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Jessica, your "lipstick level" post this morning about the recession-proof success of Nespresso coffee machines strikes a guilty chord in me. I hate the Nespresso company as an addict hates her dealer. After receiving one of their machines as a (very generous) housewarming gift, my partner and I have gotten strung out on Nespresso, which is environmentally wasteful (the little one-per-cup aluminum capsules are unrecyclable), unsustainably farmed (like most coffee on the market), wildly overpriced, and reprehensibly delicious. Their "upscale" marketing campaign is a mailbox-clogging annoyance, transparently designed to flatter the consumer for her "exclusive" taste. (I chuck their glossy magazine in the recycling bin so fast that I never even noticed George Clooney was the spokesman.) And I don't know what "customer loyalty programme" that BBC article is talking about—maybe it's only for Brits?—but after two years of ordering boxes of those little foil capsules (like a software giant, Nespresso works to insure there's no cross-platform use of its product), we have yet to be offered a discount of any kind. No matter the quantity you order, each capsule costs the same (a price that now tops 50 cents per cup). I periodically resolve to go back to my old stovetop coffeemaking method, but ... the stuff is just so damn good. Maybe the knowledge that this smug company is prospering even in the recession will be enough to wean me off their coffee at last, if only out of pure consumer schadenfreude.
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