[jasonkester]

Cool idea, but it seems to target a pretty narrow demographic:

  - wealthy enough to live in NYC and buy at least 
    one cup of coffee every single work day

  - cheap enough to want to save a few bucks a month on coffee

  - can't be bothered to carry a credit card around every day
 
  - can be bothered to carry a smart phone around every day

  - trendy enough to frequent NYC coffee shops

  - untrendy enough to be seen using "coupons" in public
 
  - techy enough to consider installing a coffee buying app 

  - non-techy enough to not have built a crazy $10k 
    coffee roasting-grinding-brewing setup at home

Fortunately for them, starting in NYC, that still leaves around thirty million potential customers.

It'll be fun watching this play out.

[carlob]

> - non-techy enough to not have built a crazy $10k coffee-brewing setup at home

I have an espresso maker (admittedly much much cheaper than that) at home, but I still drink coffee out throughout the day.

Though I also must admit to the fact that I leave in Rome where an espresso is 70-90 cents and consistently good.

[adambenayoun]

I own 3 espresso machines and have access to 5 no matter where I am (Splitting my time between Tel Aviv and the bay area) and I still drink coffee outside.

[theorique]

I own 3 espresso machines and have access to 5 no matter where I am

What's your average resting heart rate? :)

[vijucat]

Ha, I was thinking of the same thing. Who knows, maybe he's built for this kind of thing. On that note : if he can get a good night's sleep after all that caffeine, then I envy this man's constitution, which can absorb so much caffeine and still not reel from it! Poor me has to strictly follow a no-caffeine after 6 p.m. rule if I have to get any sleep. Actually, come to think of it, the only time I can handle coffee gracefully is right after I wake up from sleep.

[alexkus]

Can't put in words how much better I sleep after moving to decaffeinated coffee.

I do like a nice coffee but I'm content with instant[1] decaf (and even if I have 10 cups a day it's not more caffeine than the equivalent of a single cup of caffeinated coffee).

Not spending £3/$5 a day on coffee helps too. It means I'll pay my mortgage off 2 years early.

1. A lot more prevalent here in the UK: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-26869244

[carlob]

I find it's really hard to make a homemade espresso that comes close to the one you get from a café around here. But then again maybe I should invest 10k on a new machine (and then 20k to renovate my kitchen to fit it in).

[yhager]

You can get a pretty good quality espresso with a fairly cheap setup.

To me, the most important thing is the freshness of the roast, then the quality of the grinder, and and actual espresso machine comes third.

I have a $800 setup (machine + grinder), and I roast my own beans, on an iron skillet, once a week.

It's pretty difficult to find anything outside on par with the quality I can get at home (most of the time..)

[carlob]

> It's pretty difficult to find anything outside on par with the quality I can get at home (most of the time..)

It really depends on where you are. I find that espresso in the gourmet cafés in large American cities I tried is mostly on par or slightly worse than the average espresso in Rome. The grains and the roast can be pretty good, but it's often brewed slightly long for my taste.

Espresso here is so dense it's almost solid and that's the thing I can't reproduce at home.

[stephen_g]

I got mine second hand (insolvency auction) for $900 for a machine that would have cost $6,000 when it was new a couple of years ago, and later I spent $400 on a grinder that goes for $1200 new. Both in good working order, apart from having to replace the hopper on the grinder ($70 for a piece of plastic was annoying).

Totally worth it though. The grinder (and coffee beans - buy them no later than a week after roast) are the most important part really.

[iterationx]

I'm in the market for espresso machines, what kind should I buy? Looking to spend no more than $2k.

[Patrick_Devine]

It's not quite like having a coupon or carrying a credit card, but more like insurance. You're insuring that the maximum you'll pay for coffee every month is $45. If you think of it that way, it's a pretty good deal, and doesn't come with a ton of friction (you're more than likely already carrying a smart phone). Now you certainly could pay less than $45/month on coffee with coupons, but this takes away the hassle from both the consumer and from the coffee shop.

I'm curious if the discount being offered to individual coffee shops is negotiated or if it's a flat rate. I would imagine that each shop charges different amounts for a cup of coffee, although maybe it falls around some uniform distribution. Certain locations probably skew one way or the other though; does a cup of coffee cost more or less in midtown or the financial district than SoHo?

[nitid_name]

Doesn't every coffee place in NYC use the same blue coffee cups?

I haven't been in awhile, but I remember the slice of pizza being pretty consistent from shop to shop and something about it being related to the cost of the subway. I could imagine coffee having a similar pricing scheme throughout the city.

[Patrick_Devine]

I'd forgotten about the NYC blue coffee cups, but yes, I think that was the case in the past, or at least, it is according to wikipedia. Here's a link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthora

I'm assuming these guys are targeting the more shi-shi fru-fru latte scene and not your blue collar cuppa cha which I associate with the anthora cups.

[aestra]

>Fortunately for them, starting in NYC, that still leaves around thirty million potential customers

The population of New York City (5 boroughs) is 8.337 million people.

The population of Manhattan is 1.626 million people. During the day, commuters from the other boroughs and outside the city nearly double Manhattan’s population to 3.1 million people.

I can't imagine them doing this outside of Manhattan, but even if they do according to the Metropolitan Statistical Area, the entire population of the New York metro area is 19.9 million people.

The entire population of New York State is 19.651 million people.

>untrendy enough to be seen using "coupons" in public

>can't be bothered to carry a credit card around every day

Where do you get this from?

> wealthy enough to live in NYC and buy at least one cup of coffee every single work day

Brooklyn has more affordable housing and is becoming gentrified with a median per capita income of $43,567. It's easy to commute to Manhattan from some affordable neighborhoods.

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2014/01/new_...

[halflings]

I think that was a joke, suggesting New York is a lair for "ironic" people (I guess).

[mseebach]

Addressing your points 2-7: This clearly isn't a revolutionary, disruptive startup, it's a clever play to incrementally remove a little friction, but every little helps. It may not remove enough friction to be worthwhile, but I can't fault them for taking a shot.

Point 1: As you suggest, that's probably not such a small population to start out with, and it's not like NYC is the only coffeedrinking city on earth, or that coffee is the only drink enjoyed by city-dwellers.

Point 8: There's almost no point in paying insane NYC rents if you spend the majority of your time in your apartment.

[prostoalex]

The model is scalable outside of NYC, and "can't be bothered to carry a credit card around every day" critique can be applied to any service that tries to improve payments flow (Square, Starbucks' mobile app).

On "techy enough", for reference, 11% of Starbucks purchases is happening through their mobile app - http://news.starbucks.com/news/starbucks-accelerates-mobile-...

[george21]

Do you think the market is limited at first is an initial wedge for them? What's to stop them from later creating other properties related to topics like fitness, or eating out for example?