Specifically at grocery stores.
This weekend I was grocery shopping, and it occurred to me whilst attempting to find the one or two whole bean offerings amid the sea of pre-ground coffee and k-cups that I haven’t seen coffee grinders in a grocery store in years. It feels like, growing up through the 90s and early aughts, most stores would have at least a few options to grind fresh, or at least the Bakers near my home did. However, at some point, they were seemingly removed everywhere.
Of course, my intuition tells me that it benefits stores to not have such specialized machinery in place so as to allow maximum flexibility with store layout, but I’m curious if anyone has an inside scoop.
Covid-19 pandemic.
The grocery stores near me have taken down their coffee grinders during the pandemic. They had signs posted saying: “Temporarily Closed for Sanitary Reasons due to Covid-19”.
When lockdown ended, the coffee grinders were covered in in plastic and the signs were re-phrased to: “Temporarily Unavailable until Further Notice.”
Then one day it was all gone. The store employees and managers said at first that it was because of Covid, then a few months later they said it was ‘upper management’ decision – this was for both corporate and family-owned stores.
EDIT: I forgot to mention that I ended up buying a Cuisinart coffee grinder at this family-owned grocery store chain (they’re popular in parts of Canada and upstate New York).
It’s sadly a common thing. Something gets removed temporarily and people realize they like not having to deal with it better than the perceived benefits it offers.
The grocery store I go to has a massive wall of whole beans and the grinders are right next to them. Always like trying different flavors out.
Oh wow! That’s even more expensive a selection than I remember. Is this a chain, or a local store?
H-E-B Central Market. It’s a Texas chain.
I would suggest getting your own grinder. Beans going through that thing probably have 31 flavors in them by the time they’re ground.
Wow! Not sure I’ve seen one even half that long!
I do not drink coffee in any capacity. Why do some of them require “employee assistance” and others don’t??
my guess is those ones are damaged or something and have to be opened from the top instead
Dispensers were damaged, so if you tried to dispense it, it’d end up all over the floor.
(Nah, really they just exceed the daily allowed amount of caffeine and require a prescription to dispense)
Yeeeeaaaaahhhh!
I suspect you are right right in mentioning single serve waste producing machines.
I think there has been a greater split between those who tolerate crappy coffee and those who don’t - the crappy coffee people have moved to the expensive single serve machines, and the people who are picky grind at home (and probably also don’t buy at the grocery store). The rest evidently use pre-ground. Plus, the grinder at the grocery store isn’t cleaned regularly. I have distinct memories of them smelling like the flavoured coffee, which, today, I find revolting.
The gap between commodity coffee and snobby coffee has grown, and the availability of snobby coffee has grown between the multitude of roasters and online shopping. If it’s, say, $10 for a bag of premium coffee beans that’s of unknown age (at least 2 months) and lists only “south American” as its origin, or $15 for a bag of 3 day old locally roasted beans from a specific farm in Colombia, I’d go for the latter. I think my prices are a good 10 years old, but let’s just use it as an example.
Ironically the k-cups are quite a bit more expensive than that.
The in store grinders are still around in some stores.
About 12yrs ago, I picked up a Tassimo machine that made coffee from pods… over the next few years, I added a milk steamer, so that I could heat and froth my own milk as the pod milks were vile.
I was used to buying lattes at shitty coffee places like Costa and Starbucks in the UK… then some one made me an amazing latte at an independent coffee shop… and I realised how good coffee should taste.
I tried switching to my own ground coffee and buying some re-useable pods for the machine… they were garbage.
So a few years ago, I invested in a decent bean to cup machine with steamer by Delohngi, and started buying a variety of beans to try in them.
I’ve settled on Lavazza crema or intenso beans (8/10 & 9/10) as they’re quite strong and reasonably priced… Occasionally when I visit one of the food fairs in my area (about 5 or 6 a year) I’ll pick up a bag of extra special flavours for xmas and so forth. I’ve even tried a few of the supermarket varieties and found them disappointing.
With the price of coffee rising due to climate change and poor crops, I’m having to rethink my purchases… 4x 1kg bags of beans used to cost £60, and are now more like £100… So I’ve switched to a different lavazza now as they’vce changed packaging and these are labelled 11/13 and 10/13 for strength.
Whilst I was saving a lot of money each year by ditching pods… it was more about the waste than the expense for me… the cost of the machine meant I didn’t actually save any money for about 2yrs really due to the upfront cost, but the savings each year on beans vs pods is about £125-150… and the machine was £320.
But with prices of coffee beans rising, the cost of the pods is rising even more… so those avg savings could be more like £175-200 a year now.
All I know is that the coffee beans work out cheaper, give a far better drink and the grounds help keep the cats of the garden and the soil fresh and fertile.
Bags / cans of pre-ground is also on the decline in my neck of the woods. The exception being pods. Half of my coffee aisles are pods.
I feel like most people are in one of two large camps. Whole bean people with grinders or self grinding machines, and pod people.
The pre-ground bag / can people are an increasingly small slice of the pie.
Funny enough, you want your coffee to off gas for some time after roasting. That’s why there are those little vents in the bags. Three days old coffee will foam a lot and taste off.
I don’t know how big the bags are you are buying, but I’m buying one kilo for between 20 and 50 Euro. Depending on how fancy I want it to be. But that’s hand-picked, fair trade, single origin coffee.
