By Marco Newby, from Coffee Brew
Best for: Coffee-avoiders (or those just really wanting to cut down on the sugar)
Price: £7.99 for four
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If you like a cuppa with a side of caffeine, then your wallet may be eating up. The cheapest espresso machine around is the Swiss Neuhaus model, which costs £950 and takes half as long to make a cup of coffee as an ordinary one, you might think. If you’re prepared to pick up the same machine at Argos for £400, it gets rather mighty bloody.
But no, it doesn’t have to be that way. Newly-launched mobile app Coffee Brew is in on the act, and it wants to enable fussy coffee-avoiders to get the effects of a good old cup without all the extras (like milk frothers, asparagus or Special Brew). The service costs £7.99 per month, which allows for both drinks and number of coffees per month (normally around two, but up to six).
There are other apps that can do this, but Coffee Brew claims it’s one of the only on the market that allows users to track how many calories they’ve consumed by tapping into the built-in calorie calculator on the app. That way, you can ascertain if you’re really wasting your money or just enjoying yourself – a worthwhile consideration for those of us who, despite the downsides, can’t get enough of a good cup of Joe.
Coffee Brew was launched last week by San Francisco-based four-year-old startup, Cake Health, and is currently only available on Android, but the company is currently developing an iOS version. The app is also developing food delivery services too, according to their Kickstarter page.
There are many more apps you could use to curb your energy intake, such as calorie counter MyFitnessPal or calorie counting app MyFitnessPal Health, but the key difference with Coffee Brew is that instead of targeting healthy eaters, their focus is on optimising beverage choices for each individual.
In a similar fashion to daily workouts, training, or even bus journeys, it’s all about balancing. Offering a safe way to cut down on sodium, sugar, fat and calories through food is useful and could lead to weight loss. With less coffee and tea, our energy is, potentially, a little less diluted. And that’s a good thing.