It looks like Keurig beat their 2020 date for offering an alternative to the disposable k-cup. Keurig Green Mountain competitors had filled the market niche with reuse-able filters (some not worth their $19 price tag, some that worked amazingly well for their $5 price point), Keurig Green Mountain was fairly slow to come up with a reuse-able filter. The viral video “Kill the K-Cup” made this painfully obvious in a hilarious homage to the early stop motion sci-fi movies- I’m fairly sure that there’s a k-cup Godzilla featured.
Is it too little, too late?
Well, apparently not. Keurig Green Mountain is still leader of the pack in 2017 with $1.16 billion in sales. So why release a reuse-able filter 2 years early?
Well, people didn’t like it when they could only use Keurig made k-cups (the throw away kind). As reported by the Washington Post online article in May of 2015, “Keurig’s K-Cup screw-up and how it K-pitulated to angry consumers”:
Sales of brewers and accessories declined by 23 percent, the company reported. Its stock price fell 10 percent in after hours trading.
So, they brought the My K-Cup back and it looks like sales are better than ever.