Are you one of those commuters who stops off at a coffee shop for that essential first java jolt of the day? Just a plain coffee at $1.50 a cup still adds up to $4.50 for a 5 day work week or around $18 a month.
Wouldn't it be great if you could save money and still get a great cup of coffee with minimum time and effort? Read on to find out what might be just what you need.
In order to save money, it will be necessary to expend a large chunk up front to buy a $120 Braun Tassimo hot beverage machine. It is a programmable dispensing system that works with "T Discs" or prepackaged sealed pods.
Even at that price, it will be a matter of months before you'll have saved up for it by not buying a coffee.
If you've ever dreamed of being a barista, here's your chance. All you do is insert the desired T Disc, press the button and wait for a minute as the machine brews your individual drink. The T Disc has a bar code the machine reads to know the size of drink, the amount of water required and the optimal temperature.
Because each drink is self-contained, you can make a variety of drinks without any cleaning in between.
There is no doubt that this is pricier than brewing a pot of coffee in a regular machine at home. The price for a Tassimo coffee falls somewhere between the regular home coffee and the coffee shop coffee. The advantage and main attraction of the Tassimo machine comes with the convenience of being able to brew that single cup of coffee or any other hot beverage in about a minute.
It would be hard to find fault with the flavours of the rich cups of hot chocolate and lattes or simple coffee.
Tassimo does have competition. One of those is from a company called Keurig. It also uses discs for making beverages but these do not include lattes, espressos or cappuccinos. What it does offer is a greater variety of coffees, teas and hot chocolates. While a Tassimo drink takes a minute to brew, the Keurig takes 40 seconds.
Many grocery stores carry the Tassimo T Discs while it is a lot harder to find a source for the Keurig discs. On line shopping is the best suggestion for obtaining them.
This is an exciting technology that could make us to rethink old habits of stopping off to buy that expensive hot beverage.
[Photographs copyright by Linda Dunbar. Reproduction prohibited]
