Saving Freak

January 31, 2012

K Cup Coffee – Is It Worth It?

K cup coffee has taken the world by storm.  When Wal-Mart puts your product at the front of the aisle then you know you have arrived.  The question I see time and time again is, "Is k cup coffee worth the price?"  Since my wife and I received one the k cup coffee makers for Christmas I had to take some time and figure out what is the best method for getting my k cup coffee cheaply.

K Cup Coffee Pricing

I went to Wal-Mart and immediately determined that their prices were a little too high, unless you are purchasing instant coffee and if you are doing that what is the point of the k cup?  So I hit the internet to see who had the best k cup coffee prices.  I decided to go after the Coffee People Donut Shop Coffee.  Here is what I found:

Amazon.com
$60.08 for 100 k Cups

=60 cents per K Cup

CoffeeForLess.com
$55.96 for 96 K Cups
4% Cash back for using BigCrumbs.com link

56 cents per K Cup

CW-USA.com
$55.50 for 96K Cups
4% Cash back for using BigCrumbs.com link
$11.11 for shipping

67.3 Cents per K Cup

So online you can order the k cup coffee for as little as 56 cents per k cup.  This is still about three time higher than what you can get coffee from a drip coffee maker.  The obvious downside to the drip coffee maker is the amount of coffee that has to be made during each use.  There also tends to be some waste with the grounds because I don't know anyone who actually follows the recommended amounts.

K Cup Coffee Reusable Filters

So I set out to find a better way to use the k cup coffee maker than using the actual k cups.  There are a ton of recommendations out there including reusing your k cups but most of them are kind of hokey.  What I did find was some ingenious people decided to make reusable and cleanable filters that insert into your k cup coffee maker.  Here are the three that I looked at before I purchased:

My K Cup - This is the only refillable k cup coffee filter that is actually made by Keurig.  It does work very well, but has one major drawback in that you have to remove the entire k cup mechanism and put in the one that comes with the My k cup.  This means if someone gave you k cups as a gift or you decided to get a few just for kicks you would have to swap out the entire mechanism to use the regular k cups.

ekobrew Cup - This one is a great option and is super popular.  This one fixes the issue that the My K Cup has in that it fits into your existing k cup coffee maker with no modification.  I didn't end up buying this one for some really insignificant reasons and the fact that at the time the two pack for ekobrew was more expensive than the next option.  As of this writing it is the cheapest option.

Solofill Cup - This was my eventual choice.  It basically directly competes with the ekobrew cups.  It has only one real advantage and that is because it is called Solo, and because it comes in red, every time I make my wife a cup of coffee I get to sing the Red Solo Cup song (I told you the reason was insignificant).

K Cup Coffee Final Thoughts

So the down and dirty of k cup coffee is that by themselves they are not a good deal, but if you are only drinking a small amount of coffee and are willing to pay a little extra to get one of the reusable filters then you can really save a bunch of money by switching to k cup coffee.

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