After listening to the Trader Joe’s episode of Acquired (I’m not a longtime listener, I promise I listen to cooler podcasts), I decided to visit my local TJ’s right in the heart of San Francisco. And no, not the nice one in Hayes valley, I went to what I call the “weird Trader Joe’s” in SOMA.
Weird Trader Joe’s
The reason I call it that is because it’s weird. To start, the whole thing is underground. You enter the Trader Joe’s then take an escalator down to it.
Thinking back to that Acquired episode, Trader Joe himself seemed to want to keep the stores small and dense. Limited SKUs, limited sprawl, stuff packed in every aisle. But weird Trader Joe’s is laid out like this: Half of the store is sparse, with not enough aisles so somehow items are still stuffed onto the shelves. But the other half, the checkout section, on the other hand, is 20 registers packed into two rows, with one line wrapping literally all the way through the store.
But, I mean, it’s clear people get their groceries there. It’s always packed. But again, it’s packed in a weird way. In my Trader Joe’s experience, it is usually crowded, aisles are bustling and there are long lines. But weird Trader Joe’s layout creates a whole new type of Trader Joe’s experience. You cannot get to half of the items in the store without being in line, or by awkwardly walking by the line while not being in line! Frankly, I don’t think this is what Trader Joe envisioned.
It was while I was in that horrible line that something caught my eye. Trader Joe’s Ready To Use Espresso Coffee. 15 espresso shots. $10. In a purple plastic bottle.
The K-Mini & Roommate Coffee
I am not a coffee fanatic. See I love coffee, and I drink it nearly every day, but my love is impure. I do like the taste of coffee, but realistically, I like it as a minor flavor in a coffee-drink.
In thinking about it, maybe this is a very normal take. I like my little drinks! I like my milk and sugar and my Iced Mint Mojitos and Chocolaccinos. My Starbucks order will have no less than 10 words in it. I only write that “my love is impure” because I’ve been surrounded by way too many coffee fanatics at my work! “See you need to get the beans just right or whatever, you need a good pour, you need this machine or that machine.” I just don’t do any of that!1
What I tend to do, is use a good old-fashioned coffee machine (what I’ve learned is called something like a “single serve K-cup drip coffee maker”, or some combination of those words). Preferably a shitty one that isn’t too complicated and that I can’t break. Preferably, the Keurig K-Mini, pictured below. And just give me the worst K-cups too. Just like some Starbucks ones or like Target brand if you can.
Before I left for college, I found that my Dad, who I had thought to be a prolific coffee drinker, had replaced his nicer Keurig, with, not a fancy espresso machine or some complicated contraption, but with a Keurig K-Mini. When I got to college, my roommate had one of these. In some sense “roommate coffee” is the best way to describe what this makes.2
But when I got to my first day of work, along with all of the fancy machines (which, thanks to chatgpt, I now understand to be an espresso machine, a cold brew machine, a pour-over, and a French press), I encountered the Keurig K-Elite. This is, as far as I can tell, the Keurig K-Mini but you can pour different size cups, though I’m not sure why you would ever want that. It is perfect and I use it every day.
So honestly, this is how I like my coffee-at-home. Roommate coffee. Load up the K-Mini with the cheapest K-cup you can find. Hope the machine doesn’t just give you water. Then add just a comical amount of milk and sugar. Even add ice if you’re feeling like it. Either way, the coffee will be lukewarm. Which is just how I like it.
But this is not how you make the worst coffee at home.
Terrible Coffee
Unsurprisingly, I bought the Trader Joe’s Ready To Use Espresso Coffee. I’m honestly not even sure what it is. Probably just espresso? Whatever the case, this morning I set out to craft my own “little drink”: an iced vanilla latte.
The plan was simple. Trader Joe’s Espresso. Milk. Ton of sugar. Splash of vanilla extract. Two or three ice cubes.
The coffee was doomed from the start. As expected, the Trader Joe’s Espresso does not taste very good (in my “research” for this article, I found many Reddit threads raving about it, though it seems like they like the caffeine content and bear the taste). Even so, the flavor of the espresso shouldn’t be a problem because we’re adding a ton of sugar. The sugar I’m using? Also Trader Joe’s! This should be a match made in heaven, but for anyone who has used Trader Joe’s sugar before, you know that it is fucking huge. I might as well have tried to dissolve a pebble into this drink. On top of that. THE DRINK ISN’T HOT.
The sugar didn’t dissolve. The vanilla wasn’t strong enough. What I got was a bitter & sour glass of “coffee”. With no water either, it’s consistency was basically that of milk.
At last I had done it. Something worse than Roommate coffee. Terrible coffee.
Wow it was hard to get down. But the last sip, the one that pulled all of the undissolved sugar into my mouth, was heaven.
Variation: For an extra-thick “mocha” variant of terrible coffee, substitute normal milk for a Fairlife protein shake (30g of protein). Jesus.
In some sense, I don’t “do any of that” because I am “too scared” to ask my coworkers how to use the more advanced coffee machines. I have been at this job for 6 months now. It is obviously too late to ask
Perhaps another name for it would be “Coworker coffee”, but of course I am the coworker. My coworkers are the coffee people.