bags if people want to be environmentally friendly their is nothing to hinder them (my guess is that most don't really care) Nespresso offers a great product, great service I don't think there is any risk of them going out of business anytime soon.

m0llusk 6y ago

Some scientists brewing herbs for research found Nespresso machines to be almost perfectly efficient. In my work with residential maintenance I find Nespresso machines extremely common but also frequently broken. They are not easy or cheap to repair so often there is an upgraded unit which also breaks. This raises significant issues with durability and design for disassembly. Going for cheap with a high end product may end up cursing the line over time. What I find enduring are the older type of Cuisinart brewers which are made of relatively robust components that are easy to replace. They are nowhere near as good but endure actual use much better.

tguedes 6y ago

I always thought Keurig was the first to come up with using the pods to hold the ground coffee but it seems based on this article that it was actually Nestle. Why did Keurig become the default standard in the US?

hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
Keurigs generally make brewed coffee (i.e. the water is not under pressure), which is overall more popular than espresso in the US, which is what Nespresso makes.
TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
Nespresso pods costs a lot more than any Keurig-compatible pod I've seen.
TheSoftwareGuy 6y ago
This is talked about in the article. The Nespresso didn't quite catch on in the US like it did in europe. Americans generally prefer to drink larger quantities of coffee, often in the car. This does not lend itself well to espresso. As such, K-cups got much more traction
- AgloeDreams 6y ago
  Yup, plus the K-Cup machine is higher profit and lower cost to build than a Nespresso machine. The BoM for Keurig is incredibly low for the selling price, something like $12 on a $130 machine. They flipped the razor and blades model and managed to make massive profit on both the razor and blades. I'm starting to see evidence that Keurig is struggling now however, They have launched much cheaper models and are all over the place looking for hits including ground coffee. I think they realized that they are known for 'meh' coffee and know that that brand wont get them to where they want to be next.

wooger 6y ago

Pre-ground coffee is limited in quality, as it'll always be stale when it goes into a mass production process as used by Nespresso. You need to be grinding only <15 minutes before brewing to get the best flavour. Likewise, you really want to be using beans within 2 weeks of them being roasted, which will never happen either. Nespresso suffers from old stale coffee, plus each pod contains nowhere near enough coffee grounds to make even a vaguely strong cup of coffee. Separate to all the waste issues, the coffee is weak and tasteless and to be honest, I'd prefer a high end instant coffee vs. Nespresso any day, as I can at least make it stronger. To get nice coffee you need to start with fresh beans, and use enough of them. I find a quick filter coffee to be much preferable 100% of the time.

ceejayoz 6y ago
> You need to be grinding only <15 minutes before brewing to get the best flavour. Because of oxygen, which the Nespresso pods are sealed against.
newacct583 6y ago
Unpopular opinion: the snobbery in the first two sentences is misdirected. Those absolutely are not requirements for most coffee drinkers. I mean, I do the food snob thing for a lot of items, but coffee just barely qualifies relative to areas where there is genuine variability (tea, cheese or wine, say). For 95%+ of drinkers, coffee is coffee and the only really signficant distinguishing qualities are the roast (which persists on a shelf) and brew strength. Note that I'm not saying that there aren't coffee snobs who feel strongly about this. I'm saying that the nature of the product is that there will never be enough of them to matter.

nottorp 6y ago

What revolution? Capsules are wasteful and expensive and you have no idea what's in them. No capsules for my home use thank you. I considered getting a fancy expresso machine that grinds the coffee for you in place at the press of a button, but I decided against it because I'm likely to overdose on coffee with one. Filter coffee is good enough for me thank you.

CloudNetworking 6y ago
Pretty much everyone and his mother in Europe has a capsule coffee machine. P.S.: I won't comment about the filter coffee remark as it's clearly bait ;)))
- nottorp 6y ago
  Nope. Even from my coffee snob friends, only one has had a capsule machine and abandoned it anyway. And he's the kind that owns 3 different french presses to start with.
  - CloudNetworking 6y ago
    Is that in Europe? I mean, I don't know anyone that does filter coffee in Europe to be honest. Not trying to be snobby, it's just different habits I guess (e.g. a watery black coffee is known as "Americano" in most places in Europe I've been)
kirykl 6y ago
Per pound of coffee Nespresso is indeed very expensive (when measured against the volume of ground whole bean needed for a cup)

trekrich 6y ago

because its shit coffee.

doodpants 6y ago

Informative article! I'm not a coffee drinker, and I never even heard of Nespresso until the George Clooney ads started in the US (which according to the article was in 2015). I've been under the impression that Nespresso was an upscale rip-off of Keurig; didn't know it had been around since 1986!

EdwardDiego 6y ago
Apparently he did those adverts to fund his Darfur satellite monitoring.

SergeAx 6y ago

> Nespresso’s getting close to saturation point, and there’s lots of competition I would love to give a shot to aforementioned competitors, which would offer comparable coffee quality, equipment price, fully automated brewing process and variety of blends within walking distance in any major city on the planet. Nice boutique-style retail store with competent personnel would be appreciated.

hocuspocus 6y ago
Since most patents expired, 3rd party brands started manufacturing compatible capsules in aluminum (plastic copies have existed for a longer time, but Nespresso fights that). The fact you need to go to a Nespresso shop and/or order online is actually fairly annoying. Most people want to buy coffee alongside their groceries. That's probably biggest reason behind the Starbucks partnership.
- SergeAx 6y ago
  Ah, you mean competitors are selling capsules, not the entire ecosystem. So, I believe that's how success looks like)
  - hocuspocus 6y ago
    Except it's like printers, Nestlé is losing money on most Nespresso machines, so if users start buying significantly fewer original capsules it'll threaten the ecosystem.

mD5pPxMcS6fVWKE 6y ago

I like powdered instant coffee with condensed milk, now kill me.

_emacsomancer_ 6y ago
At least this produces far, far less waste than Nespresso-style. And, depending on exactly how they process it, may end up 'fresher' than coffee brewed from old ground coffee.

banku_brougham 6y ago

Its not as good as freshly ground beans. <insert clip of Baron Harkkonnen>