Repost: My Open Letter to the Allegro Coffee Company.

This was originally posted, in a slightly modified form, 25 February, 2011.

To whom it may concern,

I love your coffee. It’s really good coffee. I’m not complaining about the coffee. I’m including a photo of the problem. The adhesive you use to seal your packages is so strong that the packages cannot be infiltrated from the top. This would be the preferable way, as it would also render your built-in resealing apparatus useful. So instead, in order to gain access to the ground roast coffee berries (And let’s face facts here: coffee is made from berries, not beans. They just look like beans. They’re an arboreal fruit. Interestingly,  avocados are berries, and raspberries are not. Weird, eh?) I am forced to cut a small hole in the side of the bag, which, in this case, as can be seen in the photo, I then had to inveigle a finger into in order to enlarge the aperture sufficiently to form a rudimentary spout.

The key word there is ‘rudimentary’. The result of this crude manipulation is a ragged edged egress for the coffee. In this case, my primary objective has been achieved: I am now capable of liberating your excellent coffee into a coffee-brewing device (a machine which has its own set of enthralling deficiencies, but which is, frankly, none of your business.). However, several secondary purposes remain thwarted. I am not, for example, possessed of the ability to satisfactorily reseal the bag, which results in only three options:

1) Consume the entire contents of the bag immediately, resulting in a deplorable condition I’ve come to call the ‘tremulous vigilance’, or

2) Resort to drinking stale coffee later on (which substantially diminishes the satisfaction derived.).

3) Toss the bag and buy a new one, which is, in this economy, a sub-optimal use of scarce resources and probably has a large carbon-footprint enhancing effect.

Another secondary purpose which I am unable to achieve is the preservation of my office workspace in a condition unsullied by the presence of large amounts of granulated roast coffee berries. The bag thus rendered, it is nearly impossible (I’m not a surgeon for God’s sake!) to confine the spillage of the grounds strictly to the filter thereby (a) retaining as much of the coffee as possible for consumption and (b) not making a mess. But you know, spilling the coffee does result in a wonderful roast-coffee potpourri scent emanating from my desk, and I’m not made of stone; let’s call this one a wash.

All of these travails could be satisfied by using a lower quality adhesive for sealing the upper opening of your coffee-bags. In bulk, I’d imagine this could even save you, say, $0.01/100 bags. I’m guessing that a fine roast-beverage concern like Allegro sells a lot of small metallic bags of coffee. So, for every million bags, you’ll save (according to my wild guess about a made up number, assuming that a cheaper adhesive will actually solve my problem – which I don’t actually know to be the case.) $100. Tell you what, for $50 in coupons the idea is yours!

Thanks and love your coffee!

Dr24hours

p.s., I don’t actually need any coupons.