Tonight we went to the open­ing of the Nespres­so “bou­tique” on Lambton Quay, because frankly, we’d go to the open­ing of envelopes if they involved Louis Roed­er­er cham­pagne(1) (although a num­ber of peo­ple we know turned down the invi­ta­tion, sent us links to a Buz­zfeed arti­cle about dis­pos­able pods and then com­mis­sioned haikus) and it was an inter­est­ing night.

The wine, the cof­fee cock­tails which we could­n’t drink more than one of because caf­feine after mid­day, though we did note they were more booze-tast­ing than your typ­i­cal espres­so cock­tail nor­mal­ly tastes, the scent­ed can­dles in the gift bag and the cater­ing by The Larder were all spec­tac­u­lar.  Good work by the PR peo­ple. The room was an inter­est­ing mix of peo­ple. Chefs includ­ing TAWA win­ner Mar­tin Bosley and talk­ing man Rex Mor­gan were there (and we got tweets from Tay­lors and La Boca Loca about how they could­n’t make it). Tai­ka Wait­i­ti was there, and we were told it was because he’d made an art­work out of the cap­sules. Chris Parkin from the Muse­um Hotel was there — I think they have Nespres­so machines in all their suites. There were some guys wear­ing shirts cov­ered in logos who we fig­ured were from the mon­ey boat. War­ren Maxwell from Trin­i­ty Roots/The Lit­tle Bush­men was there, and was quite pos­si­bly the coolest per­son ever. He just closed his eyes and sang while the beau­ti­ful peo­ple ignored him except to Insta­gram a shot of him play­ing at the end. In fact, he smiled very dev­il­ish­ly before he broke out into ‘Home, Land & Sea’. Oh man, that voice, that song, what a treat.

John Key showed up flanked by Men In Suits And Ear Pieces, and in his speech, he com­pared him­self to George Clooney. It’s true, they are pret­ty sim­i­lar in how they both real­ly care about inter­na­tion­al aid, except for John Key. He men­tioned how in his house, which you know how much it cost thanks to the NZ Her­ald, he’d had an expen­sive espres­so machine plumbed in, but it did­n’t work. Mean­while his “mid priced” Nespres­so machine always works per­fect­ly, so much so that he’d bought one for his daugh­ter who lives in Paris. We tried to look up how much the machines run for, but the Flash crashed our slow lap­top. We did find a brand new mon­ey­boat ver­sion on Trademe for !~$700 though with a RRP of $900. We also tried to do a cost per cup analy­sis, but you had to have a login to order pods, and we did­n’t feel like sign­ing up.  You can buy a case to hold your pods (not the pods them­selves) for $65 on Trademe though. The New Zealand Her­ald has an arti­cle about costs as well.

We men­tioned arti­cles express­ing con­cern about the envi­ron­men­tal impact of Nespres­so (while we con­tin­ue to buy our cof­fees in take­away cups any­way), but the bou­tique had a whole wall ded­i­cat­ed to talk­ing about their envi­ron­men­tal com­mit­ment. Nespres­so bou­tiques will recy­cle your pods for you AND sell you a $35 rub­bish bin to store them in as well!

For those of you who have a Nespres­so machine, like the per­son on Twit­ter who has been very upset with us for not know­ing the exact open­ing date of the shop, you should prob­a­bly note that there is not a whole lot of park­ing right out­side the door of the bou­tique (there is a bus stop right there but that may not be of inter­est), though there is park­ing at the near­by TSB are­na for only $12 an hour, which will accom­mo­date your SUV nice­ly if you decide to make the trek in from Chur­ton Park. For us, the shop is very pret­ti­ly designed, much like a MAC counter, and it IS just like the George Clooney ads, and the staff were all very friend­ly, but much like our con­fu­sion when Star­bucks opened, we just don’t under­stand why it could be a thing in Welling­ton.

1 In 2011, Nestlé was list­ed No. 1 in the For­tune Glob­al 500 as the world’s most prof­itable cor­po­ra­tion accord­ing to Wikipedia.