If you were worried that expanding into K-cups and the one-cup coffee market would hurt Starbucks, worry no more. According to a press release by Starbucks, after two months they have shipped over 100 Million kcups. Jeff Hansbury, president Channel Development for Starbucks said “Our [Starbucks] focus with the initial launch has been on Keurig Single Cup Brewer owners. Our next big opportunity will be to attract new customers to the category. We are confident the combination of the Starbucks Experience with the quality and value of Starbucks Coffee K-Cup Packs will ultimately make this a billion-dollar business over time.” In the fall of 2012, Starbucks will begin selling k cup single-cup portion packs in their retail stores.

Currently, Starbucks offers seven k-cup single-cup packs to customers: French Roast, Pike Place Roast, House Blend, Breakfast Blend, Sumatra, Caffé Verona, and Veranda Blend. The Veranda Blend k-cup is the only light roast Starbucks kcup available, while the Pike Place Rost, Breakfast Blend, and House Blend are all medium roast k cups; the French Roast, Sumatra, and Caffé Verona are all dark roast kcups. The Starbucks k-cups are currently available at food, drug, and retail stores nationwide as well as online at www.keurig.com.

Keurig and Nespresso — the two leaders in the one-cup coffee industry — have different approaches to meeting the needs of their customers. Because single-serve coffee requires the coffee beans to be be ground and packaged before distribution, both Keurig and Nespresso are unable to give customers as many options for flavors and roasts as traditionally packaged coffee. To solve this, Keurig partnered with Green Mountain Coffee Roasters to produce k-cups for roasts from a variety of different roasters throughout the United States and Canada. They continue to enter into licensing and distribution agreements with roasters to get even more options into the kcups for their customers. Currently, Keurig and Green Mountian Coffee Roasters offer over 200 different flavors and roasts from many different leading coffee brands.

Nespresso has a more limited selection: there are only sixteen different Grands Crus capsules available. Instead of working with other roasters, Nespresso one-cup coffee works closely with their farmers and buyers to select the beans and roasts for the Nespresso capsules. This farm-to-cup system enables Nespresso to produce single-sourced Nespresso capsules in addition to their blends.

Did you know that coffee surpassed beer as New York City’s most popular breakfast drink in 1688? Or that instant coffee was first developed in 1901? Or that coffee sales increased by 700% from 1995-2000, and shows no sign of decreasing — look at the popularity of new one-cup coffee brewers after all. For a fun overview of the history of coffee in the United States, take a look at this infographic posted at the National Geographic. In addition to the infographic (be sure to click to enlarge), there’s also links to a couple articles on the environmental impact of coffee and how you can use coffee grounds to improve your compost.

Overall, the infographic shows that coffee became a popular beverage in the United States right after the Boston Tea Party, and has just become more and more popular since. One thing that stood out, was that in a year, the average coffee drinker spends about $165.00 on coffee; maybe I’m just above average when it comes to coffee drinking. Enjoy the infographic and use it to win coffee bets with your friends.

In honor of 2012, Nespresso has teamed up with luxury brand Shanghai Tang to release 3,000 special edition Nespresso CitiZ one-cup coffee brewers. The Shangahi Tang Year of the Dragon Nespresso single-cup coffee maker was designed by Millicent Lai, the head designer of Shanghai Tang, and includes the Special Edition Nespresso CitiZ brewer, a Ritual Cappuccino Dragon Cup Set, a Dragon Capsule Holder with Carved Stone Inlay, and a Dragon Capsule Holder with Carved Silver Metal Inlay.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the Year of the Dragon Nespresso CitiZ one-cup coffee maker is just one of a number of Year of the Dragon-themed luxury products. Unfortunately for fans in the United States, the 3,000 Nespresso Year of the Dragon single-cup coffee brewers are all sold outside of the United States and cannot be ordered from Nespresso. Participating Nespresso Boutiques are located in Australia, China, Hong Kong, Kuwait, New Zealand, Singapore, and the United Arab Emirates.

