Who doesn’t love a good coffee pairing? Certainly not us. Coffee go-withs, collabs, mash-ups, we approach them all with an open mind and a willing heart, often to the chagrin of the dogmatic beverage-normative coffee bro (not sorry not sorry). Still, there are some bridges that are, in the editorial opinion of this publciation, perhaps a touch too far. Most of the time we ignore such products. Occasionally we write about them in a skeptical manner. The Bluprint—not be be confused with Blueprint Coffee of St. Louis—a new coffeemaker whose smartphone-integrated app doubles as a social media self-actualization feed of your goals, tasks, and achievements, falls squarely in the latter.
Coffee and productivity have been bedfellows for just about as long as people have noted the extra pep in one’s post-coffee step. They’re inextricably linked, and for good reason. But do I really need a coffeemaker to track my life? This feels… dystopian is too broad. “Let’s rise and grind” reads the website copy. Boringly dystopian, cringingly dystopian—that’s more like it.
So what is Bluprint, other than an unsolicited mailing list multiple members of Sprudge’s editorial team were added to without their consent? For one, it is a very stylish automatic coffeemaker that has been released today, June 8th via Indiegogo. It is rather fetching with its clean lines, adorned in the babiest of blues (also available in mint green, white, rose gold). The quality of the brew it makes is not yet known; it doesn’t have SCA certification, and none of the functional nuts and bolts are given much airtime in the campaign or the many emails I have already received about it, though they do say they’ve incorporated “the latest in coffee science, including brewing temperature.”
What takes up most of the copy for “the only design-forward, smartphone integrated coffee maker” are the goals and the productivity, the productivity and the goals. Through Bluprint’s proprietary app, you can program the coffee maker from anywhere your smartphone is—which means you’d have to have your water loaded and coffee pre-ground, not ideal but sure—and even order coffee directly from Bluprint (but again, not from Blueprint Coffee). You can also set and track your “daily micro-goals,” which then get shared with “Bluprint’s supportive community to give encouragement and stay accountable, or find inspiration on new goals.”
Some of those goals, included on the brand’s website mock-up, include “Do 50 Situps” (good job, Cody Ryckman!) or “Meditate for 15 minutes” (do it for you, Camille Blackman) or “Eat a salad” (now that’s a sensible lunch, Lana Anderson), and so on.
The idea of my coffee maker doing all of this is, in my opinion, horrifying. It seems like coffee equivalent of having a beautiful partner who rolls their eyes all the time. The Tinder date who subtly career shames you, in coffee maker form. This pairing of coffee and tech bro overdesign is the result of the creators adjusting to the NYC work-from-home world, where they “were paralyzed by too many choices” in home coffeemakers (so naturally the only thing to do was create another one).
“Existing coffee makers speak only to the functionality of their product, rather than the happiness and motivation for the day that comes from a great coffee as part of your daily routine,” says the marketing copy. I literally have no idea what that means, but apparently there’s some scientific backing to it, with the “science of habit formation [following] a simple neurological loop: cue, routine and reward:”
“For us at Bluprint, coffee signals the start to our morning and our to-do list for the day.” explain the founders. “Our vision for the brand is to build and foster a community around the morning coffee routine, inspiring people to set goals and be empowered to accomplish their ‘perfect day.’”
Cue, routine, and reward. Like the cheetahs at the zoo!
This is the part in the article where I would normally wax philosophic about why you do or don’t need this thing in your life, but frankly I feel like the facts speak for themselves at this point. If you’ve made it this far, you already know deep down if you want an admittedly very good looking automatic coffee maker that brews some caliber of coffee of an as-yet unknown provenance that can then be auto-reordered from an app that doubles as another social media feed, this time explicitly goals-and-achievement oriented, as if there weren’t already enough pressure in your life. If that’s your bag, you can purchase a Bluprint of your own for $165 (30% off the $235 MSRP) over at Indiegogo.
Deep distrust of the underlying tech aside, the Bluprint is really nice looking. There’s a bigger point to be made there, about what beauty conceals, or the ability of aesthetics to cloak concerning red flags, but perhaps this goes without saying. Personally, I’m pretty happy with my Chemex and procrastination routine. It’s served me well for over a decade now, and I somehow found the wherewithal to write this article without earning dopamine rah-rahs from a judgmental sentient kitchen appliance. If only there was an app for that.
Zac Cadwalader is the managing editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.
