How Keurig saved — and ruined — your coffee

Jul 05, 2026 08:51 PM - 3 hours ago 148

David Pierce

is editor-at-large and Vergecast co-host pinch complete a decade of acquisition covering user tech. Previously, astatine Protocol, The Wall Street Journal, and Wired.

Before Keurig, the java successful your agency was almost surely terrible. Old, burned, made by personification who would alternatively poorly eyeball than decently measure. Just altogether gross. After Keurig? You could make your ain coffee, a cup astatine a time, precisely erstwhile you needed it. The single-cup brewer was an elegant solution to an highly communal problem. At least, that’s really it started.

On this section of Version History, we excavation into the history of the Keurig, and the ways successful which the thought sewage vastly bigger than anyone expected. K-Cups and Keurig machines became ubiquitous successful offices each crossed the US, past quickly began to invade our homes arsenic well. But arsenic David Pierce, Eater’s Melissa McCart, and creator and champion barista Morgan Eckroth discover, ultra-convenient java comes astatine a cost. To us, to the environment, and to the full conception of “good coffee.” Keurig has spent years trying to reckon pinch each those things, while besides trying to drawback up to a java civilization that mightiness beryllium leaving it behind.

This is the 4th section of the 4th play of Version History. If you haven’t yet checked retired the communicative of the Harmony remote, the Roomba vacuum, aliases the Nest thermostat, make judge you drawback up! It’s smart location play this season, and we’re having a blast. Here’s really to get each episode, and each our different nosy stuff, arsenic soon arsenic it drops:

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