There is no single place that has the best price always. Shopping in the right places and at the right times can result in substantial savings. I’ll be sharing some of the places that offer a variety of ways to save money year round and also some temporary opportunities that are available at different times throughout the year.
Before proceeding I want to address one related question: “why should I switch to single cup brewers if making coffee is going to be much more expensive?” That’s an excellent and valid question, by the way.
The short answer is this: while generally K-cup coffee makers and K-cup pods are more expensive compared to what are still the most popular method of brewing coffee (drip coffee makers) and the most popular packaging alternatives (bags of whole beans or ground coffee), there are ways to narrow the gap.
Year-Round Deals
These days there is an abundance of year-round deals. It would take many posts to cover them all. Just about every store has at least one way to save always. Sometimes the deals are easy to spot, but other times a bit more effort might be required.
Below is an example of a store that makes it very clear that it’s interested in helping you save on coffee, including Keurig coffee pods.
Coffee for Less
I like what they offer in terms of the many possible ways to save. While they don’t sell a wide assortment of coffee like you might find at a huge online store like Amazon, the savings might just make the coffees they do have seem more appealing. For those who prefer the Keurig alternatives they offer, few places offer more opportunities to save.
Here is a brief summary of potential savings available on Coffee for Less:
- Reward points for creating an account
- Reward points for sharing / following / liking on social media
- Reward points for reviews
- Reward points for purchases
- 5% off for subscriptions
- free shipping on orders for $85 or more
- clearance discounts
“Pay to Play” Deals
Due to the scope of this post, I’m not going to be saying a lot about these. In this post, I want to focus on the deals that are available to all.
Here I’m just going to mention them in the context of those who have already decided that these types of memberships are worth it to them in general. In other words, they’re not just doing it to save on coffee.
What I’m talking about here are things like Amazon Prime and wholesale club memberships. They all definitely offer additional ways to save, and at times they will offer the best discounts for Keurig coffee pods.
Limited Time Deals
There are basically two general types of limited time offers, and I make the distinction based on the extent to which they can be planned for ahead of time.
Regular Limited Time Deals
These are the deals that can occur at any time throughout the year. Usually they’re not announced well ahead of time, so it’s only possible to plan ahead in a very loose sense. Also, the timing tends to be mostly unpredictable.
There are many types of offers that “come and go” throughout the
year, and they are made available for a variety of reasons. Here are
some examples of these reasons:
- To reduce excess inventory.
- To phase
out merchandise (for example, to sell remaining quantities of a current
style of coffee pod and make room for a “new and improved” or an eco
friendly coffee version) - To attract people in price conscious segments of the market (people looking for discounts are in this segment)
- To entice people to a store knowing their possible tendency to buy other
things at regular prices while already there. An example is using
“loss-leaders” that are offered at deeply discounted prices to attract
customers who might buy other high margin items that make up the losses
and then some. Though if we’re aware of this trap, we just stick to the discounted items.
Fortunately, there are ways to stay well-informed and to minimize the chances of missing out on these deals I just mentioned. Similar to what I explained above about the year-round and “pay to play” deals, it’s also beyond the scope of this post to mention all of this information (especially in any kind of meaningful level of detail). I have a separate post that covers the topic completely.
However, I will provide some examples here. There are services that can alert you shortly after information on new deals is available. One of them is Google Alerts. Creating an account is free. You can create specific alerts such as “Keurig coffee pod discounts,” “Keurig coffee pod sale,” etc.
You can also sign up to receive newsletters, sometimes as often as daily. Here is an example of a coupon site that offers a daily newsletter: coffee coupon newsletter.
The final example in this section is articles written by those who are knowledgeable in specific subjects such as Keurig K-cup deals. They can share tips about things like lowest known prices throughout the year, where they have found the best deals locally in places known to sell coffee, and even where they have found great prices in unexpected places. Here is one of these articles: tips for finding K-cup deals
Seasonal Deals
Here we can use historical data from other years to get a sense for where information on this year’s best deals can be found.
The options mentioned in the section above can also be adapted and used to find seasonal deals. Because we have more information and more time to plan ahead, season deals tend to offer ideal opportunities to find the best discounts.
I’ll use Black Friday as an example. Alerts and newsletters can be used to learn of deals we might not have been aware of otherwise this year. We might possibly identify stores that are having Black Fridays sales for the first time (stores that could have been in existence for years but that might not have held Black Friday sales in past years, perhaps some new stores that may have started throughout the year and will be having a Black Friday sale for the first time, etc.).
We can also check websites that had information on Black Friday sales last year for updated information pertaining to this year. Below is an example of a website that I’ll be checking for updates:
Black Friday information website to watch for updates this year
If you have some things you would like to share about finding the best discounts for Keurig coffee pods, please leave a comment below.