My wonderful Kickstarter coffee maker addiction.

Kickstarter is a crowdfunding site. Entrepreneurs go there, present their ideas and ask people to invest. This isn’t big-time investing. Usually entrepreneurs and others raise the money they need by getting a lot of people to invest between around $5 and $100 each.

As an example, I invested $45 in the Impress Coffee Brewer you can see in the video above. It looks like a neat little brewer to me, and just right for when I make coffee to take in the car, or for when I’m traveling. I also hope and suspect that it makes great coffee.

The trouble is, there are now more and more coffee makers and espresso machines looking for funding on Kickstarter. I want one of each!

Well, I guess I’ll have to control myself, because I have already invested in several other Kickstarter ventures.

But here is the thing – I just love the fact that small startups are getting into the business of creating new types of coffee makers. All the brewers and espresso devices I have been tempted by are beautifully designed and created with the purpose of brewing really good coffee.

By way of contrast, the coffee machines I see in the stores, manufactured by big corporations, are becoming worse and worse. They are mass produced with cheap plastic, cheap parts and a cheap mindset. When you buy them and use them they stink of plastic, the coffee tastes of plastic, and the coffee they brew is not very good.

As I have said elsewhere on this site, buying a fancy new coffee maker does not translate into brewing better-tasting coffee. You can make amazing coffee with a simple French press or a pour-over coffee cone. The latest coffee makers from big companies simply add more and more gizmos and features, hoping buyers would rather spend their money on cool new features than on a machine that actually makes decent coffee.

And that’s what I really like about the small startups trying to fund their coffee makers through Kickstarter.

Do a search on Kickstarter for “coffee makers” and you’ll find several results. And when you watch the videos you’ll see that these guys are not driven by finding the cheapest possible way to make a coffee brewer. They are deeply committed to brewing great coffee, and are also interested in good design.

As a trend, I like this. Not everyone wants to buy the cheapest possible version of something. I think the success of a site like Kickstarter tells us there are a lot of people who would rather encourage small entrepreneurs and spend their money on products that work well and look good.

For myself, when I next need any kind of coffee-making equipment, I’ll take a look on  Kickstarter first.

About the author: Nick Usborne, aka Coffee Detective, is a writer and long-time coffee enthusiast. Read more…