By Patricia Lopez*
TOMBALL, TX (KTRK) — If you use K-Cups to get your coffee fix in the morning, you know it can get pricey.
But we’ve found a way to stretch your dollar on the machines and the pods.
CoffeeIcon in Tomball is known for their massive assortment of K-Cups, more than 400 plus brands of K-Cup pods and K-style pods.
So when the Keurig 2.0 machine came out just a little over a year ago, Mike Ferguson with CoffeeIcon says there was a bit of an uproar from consumers.
“It has a built-in camera that if try to brew a product that is not theirs, you are going to get an ‘ooops’ and guess what? You just ruined your coffee,” Ferguson says. “Give it to your buddy, ’cause now it had a hole in it and you can’t brew it anymore.”
The Keurig 2.0 only will lock out any coffee pods not bearing a special mark, restricting specific brands.
But soon consumers everywhere found a way around it. Some hacked the system and outsmarted the reader, and now retailers have other solutions like one called the Solo Clip.
“What does the market do? It came up with a clip,” Ferguson says. “It clips over the camera really easily. It camoflauges the machine so you can basically brew whatever you want.”
There’s also an option to brew your own coffee in the K-Cup, saving you even more money.
“The pods that you are going to buy at the retail store are at least two bucks,” Ferguson says. “This you can brew for less than a quarter and you can just wash it out, and of course you have the single use cup you can use in this machine and they are both 2.0 compatible.”
Another big money saver, Mike says, is choosing the right machine.
He likes the Cuisinart Compact single-serve coffee maker that works with any coffee K-Cup style pod.
“This is a $99 machine with a three-year warranty,” he says.
