Tuesday 22 February 2011

3-in-1 - if you actually take three in one that is

Nescafe's "latest" wheeze for the UK[1]:

3-in-1 coffee


With NESCAFÉ ORIGINAL 3-in-1 it’s now amazingly easy to make the perfect white coffee with sugar.
All you have to do is add hot water so you get a creamy and sweet tasting coffee every time.

The premise being that the vast majority of the population all
  • use the same sized cup
  • use the same size level-teaspoon of coffee
  • take the same amount of sugar
  • would use the same amount of whitener if they normally use skimmed/semi-skimmed/full-fat milk, but didn't have any milk
Sod all those who
  • use pint mugs
  • use heaped teaspoons of coffee regardless of the size of their cup
  • don't take sugar
  • prefer their coffee slightly cooler due to the milk they normally add
Anyway... brief costings from a quick google search:


Asda £1.00 for "10" servings of 3-in-1: 10p per cup.

Asda £6.38 for 300g jar Nescafe Original (@1.7g per serving => 176 servings) - 3.625p per cup
Asda £1.34 for 2kg of sugar (lets say 2 tsp = 8.4g => 238 servings) - 0.536p per cup
Asda £0.86 for 2 pints semi-skim milk (lets call it 20 servings) - 4.3p per cup.


So, on the face of it, at those prices (and, of course, assumptions) you're looking at about 1.5p more expensive per cup for the, more convenient, creamy and sweet stuff (the latter comes to 8.5p rounded up.)

But:
  • You're not getting any choice in the serving size with the former
  • It assumes you actually want all three
  • You prefer whitener to milk.
  • This will, of course, be an introductory price, and it will, in no way, stay this low if they continue to sell it.

Scaryduck has his own take on this of course...
However, I can't help thinking that this new innovation might be missing a trick.

[...]

If only you made such a product which provided the coffee lover with just coffee, leaving them with the option of adding sugar and milk to taste?


[1] They've been trying this all over the place. They tried in Africa in 2008.

Friday 18 February 2011

Polls within posts

Test post to attempt to answer the question posed over at The Moose.

Used http://dadsbattleground.blogspot.com/2008/07/how-to-add-poll-inside-of-post-on.html as a starting point.


How easy is it to create polls actually in blog posts?