Green Mountain Coffee Roasters is hard at work making pods for the Keurig brewer that contain some kind of exclusivity device. Just like iTunes music that gets tied to your computer the Keurig 2.0 system will only brew drinks from licensed pod makers. That means kiss those lower cost pods at Wal-Mart good bye. If you don’t sign into an exclusive deal with GMCR and Keurig then your pods won’t work. The wildly more eco-friendly refillable pod will also either die out or become wildly expensive,
It’s a great demonstration of hippy hypocrisy. It’s A Okay to use your market-share leader status to force competitors into unfavorable business deals or shove them out of the market space; while at the same time championing Fair Trade. I guess Fair Trade is a good thing if you are looking out for foreign nationals in far away lands and trying to influence developing nations to adopt costly ecologically friendly measures. When eco-friendliness bites into your bottom line (i.e. the refillable k-cup) you bite back. Good job GMCR! You make it so we all have to buy your new K-cups with even more plastic and probably a form of RFID with extra copper/metal parts. Now the NSA can track how much coffee we drink while you protect your bottom line from those refillable third party jerks.
I’m so glad I got the percolator out the other day, looks like she’s gonna get a lot more use than just camping…