I think your intuition is probably right, but also Amazon happened. You can get a grinder delivered to your house in a day or two for like $10. Nobody who cares about fresh-ground coffee is going to hesitate to invest in a grinder when it costs less than a bag of beans.
You can even get a workable burr grinder for ~$40.
That’s a bean slicer though, go the full mile and buy a burr grinder, a used pro one will last a lifetime too.
You can still get one pretty cheap
the only grocery around me that had one took it out when they quit selling coffee that way, a few months into covid.
I was thinking exactly this: it’s a sanitation issue, and I’m pretty sure that any store that still had them got rid of them during Covid.
Personally, I refused to use them. I’ve worked in both service and hospitality, and I know how gross people are, even when they don’t mean to be.
We also have a less people capable of maintaining/repairing those machines. Parts are probably harder to get.
Expensive too thanks to the moron tariffs.
Costco is my go-to place for coffee, and they still have them. However, I don’t use them, I bought a burr grinder. I prefer grinding the coffee beans right before brewing.
My local Costco stopped selling whole bean Pete’s Major Dickason’s blend. I asked why and got the answer that “we removed our grinders.” Lame. No one else can possibly have their own grinder and want to grind their beans fresh daily.
I have memories of them being featured on supermarket sweep as well.
Chiming in to say that I still see them fairly frequently. But also, as others noted, most people who want fresh ground coffee can just do it at home now.
Also, I imagine that the grinders were only ever really introduced to try to sell customers on more expensive whole-bean coffee that had a higher margin than folgers. But now every independent coffee shop sells beans in-store and you can choose from 10 million options online. So its not really drawing in new customers there either.
I imagine the stores keep the grinders because they’d be a hassle to remove, but then remove them when they break, since they aren’t worth it to fix.
They disappeared like pay phones, restaurants giving mints and toothpicks, and public water fountains.
Covid really killed a lot of stuff.
Decreased demand.
- People who want something simple often use pods.
- People that buy whole bean are more likely to have grinders at home.
- In places like the US, especially on the coasts, many people have finally learned what good coffee tastes like, and it usually doesn’t come from pre-ground coffee.
Pre-ground coffee is also on the decline in my neck of the states. Almost all of the packaged coffee is whole bean because people have grinders.
For example I’m all of the above
- to keep things simple I use pods
- when I want something nice I have a grinder at home
- I do know at least a bit what makes good coffee the way I like it
But also a grinder at the store may have unknown cleanliness as well as a mix of different styles and flavors and ages. If you care about good coffee, that’s not it.
But yeah, that means there is so much I’ll never try because trying doesn’t justify buying a full bag
If you’re serious about coffee you know it’s best to grind as soon as possible to brewing, so you get a grinder. A really good burr hand grinder is like $100 and a good enough one is like $20, a solid burr electric grinder is like $150.
If you don’t care so much you just buy preground. Keurig and nespresso “unrecyclable plastic waste generator for shit coffee” machines also needed far more shelf space. I cannot stress enough how the keurig is a blight on humanity. The coffee is objectively bad and that is whatever, it’s still drinkable, but it creates so much unnecessary plastic waste with every brew. This wouldn’t be so much of an issue if it didn’t become the de facto coffee method of every lazy shit who drinks coffee every morning (read: 60% of America). It is a scourge. It is pathetic that you go to a place like target and there are 18 different keurigs, 1 Mr. Coffee, and that’s it. At least the Mr coffee isn’t wasteful. But I digress. It wouldn’t kill them to stock a French press or something though.
An anecdote: I saw someone online who was able to buy a grocery store coffee grinder (Bunn G3) for crazy cheap (like $150) at auction around Covid times because the store was selling it off. Maybe that’s when they were getting rid of them? Apparently it was filthy, which tracks, but performed well once disassembled and thoroughly cleaned. They’re like $1400 new. But coffee people are nuts and that’s nothing, there are grinders that are like 4000+
I watched some Ted-talk’esque thing about a guy who chased the perfect coffee and he came to the conclusion that after toasting the beans, coffee only has a shelf life of two weeks, ground or not.
Obviously it keeps, but for optimal coffee…
Due to this he started developing small home toasting devices. I’d like to try that, see there’s any difference.
It is pathetic that you go to a place like target and there are 18 different keurigs, 1 Mr. Coffee, and that’s it. At least the Mr coffee isn’t wasteful. But I digress. It wouldn’t kill them to stock a French press or something though.
Wait, the Germans didn’t bomb Pearl Harbor. I know you’re on a roll here but searching target.com for French press returned 11 pages of results and at least the first page was like 18 different French presses
I think two of the somewhat fancier grocery stores I go to have grinders there. The more basic one I usually go to I don’t think does. I don’t drink coffee myself, so I’m not 100% certain.
A few of the stores I shop still have Community Coffee branded coffee grinders. But not like it used to be with one in every store
The last place I saw one was Costco, but the one by me at the time removed it during the pandemic. I remember Whole Foods used to have them but I haven’t been in years.
I’ve never had a problem getting someone to grind a bag for me at Starbucks, including bags bought elsewhere.
Coffee-buying has increasingly gone gourmet. I think most people who brew coffee at home have a grinder. But ground coffee starts losing its quality pretty soon after it’s exposed to air, so grinding fresh only matters if you brew it right after grinding. For people who only make coffee for guests or only drink it for the caffeine, there’s pre-ground options. Also, grocery stores don’t want to sacrifice that valuable shelf real estate for the large grinder…
