Specifically at grocery stores.
This weekend I was grocery shopping, and it occurred to me whilst attempting to find the one or two whole bean offerings amid the sea of pre-ground coffee and k-cups that I haven’t seen coffee grinders in a grocery store in years. It feels like, growing up through the 90s and early aughts, most stores would have at least a few options to grind fresh, or at least the Bakers near my home did. However, at some point, they were seemingly removed everywhere.
Of course, my intuition tells me that it benefits stores to not have such specialized machinery in place so as to allow maximum flexibility with store layout, but I’m curious if anyone has an inside scoop.
If you’re serious about coffee you know it’s best to grind as soon as possible to brewing, so you get a grinder. A really good burr hand grinder is like $100 and a good enough one is like $20, a solid burr electric grinder is like $150.
If you don’t care so much you just buy preground. Keurig and nespresso “unrecyclable plastic waste generator for shit coffee” machines also needed far more shelf space. I cannot stress enough how the keurig is a blight on humanity. The coffee is objectively bad and that is whatever, it’s still drinkable, but it creates so much unnecessary plastic waste with every brew. This wouldn’t be so much of an issue if it didn’t become the de facto coffee method of every lazy shit who drinks coffee every morning (read: 60% of America). It is a scourge. It is pathetic that you go to a place like target and there are 18 different keurigs, 1 Mr. Coffee, and that’s it. At least the Mr coffee isn’t wasteful. But I digress. It wouldn’t kill them to stock a French press or something though.
An anecdote: I saw someone online who was able to buy a grocery store coffee grinder (Bunn G3) for crazy cheap (like $150) at auction around Covid times because the store was selling it off. Maybe that’s when they were getting rid of them? Apparently it was filthy, which tracks, but performed well once disassembled and thoroughly cleaned. They’re like $1400 new. But coffee people are nuts and that’s nothing, there are grinders that are like 4000+
I watched some Ted-talk’esque thing about a guy who chased the perfect coffee and he came to the conclusion that after toasting the beans, coffee only has a shelf life of two weeks, ground or not.
Obviously it keeps, but for optimal coffee…
Due to this he started developing small home toasting devices. I’d like to try that, see there’s any difference.
do you remember where you heard about that auction find? I’d love to see some pictures or video of that restoration if there are any
I think it was reddit? Searching for it is not helpful though as it appears it’s not all that rare of a deal, the coffee subreddit has like a dozen posts of people asking about “is a used bunn for $150-200 off marketplace a good deal”
And man browsing this is why I fucking hate reddit. There’s always some pedantic asshole to be like welllllll maybe butttttttttttttt here’s the problem with that deal: it’s not a $6000 grinder that looks like a prop from a Wes Anderson movie. Like the answer to that question is “yes”, or maybe “yes but you’ll have to clean it real good because it was in a grocery store for 6 years and never got cleaned once”
Wait, the Germans didn’t bomb Pearl Harbor. I know you’re on a roll here but searching target.com for French press returned 11 pages of results and at least the first page was like 18 different French presses
I meant brick and mortar, refine that list to “pick up in store today” and see what happens. Lots of people still impulse shop and want it right this second, even if that means driving to the store and having it put in their car. I mean obviously you can go on amazon and get a v60 or a moka pot for less than $40