Coffee Subscription — The Last Thing I Expected To Get

And I still can’t decide whether I fell for it, or just made the greatest decision ever…

Nespresso coffee pods. Photo by author.

Do you subscribe to coffee or for coffee? My mind can’t decide whether it’s “to” or “for”. That feeling resembles very accurately my state of mind as I was standing at the Nespresso till this morning, being offered something I never really considered before. Truth be told, I just ran out of decaf coffee for my evenings, and needed a few dozen more pods for the next few weeks. Yet, there I was having to make this grand decision whether I wanted coffee for the rest of my life or not.

You’ve got to hand it to Nespresso, they’re not entirely dumb. They looked at shopping trends, average coffee consumption, did some maths and came up with the idea of a 25 euro monthly subscription. That’s about 50–60 coffees worth of credit that gets applied to my account every month — credit that I can use whenever — and I most certainly will because I drink about 80–90 coffees a month. The math checks out, right? I’ll use up my credit and likely spend a bit of extra as well.

And they’re clever about it, too. Since I’m spending the money anyway, why not be a subscriber and get the extra benefits? And there’s the hook. The very nice lad explained to me that instead of just…