Category: Weblog

  • Hacking the Verismo from Starbucks

    I’ve been wanting a home pod coffee machine for a while now, but everyone you speak to has a different opinion on which is better, and to be honest its all based on whichever one they’ve owned so ive taken most reviews with a pinch of salt.

    I had been eyeing up the Tassimo machines as they had Costa coffees and lots of hot chocolate flavours but they were very bulky and for anything that looked half decent you bloody paid for it! Then i kind of lost a bit of steam for the whole thing as I looked into it all more and more and there were lots more machines coming on to the market – it got swamped and I got bored!

    A few months later we were visiting a customer of ours who specialise in domestic appliances and noticed they had started selling the Verismo from Starbucks, a Pod coffee machine licensed by K-FEE and that boasted lots of different types of coffees which all looked great! We walked out with 3 machines – each with 90 delicious pods to use!

    $_12One of the Verismo machines took a spot in my kitchen at home and we very quickly used the initial 90 drinks we got with it so i started shopping around for more pods for it and found myself on eBay and was presented with some very interesting finds.

    I found some “Espresto” pods for sale, they are made by the same company behind the Verismo machine – K-FEE and from the encouraging description on the eBay listing it seemed like these pods may fit my machine and I may have just found a way of stocking it without breaking the bank!

    The pods arrived, I held one next to a Starbucks one – and guess what? They are identical! This means that things like milk pods can be sourced cheaper, and also you can get hot chocolate pods which are something Starbucks dont offer for the Verismo system – they taste great too!

    I instantly ordered loads of milk and chocolate and even one of their coffees to try and its all good quality stuff – the range of pods available to me had opened up!

    On one of the listings for the Espresto pods it also mentioned “PodPronto” which turns out to be a machine sold by Tesco and – again – licenced by K-FEE – so low and behold, the pods from that fit too!

    Tesco_Podpronto_Latte_Coffee_Pods_157.6G_8_Serving__76528_stdSo now, not only can i buy cheaper milk and coffee pods on eBay i can also walk down to my local Tesco and buy their pods – even cheaper!

    I’m investigating if any other machines have pods we can use, and i’ll keep this post updated – im sure they make other machines for other people so shouldn’t be hard to track down.

    [UPDATE] I have been informed that Tesco are discontinuing their PodPronto machine  – so get all the pods from your local store before its too late!

  • Struggling to decide on direction

    My head is literally bursting with opinions and conversations that I feel I need to unload somewhere and I figured it would help me to write some of them down on my faithful blog, but when I start to write I just go on and on and on and on and before long I realise what I’m writing no longer reflects the initial subject I was writing about – and I just save it as a draft and forget about it.

    I just read two of them now and they both end up sounding like the beginnings of some new age scripture written by some crazed anti-society nut.

    Maybe that’s what I am. Hah.

    Anyway, I’m going to attempt to pull bits of them together pretty soon, I probably won’t include so much of the crazy stuff, maybe I’ll post them in the future when my opinions don’t get me into trouble as much.

  • Internet killed the [everything] star

    I often hear people talking about how “the internet has killed the high street” and to be honest, i’m getting really sick of it!

    The internet didn’t kill the highstreet – they did that all by themselves!

    In actual fact the high street could massively benefit from the internet if the town centre businesses started using it more to their advantage! Take Argos for example – they could have quite easily given up when the internet started picking up pace – as no one wanted their catalogs any more! But no, instead, they modified their business model and embraced the internet – now their “Click and Collect” model is being copied by Tesco, Asda and everyone else in-between.

    The internet has also made things like fashion, and the ever changing face of it, more accessible to the world. People know what their favorite celeb is wearing as they see it on twitter, and if the high street stores could react as quick as online stores do – they could still be in with a chance of getting the sale. People still like to try clothes on after all!

    The main issues as i see them are as follows

    • Not enough help from the councils and governments – give people free shops for 3/6/9 months and see if they can make it work. They’re all sat empty, so why not?
    • Business overheads – someone who employs 10 people cant compete with someone who sells from their bedroom – not a lot can be done to fix this apart from the bricks and mortar retailers making their offering better!
    • Being idiots – Making silly choices, bad advertising decisions and generally being crap at running a business. I have friends in business and they all do well – its because my friends are not idiots.

    Financially, the economy is on the rise and things are starting to look peachy again – if you have a business idea, if you want to open a shop selling something and its burning a hole in your head – then just go for it!

    What are you waiting for? 🙂

  • UK Domain Awesomeness (and total Lameness)

    Check it out!

    https://0lly.uk 🙂

    Very excited 😀

    However, i am deeply saddened to find i cant try and purchase olly.uk (o not a zero) until 2019!

    What is the point guys, really?