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.