Opening the box Grind
Bombarded on social media with unwanted posts from Grind, never a good sign.
Ordered, arrived in the post a few days later.
Subscription £9–99 for compostable coffee capsules:
- three boxes each of ten compostable capsules
- a tin
- an information booklet
Two boxes of Grind house blend, one of light roast.
The tin I have no use for. For coffee beans useless, the best storage is the bag they are shipped in. For capsules, would offer an extra level of protection to the little boxes shipped in, but how would know what was what, when the capsules all look the same when not in their little boxes?
The little booklet devoid of information. Learn their head roaster is a q grader, and yet no mention of q grade of the shipped coffee, no mention of origin. The norm for Grind, obtaining information about their coffee is like getting blood out of a a stone. A meaningless chart showing weeks for coffee capsules to compost (in an industrial biodegrader) compared with plastic and aluminium. Meaningless comparison, aluminium can be easily recycled. No information on what the capsules made of or where sourced from. Critical to brewing, the yield. No mention on the little boxes or in the useless information booklet. Using Opal One, I tried 26g.
The blend awful, on a par with though marginally better than the cheap rubbish on the shelves of supermarkets. The light roast not good, leaves a very unpleasant taste in the mouth.
Hot Tip: If thinking of trying Grind, and I do not recommend, order subscription for longest period between deliveries of eight weeks, then cancel on receipt of first delivery.
Grind is a start up coffee chain and it shows. I have never visited one of their coffee shops, and having tried their coffee capsules, a visit not very likely, especially when many excellent indie coffee shops in London.
Update
Grind is a chain, a start up, and it shows, hype, crowdfund, vulture capitalists, then when have sufficiently inflated the value and before it comes crashing back down, sell.
An e-mail today, subject We miss you shows how desperate for cash flow, an offer of 50% off, with the now obligatory customer recommendation telling me better than Nespresso.
It would have to be pretty shit coffee to be worse than Nespresso and to be fair, it is better than Nespresso, but there is far better coffee out there that does not require hype.
I have no problem with the service, it is just not great coffee.
