So, last time, I choose Peet’s coffee because I knew it was a safe bet from my pre-PowerReviews days of shoveling beans for hours on end. But now that we’ve finished off our fresh coffee supply, it’s time to try something new.

One of our partners, Café Britt sent out a promotional email to their customers last week and generated over 300 reviews in just 4 days. While doing some moderation (i.e. personal research), I noticed that they were getting rave reviews across the board. Now we will be the judges.

Currently in the kitchen:  Costa Rica Dark Roast (currently “Top Rated” on Buzzillions.com with a product rating of 4.9 stars and 381 reviews), Costa Rica Decaffeinated (currently “Top Rated” with 4.9 stars and 104 reviews), and Tres Rios Valdivia (was “Top Rated” last week when I placed the order - 4.9 stars and 381 reviews).

This will be a three way experiment:

1. How effective is Buzzillions for a customer taking a risk on a product she has no prior experience buying online?
2. How well is our “Top Rated” system working?
3. Will Café Britt’s blends be delicious enough to overcome the plastic k-cup’s ease?

Everybody’s time is precious. To many, coffee is precious as well.  And, to many, the planet is precious.  These groups are certainly not mutually exclusive, but with our current coffee maker they are becoming that way.  Every cup of coffee made in the office creates a plastic, non-biodegradable, non-recyclable byproduct.  We throw away at least 200 of these plastic k-cups per week (low estimate).

Now, I know better than to mess with people’s coffee.  No matter how wasteful our Keurig Brewer might be I know that it makes tasty coffee, that it’s time efficient, and that it’s not going anywhere.  No worries, Green Mountain makes an eco-friendly solution – “My-K Cup “ – a reusable filter that fits into the machine the same way that the plastic one does. It makes coffee in exactly the same amount of time*! Plus, since this mesh filter is not bound by the limited k-cup options, we can branch out to fresher coffee: actual coffee beans, locally roasted beans…even locally roasted hipster beans!

But, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The first “coffee of the week” picks are from Peet’s.  Since I used to be a barrista there, I had a few favorites that we ordered to be our trial run:  Major Dickason’s Blend , Ethiopian Fancy, and Sumatra.

If the ‘green’ option makes a higher quality cup o’ joe, will that benefit outweigh the cost of an additional 2 minutes spent brewing and breaking the habit of using the disposable cups? Stay tuned…

*Disclaimer: yes, admittedly, it does take a few seconds pre-coffee-brewing to fill the filter with grounds and then a minute or so post-coffee-smelling-yummy-in-cup to rinse it out.