"That's all well and good, but..."

"Trader Joe’s 10 Instant Coffee Packets All Dressed up with Creamer & Sugar were crafted to quell the coffee conundrum, not just for our buyers, but for all who face it. Discovered while traveling in Korea by a buyer in desperate need of a quick, quality caffeine fix, these portable packets promise a consistent cup of delicious coffee with a careful balance of creamer and cane sugar sweetener. That’s right; the coffee, cream and sugar are combined in the same packet. All you need is a drinking vessel and some hot water – simple, elegant, reliable."
That's GREAT when you are traveling in far away and distant lands where a cuppa joe might be hard to come by, in a serious pinch, in desperate times.

We still seem to be rushing down the wrong path. I really want to see us turn around. I DON'T see it turning around, but I wish it would. But I never seem to run out of things to say here. I'd call it job security, but, well... I don't actually get paid for this.

Yeah. Who's kidding who? Whom? Whatever. People aren't picking up this product for their trip to Borneo. For climbing the Alps. For super-coffee-emergencies. People are buying this to use in their homes, and of course that is perfectly fine by TJ's. That's what they made it for - to sell it.

Why does anyone *need* this product at home on any random day? Just can't get up the energy to actually collect the jar of instant and the sugar and the creamer on a daily basis? I can see how that can get tiresome.

By all means, buy this product for that "coffee conundrum" that you ran into in your own kitchen. Those happen far too frequently. It's a real problem. Solve it with plastic packaging! Quick! Hurry!

Viva la Via

It was doomed from the start.

Starbucks... now, I love me some Starbucks, I really do, lots of people take issue with them, but I worked there in NYC and pretty much had a good experience and they do a lot of philanthropic things and treat their employees decently and damn I love the coffee. (Which may explain that run-on sentence after a few cups this morning.)

But Starbucks came out with Instant Coffee. Do I hate instant coffee? No. I don't drink a lot of it but I have nothing really against it. Hell, I've added instant coffee to my coffee. Yeah I'm just that hooked. What I hate is that they felt the need to put their instant coffee in single serve convenient packs. Of plastic something material. So it's convenient.

With that in mind, I would never have purchased Via to try on my own. But they put a sample on their pound-bags of coffee, so that we may be hooked by its convenience. So I gave it a try, as it came on the pound-bag of coffee we bought for our French press. It's the fair thing to do.

Back to the first statement, though... it was doomed from the start. I must have had it in for myself. I spilled a little of the coffee while opening the packet. The teapot splorged boiling water everywhere when I poured it into the cup. The agave syrup splooshed everywhere and gave me the stickies the rest of the day because it got everywhere around my mug before I realized it. I splashed the coffee out just stirring it. (This was after I DID have coffee previously, so we can't blame it on that.)

While that may have had an effect on my experience, I'll attempt to be objective. Was it delicious? Sure. It was. Better than most other instants? Probably. Is it worth it? Absolutely not. Do we need pre-packaged little bits of instant coffee in ours lives? Nope. These are no better than those stupid plastic pods of coffee that are STILL all the rage (and still causing me rage).

This is definitely a to-avoid product.

Now, if you don't mind, my French press awaits...

Let's End Where We Began

Call me crazy, but I don't think we really need to buy chilled coffee drinks from our grocer's dairy section. It's just more plastic.

Europe has a grab-it-shake-it-drink-it product by Emmi. It's a chilled espresso drink made with quality ingredients, and it looks really tasty, but it comes in this useless plastic cup with a plastic lid! Maybe in Europe, they are better at recycling. Maybe they are better at not littering. I don't know. All I know is I don't really want these drinks to catch on. Again, they look wonderfully delicious, but I know us here. We don't need it, we really don't. In this disposable society of ours, it's just another drink-it-don't-think-it product. (wow, I'm having fun with dashes today!) We already have pudding and Jell-O in super little plastic cups, because they are CONVENIENT and we cannot be bothered to make it the OLD way (that might take, oh, 1/2 an hour!!!! Holy crap, who has that kind of time????), so I think adding another plastic throw-away to the yogurt/pudding/Jell-O/fruit cups isn't exactly what we need here.

So... briefly... I'll round out my week with another coffee kvetch. Stay away from this product, and maybe it will go away sooner rather than later.