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How Keurig saved — and ruined — your coffee

On Version History: How one company filled the world with K-Cups, and changed our relationship with coffee.

On Version History: How one company filled the world with K-Cups, and changed our relationship with coffee.

by David PierceJul 5, 2026, 1:51 PM UTC

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*]($1)David Pierce is editor-at-large and Vergecast co-host with over a decade of experience covering consumer tech. Previously, at Protocol, The Wall Street Journal, and Wired.Before Keurig, the coffee in your office was almost certainly terrible. Old, burned, made by someone who would rather poorly eyeball than properly measure. Just altogether gross. After Keurig? You could make your own coffee, a cup at a time, exactly when you needed it. The single-cup brewer was an elegant solution to an extremely common problem. At least, that’s how it started.

On this episode of Version History, we dig into the history of the Keurig, and the ways in which the idea got vastly bigger than anyone expected. K-Cups and Keurig machines became ubiquitous in offices all across the US, then quickly began to invade our homes as well. But as David Pierce, Eater’s Melissa McCart, and creator and champion barista Morgan Eckroth discover, ultra-convenient coffee comes at a cost. To us, to the environment, and to the whole notion of “good coffee.” Keurig has spent years trying to reckon with all those things, while also trying to catch up to a coffee culture that might be leaving it behind.

This is the fourth episode of the fourth season of Version History. If you haven’t yet checked out the story of the Harmony remote, the Roomba vacuum, or the Nest thermostat, make sure you catch up! It’s smart home season this season, and we’re having a blast. Here’s how to get every episode, and all our other fun stuff, as soon as it drops:

• The Version History podcast feed
• The Version History YouTube channel
• Our TikTok and Instagram accounts

If you’re a *Verge *subscriber, you can also get access to Version History (and all our other podcasts) with no ads. All you have to do is visit your account settings.

If you want to know more about the early days of Keurig, here are some links to get you started:

• From The Boston Globe: The inside story of Keurig’s rise to a billion-dollar coffee empire
• From The Atlantic: How Bad Are K-Cups for the Environment?
• Keurig caught making ‘inaccurate’ recycling claims about its coffee pods
• Kill the K-Cup
• From Mother Jones: Your Coffee Pods’ Dirty Secret
• Keurig’s K-Brew and Chill coffee maker chills out drinks for pod lovers

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