Java jolt: The pricey popularity of coffee pods

Coffee pods (Joe Shlabotnik / flickr / CC by 2.0)

If you are a regular coffee drinker, chances are you have a sleek machine at home or work that brews one cup of joe at a time in just seconds.

With each press of a button, you get a steaming cup of your favourite coffee. And your wallet takes another hit.

On GroceryGateway.com, a package of 12 Maxwell House K-cup coffee pods costs $7.99. That works out to about 66 cents per cup of brewed coffee – cheaper than stopping at a coffee shop on your way to work every morning.

However, a 326g tin of ground Maxwell House coffee, which can make up to 90 cups, is $6.69. At about 7 cents per cup, that’s the cheapest option.

Over at Starbucks, a 12-pack of Pike Place coffee pods is $11.95. That’s $1 per cup.

A one-pound bag of the same blend, which can yield nearly four times as many coffee cups, is $16.95 – about 38 cents per cup.

If that doesn’t make you think twice about buying the latest Keurig coffee brewer, the company announced last week that it will increase the price of its coffee pods by nine per cent due to the rising cost of Arabica beans.

Still, surveys and market reports show than when it comes to coffee pods, convenience trumps price. In the U.S., consumers spent $3.1 billion on coffee pods in 2013, compared to just $132 million five years earlier, according to the Mintel market research group. Other research firms have estimated that the Canadian coffee-pod market is worth more than $700 million per year.

According to the most recent Coffee Association of Canada report, a quarter of coffee drinkers said they used single-serve coffee pods in the previous day.