In this article, we will talk about a coffee which comes in k-cup pods and is called donut shop coffee. This k-cup pod is produced by a company called Keurig and this beverage is one of top 5 Keurig-owned beverages that is popular worldwide.
So let’s talk about the Keurig a little bit. This is a company from America, located in Waterbury, Vermont. Besides producing one of the best coffee pods, this company also produces machines for coffee preparation. It was founded in 1998 and from 2014 Keurig company was renamed, and now it is called Keurig Green Mountain.
The owners of this company, in their college days, saw the problem with the time needed to prepare a cup of coffee when you are in a hurry, so they made a precedent and brought to life a product that became a coronary stone in every modern kitchen – coffee pod. Today, they are selling home brewers that transform a coffee pod into a tasteful cup of coffee. So, they are not only the producers of coffee, they are also producers of machines used to prepare in coffee. They thought of everything!
According to the information from 2016 the Keurig Green Mountain company has over 530 beverage varieties in their system, 75 brands and 10 of them are top best selling coffee brands in America. 19 out of 20 of the top single-serve coffee brands are Keurig beverages. They employ over 5.700 people worldwide. They brought to life some new coffee varieties (one of them is The original Donut coffee which will be mentioned later). They produce the following coffee brewing system models: Keurig 2.0, Keurig K-Cup Brewers, Keurig Rivo, and various office, store hotel etc. brewers which are: K10, K130, K 145 Office PRO, K 155 Office PRO, K 140, K 150 and K 300SE. The brewers come in 21 colors.
Over 57 billion pods are sold during the lifetime of this company. Over 60 million brewers are sold and because of this their brewers wear a title of number 1 coffee brewer in America, they are the 2016 brand of the year (but also in 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015), have over 2.8 million social media fans. In homes all over the world, there is around 23.6 million brewers in homes, 730 thousand brewers in hospitality and around 740 thousand brewers in commercial use. In 2010 they were criticized by the New York Times for producing non-recyclable and non-biodegradable cups but everything was corrected up to this day.
Also, there were some legal issues in the near history of this company. In 2014, when Keurig 2.0 machine was introduced, seven of the competitive companies and some of the purchasers filed a lawsuit against the Keurig because of using unlicensed pods. At the end of 2014 (in December) because of the burn injuries reported from water overheating out of some of the machines, around 7 million of the Keurig Mini Plus Brewing Systems were recalled. Some would say bad luck, others bad engineering, the judgment I leave to you. But all of this is the past. The numbers mentioned above tell another story, and you must admit it is a fascinating one.
Keurig Green Mountain company gather its coffee from 29 regions and current overall purchase is about 206 million pounds.
This company in 2016 has net sales over 4.2 billion $, operating profit of 962 million $ and a free cash flow of over 1.25 billion $.
Because of all this, they wear a title of the most loved and trusted single-serve brand in the single serve coffee maker category for the year 2016.
Now, when we told a story through numbers, let us look at this company from another perspective.
Every coffee pod produced is the work of art for itself. In order to make the best possible cup of coffee, this company employs specially trained coffee tasters (aka. Cuppers). From tasting numerous samples they conclude which one is the best, and after their permission the coffee pods go into the production. In one year a cupper tastes around 6.000 samples of coffee (I don’t know when this guy/girl sleeps). Currently, in this company, there is a team of 20 experts in coffee tasting. For them, details are everything – from moisture level to the visual inspection, color and size of coffee beans. With their help, this coffee has the right ratio of sweetness, bitterness, and sourness.
The brand very popular on the Amazon is the original Donut shop coffee holiday buzz Keurig K-cup (in the package of 18 pods). This coffee is made from 100 % Arabica, medium roasted coffee beans and of course the coffee pods are compatible with all of the Keurig produced brewers. For 15 $ you get peppermint like flavored coffee, with a prevailing bitter aroma. And because of this aroma, for some consumers, this coffee is not the first choice.
By their word, the mixture of mint and coffee doesn’t give such a fantastic result, but what is interesting is that either the impressions are phenomenal or disappointing. So, you can see that this product has a very specific taste and you will have to be a judge and see for yourself. The overall rating on the Amazon website is 3 stars (medium).
So, try it, it doesn’t cost you (well it does, around 13 $). If you don’t like the Donut shop coffee, you can try some other Keurig licensed brand or partnered brand that is famous worldwide and proved their taste. Some of them are the Bigelow, Campbells, Caribou coffee, Cinnabon, Celestial Seasonings, Eight OClock coffee, Folgers, Gevalia, Kahlua, Lavazza, Tazo, Millstone, Maxwell house, Swiss Miss, Snapple, Wolfgang Puck, Tetley, Yuban and a lot of others. Maybe you recognize some of the products but you didn’t know that it is one of the links in the chain of products owned by the Keurig Green Mountain company.
Overall, a great company, a corporate giant, that had ups and downs but managed to remain in the top position when it comes to the coffee producers.