Melbourne is a city of coffee drinkers. Serious, obsessive, get-out-of-my-way, I know what I’m talking about, that’s not the right size portafilter, coffee drinkers. If London can lay claim to a pub at every corner then Melbourne surely has the rights to call dibs on being the café corner of the universe.
So what was our reaction going to be to the innovative, Melbourne based company, Keep Cup? Keep Cup offers takeaway coffee for the environmentally conscious. We love carrying that steaming, fragrant coffee into work and we love our planet. The idea is a cracker. It delivers hot coffee, often at a reduced price, and completely eliminates any enviro-guilt. Could there be a more visible way of showing people we’re doing our bit?
Of course any great idea can be hamstrung by that annoying little thing called the human factor. You know the drill: human buys Keep Cup, Keep Cup is cleverly designed so you don’t burn your hands while holding it, human drinks coffee from Keep Cup and miraculously forgets hot coffee is usually, you know, hot, human burns their mouth and wants to sue Keep Cup. There is even talk that some cafes are refusing to use the Keep Cup because they can’t guarantee that it’s been washed. (Fortunately, this has not been my experience.)
This is all terribly reminiscent of one of my favourite Seinfeld episodes The Maestro where Kramer sneaks a latte into a movie cinema and burns himself while trying to climb over another person and then sues the coffee company to get a lifetime of free coffee – a satire of the 1994 ‘McDonald’s coffee case’ lawsuit.
I think we all just need to take a step back and admire this gem of an invention and make sure the human factor has a positive influence on this little Keeper.
