

Keurig CEO Blames Coffee Pod DRM for Falling Sales - jonas21
http://techcrunch.com/2015/05/08/keurig-ceo-blames-coffee-pod-drm-for-falling-sales/

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meritt
Twitter and Keurig are finally seeing the impact of their decisions. How many
more companies have to learn the hard way that strictly controlling how your
users want to use your product is poor business practice?

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blfr
What happened with Twitter?

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cryptoz
This is a good summary: [http://www.mathewingram.com/work/2015/04/30/twitters-
multi-b...](http://www.mathewingram.com/work/2015/04/30/twitters-multi-
billion-dollar-mistake-happened-five-years-ago/) and the HN discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9470312](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9470312)

TL;DR: Twitter was an open ecosystem with lots of partners and a thriving
developer environment. They chose to stop all of that, end their developer
relations, and ensure that Twitter Inc was the only way that anyone could
Twitter. Now, that closed-off-ecosystem is making growth difficult.

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dallasgutauckis
I think people also probably just realized how much of assholes they're being
by using single-use containers for making coffee every day. The one-use
concept is nice in theory, but it creates so much trash. It's obnoxious.

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worklogin
This is a very self-righteous post. Do you ever eat out? Get coffee or drinks
from restaurants? Use mayo/mustard packets? Eat frozen foods?

They are all analogous. They're all conveniences that use disposable
containers. And no-one is calling people a holes for eating Hungry Man.

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mikegioia
Do you eat two Hungry Man's every morning before work? It's not self-righteous
and it's not analogous to your examples. People drink _multiple_ coffees per
day. People put Keurigs in the office and get used _hundreds of times_ per
day!

Introducing waste for activities that happen as frequently as coffee drinking
is why it's different.

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mmanfrin
Keurigs in the office are the most ridiculously wasteful things -- it wastes
_more_ time having everyone sit and wait for single-use pods to brew than for
someone to just open up a stupid packet of grounds for a large carafe.

I really can't understand why offices use keurig.

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patmcc
>>I really can't understand why offices use keurig.

It eliminates the interpersonal drama that can waste crazy amounts of time in
an office. If there's a large central carafe of coffee, it can lead to:

people fighting over what brand/roast/strength to make

people fighting over a freeloader not refilling it

people fighting over who cleans it and how often

etc.

(I know that sounds crazy, but I've seen it)

With the pods, everyone can get their own coffee/tea/whatever in a little
independant transaction, no drama. To the company there might be a slight
increase in cost (but still almost nothing) and increase in waste (do most
companies care?), but their employees are happier, so it's an easy trade off.

Edit: I'm not saying I support the use of these pods in offices, just giving
some of the reasoning companies have embraced them in some places.

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brazzledazzle
I wonder if it would make more sense to give everyone the reusable fillable
ones and keep 2-3 different bags of coffee around. Best of both worlds?

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karmakaze
When they say "we were wrong", I take it to mean they were wrong to think
their actions were profitable, nothing more.

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scott_karana
If people vote with their wallets, their ethics directly correlate to the
company's profit. A useful feedback loop, to be sure :-)

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ashark
People don't really vote with their wallets over ethics, though. It'd take an
enormous amount of effort to keep up with all the bad things various
corporations do, or even just to keep track of which ones have been in the
news for nasty behavior.

Even people who take time to consider the possibility of attempting to spend
ethically are faced with the discouraging reality that 1) they'll still end up
accidentally spending a lot of money with unethical companies, since even with
a great investment of time their information will only be slightly better than
someone who takes no notice of these things, and 2) it will have _no effect_
anyway unless a bunch of other people do it too, meaning tons of lost time and
likely a great deal of lost money to accomplish nothing at all. Even with a
publicity effort for an organized boycott (more time, more money, spent by
someone) you're still just hoping that enough people will make bad individual
decisions so that the decisions _become_ good ones ( _i.e._ they do more than
just harming the people making them).

Most people don't even get that far. With everything else going on, "think
seriously about how to spend in such a way as to maybe (but probably not)
affect corporate behavior so that it becomes more ethical" drops down the
priority list... and down... and right off the bottom. Doesn't mean their
spending reflects actual support for corporate douchbaggery, though.

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walterbell
Counterpoint: Chipotle's successful brand strategy,
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/scottdavis/2014/06/06/beyond-
the...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/scottdavis/2014/06/06/beyond-the-burrito-
chipotles-next-big-move/)

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zak_mc_kracken
> We underestimated the passion the consumer had for this

The passion of their customers to not put up with bullshit?

Yeah, they definitely underestimated that.

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huhtenberg
What's interesting is that they are not planning to scrap the system. Instead
they are planning to sell a refillable pod that is compatible with it [1]. In
the end, they still want the DRM, it's just that the damage done is too big
and they have to say big words to try and undo it.

[1] [http://money.cnn.com/2015/05/06/investing/keurig-green-
mount...](http://money.cnn.com/2015/05/06/investing/keurig-green-mountain-
earnings-stock-fall/)

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gnoway
I'm a 2-3x a year coffee drinker. Are these machines radically more convenient
than the alternatives?

My folks manage to get by with one of those machines where you put the grounds
in a basket, fill the water reservoir, put your mug under the spout and push
the button. The machine is cheap, it looks like it's about the same amount of
work to use as the Keurig machine and you get biodegradable paper + grounds
afterwards instead of a plastic cup. And you can put in however much of
whatever kind of coffee you want.

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smokey_the_bear
They're both pretty easy, but I can make a cup from a Keurig while holding my
baby in under a minute.

The traditional machine takes two hands to set up, and 10 minutes to drip.

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civilian
> _while holding my baby_

Hmmm, that's a great standard to test UX against.

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DeBraid
In 2014, enough K-Cups were sold that if placed end-to-end, they would circle
the globe 10.5 times. Almost all of them ended up in landfills. They are not
recyclable.

www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/03/the-abominable-k-cup-coffee-
pod-environment-problem/386501/

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ralmidani
Wow.

Another big offender is non-recyclable yogurt cups. Does anyone have figures
on those?

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jarin
I understand that their business model is probably based on the whole "give
away the razor, sell the blades" thing, but what they probably should do is
just make the coffee maker a little more expensive.

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Domenic_S
It would never work anyway. You can't print without a printer and ink, you
can't shave without razor blades, but you certainly can make coffee without
Keurig.

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dublinben
>You can't print without a printer and ink

You can with a laser printer and toner. Inkjet printers are still hugely
profitable though.

>you can't shave without razor blades

You can buy a lifetime's supply of safety razor blades for the price of a
modern kit. Razors are still hugely profitable.

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hyperbovine
"We underestimated the passion", hah. Not giving money to greedy assholes: one
of my passions indeed.

