Anyone that follows me on twitter likely knows I’m a big coffee drinker.  I couldn’t wait until they started building Starbucks in my little corner of Alabama.  I used to have a credit card that gave money back for my kids education until Starbucks came up with the Duetto card that gave money for coffee (they say you start ignoring your family when you get addicted ).  I also visit most of the coffee houses in my area. Will this change?   Maybe.  More on that later.

The picture above is of my newest toy, a Tassimo coffee maker from Bosch. You will see a rack in the back of cartridges, mostly coffee but also tea, hot chocolate, and milk. It creates a single cup of coffee from one of these cartridges in about 60 seconds.

Each disk has a bar code that says what temperature, amount of water, and flow rate should be used for the coffee, expresso or other drink.  For the engineers and tech geeks like me, check out Hacking the Tassimo Part 1 and Part 2 for the details of the bar codes.

Here is what I’m so keen on this thing (other than it being a cool gadget):

1. It makes REALLY good coffee. It surprised me how good.
2. It is a single cup.  My house is high traffic with 3 older kids. Five of us plus friends and we all like different types of coffeee (plus, my daughter likes hot chocolate and my wife likes tea)
3. No mess. Sometimes you have to wipe it down because of a coffee splash but still much easier than a regular coffee pot.
4. There are many different coffee options.  The Starbucks tastes a lot like what I get at Starbucks.

The one thing I don’t like about Starbucks is the difficulty of using the Wifi. I overlook it for the coffee and ambience.   The way it works is this… you get a starbucks card, register it, and use it once a month. Then you get a login to the ATT Wifi. Sounds good but it isn’t.  You see I use my Duetto card which I can’t use with the Wifi.  So I have to get ANOTHER Starbucks card and buy a little bit with one card and a little bit with the other… crazy. Plus, I usually visit with others like family or friends for work and if they don’t have a card or ATT wifi, its a pain.

Now, with Tassimo, I don’t really need to go for the coffee (Starbucks, I’m still glad I can get Starbucks for my Tassimo).  The other coffee houses have free no-hassle wifi so if you do something like a tweetup, it is easier to go someplace else. Now, the economy sucks.  

Local Starbucks, I hope you have a plan.  At the very least, start selling Tassimo disks.