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Keurig builds a K-Cup brewer into the machine meant to replace the K-Cup
Keurig's $500 Alta brews compostable AltaRounds and keeps a built-in K-Cup brewer for the pod it has sold since 1998. Anyone stocking K-Cups for an office or a shelf can keep ordering, because the launch adds a premium espresso option and retires nothing.
The Product Desk · Product desk
What happened
- Wired reports the Alta punctures each round and pushes water through it at 10 bars of pressure, with a built-in frother for lattes.
- Each AltaRound carries a QR code that tells the machine which pressure and temperature to use, and the Wi-Fi-connected Alta can take new recipes as more rounds ship.
- A pack of eight AltaRounds will cost $10 to $11, according to Wired.
- The Alta is sold only as a preorder bundle, and The Verge reports shipping is expected to start on October 21st.
Compiled by The Product DeskSomething wrong?How this is made
Why it matters
- decision A store or coffee service that wants Alta owners as customers will carry two pod lines, since Keurig expects those owners to keep brewing K-Cups in the same machine.
- contradiction Wired describes AltaRound packaging as foil and cardboard while The Verge, citing CNET, says the rounds ship in plastic wrappers, so a retailer cannot yet sell the box as plastic-free.
- constraint On Wired's counter the first-generation Alta needed more room than a Keurig, a grinder and an espresso machine together, so it will not drop into the space an existing Keurig occupies.
Someone in a house or office with a new Alta will want a plain cup in a hurry, and Keurig has already planned for that person to skip the new round. The company says the K-Cup brewer inside the Alta is there for coffee styles the Alta does not yet make, and for when users want something quick [8].
The story around the launch is the end of the plastic pod. In Wired's account, Keurig wants customers to leave the K-Cup for the AltaRound eventually [21]. Wired's reviewer wrote that if Alta takes off, "we are likely seeing the beginning of the end for the disposable K-Cup" [3]. The same review weighs the price and concludes, "With that high price, it will be some time before the K-Cup dies" [14]. By Wired's count, Keurig is the coffee maker in nearly 50 million US homes, with offices on top of that [4].
What Keurig has built is an espresso machine. The Verge calls the Alta one of Keurig's most expensive consumer machines because it doubles as an espresso maker [22]. Phil Drapeau, Keurig's senior vice president of Future Coffee Systems, said customers wanted espresso drinks as well as brewed coffee, and that Keurig had to invent a new system to make them [5]. "We wouldn't be able to do any of that with K-Cup," Drapeau said. "It will fail. You have to brew it at the right temperature and extract. You can't be constrained by the K-Cup system." [6]
Divide Wired's pack price by eight and each round costs $1.25 to about $1.38, before milk [1]. Knowing which rounds to order is harder, because the two launch reports disagree on the range. Wired lists single espresso, double espresso and regular coffee at launch [9]. The Verge lists six caffeinated varieties across light roast, medium roast and flavored options [18]. Wired counts four boxes of rounds in the bundle [11], and The Verge counts six [20]. Wired also reports that the preorder bundle has already sold out [11].
For a stocking or office-coffee decision, I'd sort the Alta on two questions. The first is what people actually drink: plain coffee, or espresso and milk drinks. The second is whether the budget covers new machines this year or only pods for the machines already in place.
Where people drink plain coffee on machines already in place, nothing in this launch touches the order. Plain-coffee drinkers getting new machines would put most cups through the Alta's K-Cup brewer, the use Keurig itself describes [8], and pay the bundle price for the privilege. For espresso drinkers on their current setups, the Alta is a replacement candidate, and the per-round cost above is the number to compare. Espresso drinkers buying new are the people Keurig built the Alta for [5], and they are the one group for whom AltaRounds become a standing order.
What to watch
- A standalone Alta price and a general on-sale date, neither of which Keurig had announced at launch, according to Wired.
- Keurig moving AltaRounds from plastic to paper wrappers, a change CNET reported the company is working on, according to The Verge.
- A later Alta model sold without the built-in K-Cup brewer, which would be the first hardware sign that Keurig expects owners to stop buying K-Cups.