In the early 1990s in Massachusetts, John Sylvan set out to kill stale office coffee by brewing single servings on demand from sealed pods. In 1992 he recruited his Colby College roommate Peter Dragone, then a finance director at Chiquita, and named the company Keurig after a Dutch word for excellence. Unreliable prototypes burned through a $50,000 stake from a Minneapolis investor in 1994 and a $1 million round from MDT Advisors, and early investment also came from Green Mountain Coffee Roasters. As the board took control, Sylvan clashed with it and in 1997 sold his stake for just $50,000. The first brewer, the B2000, launched in 1998 in offices in New York and New England, placed by distributors so the pods could make the money.

The home B100 followed in 2004, Green Mountain acquired Keurig in 2006, and sales passed $1.2 billion by 2010. When the original K-Cup patent expired in September 2012, cheap compatible pods flooded shelves, so the 2014 Keurig 2.0 scanned lids for a proprietary ink and refused unlicensed pods. Rivals hacked around it, antitrust suits piled up, and Keurig later brought back its reusable My K-Cup. JAB Holding bought the company for nearly $14 billion in 2016, and a 2018 merger with Dr Pepper Snapple valued at $18.7 billion followed. Sylvan has said he regrets inventing the K-Cup.

• The brewer injects water at 192 degrees Fahrenheit through a small plastic cup without bursting its filter.
• Rogers Family Coffee mailed out the Freedom Clip, which covered the 2.0 sensor with the approved ink signature.
• Keurig agreed to a $31 million antitrust settlement in 2020.
• The viral 2015 video Kill the K-Cup claimed pods sold in 2014 could circle the Earth 10.5 times.
• The pods were made from number seven plastic, hard to recycle and small enough to fall through sorting equipment.