One of the more insidious trends in home appliances is making food prep a proprietary, branded practice. This is most clear in the development of copyrighted coffee makers, which use special coffee satchels/pods (available only from the manufacturer or licensed vendors, and outrageously marked up) as a “convenience.” Using the model of Barbies, Razors, and Inkjet Printers, it’s not the initial purchase that costs you, its the accessories/supplies.
So this (spotted on BoingBoing) is pretty cool: a Make Your Own Pods kit.
With CoffeeGIANT’s new electric Gourmet Pod Maker you can now enjoy any of your favorite coffee flavors such as Starbucks rather than just the few choices that are available for your brand of pod coffee maker! Your choices will be unlimited and you can even blend flavors or vary the strength of your coffee or make tea pods as well! No more messy attempts at “do it yourself” pods either. This new machine heat seals your pod and allows you to make either one pod at a time or several to be ready for future brewing.
Makes pods for most brands, including Senseo, Melitta, Simple Human, Juan Valdez, Bunn Home Cafe, Bunn-o-matic, Mr. Coffee, Hamilton Beach, and more.
Of course, you have to buy paper kits for making the pods, not to mention your favorite coffee, but wanna bet the the net cost is way lower than what Braun is going to charge you?
And wanna bet that someone’s going to figure out a way (probably through the DMCA — chips on pods, anyone?) to sue this manufacturer before very long?