While the Nescafé Dolce Gusto doesn’t get the same level of attention as the Nespresso or Keurig one-cup coffee systems, but the Dolce Gusto one-cup coffeemaker is capable of brewing milk-based drinks. As a bonus to their customers, Nescafé has implemented a rewards system. Each box of Dolce Gusto single-cup coffee purchased comes with a code; simply enter the code into Nescafé’s system and accumulate points. The points can then be redeemed for free boxes of Dolce Gusto one-cup coffee and other accessories.

To register for Dolce Gusto’s Rewards program, enter your email address. Then continue to enjoy drinking your Dolce Gusto coffee one cup at a time while gathering points to ensure that you can drink even more.

With the New Year comes new resolutions, and a common resolution is to recycle and reuse products more. This is also a common question we get on this blog. An article in the Los Angeles Times gives a solid overview of the state of recycling in the one-cup coffee industry. Unfortunately, there’s no new developments in this department. Currently, the Keurig k-cups are not easily recycled because the k cups are made from three different materials; however, Nespresso has a program where customers can drop used Nespresso capsules off at Nespresso stores and boutiques.

For other tips on recycling and reusing single-cup coffee serving capsules like kcups, youtube users like Madrosed have posted instructional videos on how to use a single k-cup multiple times. But the video is a little dated because  Starbucks k-cups are now available.

At Quick-CupCoffee.com, we usually focus on one-cup coffee brewers and the latest developments in single-cup serving roasts and technologies, but the Compleat cup stood out because it harkens back to the original one-cup coffee: the cup of coffee you would buy from the coffee shop on your way to work or at lunch.

The creators of the Compleat cup are marketing it as the first all-paper coffee cup, which means that the plastic lid on the top of disposable coffee cups may be a thing of the past. The Compleat cup is designed with a curved, fold-over lid. This lid enables to the drink to sip the coffee from one end while steam escapes from the other. So far, the creator is still looking for clients and customers, but maybe you’ll see it in your local coffee shop sometime in the next year or so.

Green Mountain Coffee Roasters has announced the official return of the Golden French Toast k-cup. This Fair-Trade Certified, seasonal kcup roast is released by Green Mountain Coffee for a limited time every year. The Golden French Toast k cup is roasted to taste like homemade French Toast with hints of cinnamon and maple syrup.

Every year, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters releases seasonal flavored k-cups. Other seasonal k-cups currently available are Spicy Eggnog and Gingerbread. The release of the Golden French Toast k-cups probably means that one or both those flavors will be ceasing production (or have already ceased production) until next winter, so stock up on those holiday flavors if you enjoy them as well. Green Mountain Coffee’s Golden French Toast kcups are available at www.greenmountaincoffee.com and www.keurig.com; they will be available from www.greatcoffee.com mid-January.

At the beginning of the year, Sara Lee’s sale of the Senseo brand to Smuckers. For one-cup coffee fans, Senseo is (or was) one of the major coffee pod roasters and manufacturers. As part of the sale, Senseo coffee pods will cease to be available in retail outlets after March 31st, 2012; however, the coffee pods will still be available through select online retailers.

Senseo offers eleven different roasts: Kona Blend, Breakfast Blend, Espresso Blend, Colombian, Kenya Blend, Hazelnut, French Vanilla, Sumatra, Dark Roast, Medium Roast, and Decaffeinated. So, if you’re a fan of Senseo and their eleven different coffee pods, we’d suggest stocking up while you can. The coffee pods are currently the cheapest per-serving form of one-cup coffees available.

We usually focus on one-cup coffee brewers that have simplified the coffee-brewing process: machines from companies like Keurig, Nespresso, Flavia, Tassimo, and Senseo. These companies combine brewing and packaging technology to make brewing a cup of coffee easier without losing the flavor that you love.

Melitta, a coffee filter company, has gone the low-tech route and developed a single-cup coffee system that requires a mug, the Melitta PerfectBrew Filter Cone, boiling water, coffee, and regular coffee filter. Simply fit the filter cone over the mug, put in the filter and coffee, pour in the hot water, and enjoy your cup of coffee. The benefit of this system is that it’s very compatible with using your own favorite roasts and beans; however, it also takes more time and has more clean-up than the one-cup coffee machines.