Soon you can get hot coffee right from the fridge
The convenience of single-serve pod coffeemakers has made them among the fastest-growing small appliance. One downside is the loss of counter space, especially for consumers with compact kitchens.
Here comes GE with a solution: the first-ever refrigerator with a built-in single-cup coffee brewer from Keurig. The feature will be available on GE Cafe Series French-door bottom-freezer models (GE CFE28USHSS and GE CYE22USHSS) in the third quarter of 2015. The price will be $3,300.
The built-in coffee machine is the latest in a string of innovations to hit refrigerator water dispensers. A couple years back, GE launched the first hot-water dispenser, intended for tea, hot soup, and the like. Samsung answered around the same time with a sparkling water dispenser from Sodastream. Neither feature caught on in a huge way. GE hopes the broad appeal of single-serve coffee-making will give its new feature a bigger boost.
“Over the last couple years, GE surveyed Café French door refrigerator consumers who have the hot water feature; they asked us, ‘When can we have a refrigerator that dispenses coffee or tea?’ In fact, two-thirds said they’d be interested in a single-serve hot beverage dispenser,” said Dan Goldstein, refrigeration marketing manager for GE Appliances, in the news release.
GE is touting several other benefits of the coffee dispenser. For example, it uses an advanced water filtration system that's been tested by an independent third party to remove 98 percent of five trace pharmaceuticals from water. The dispenser is also Wi-Fi enabled, meaning you can preset the brew time via your smart phone so that water in the reservoir will be hot when you're ready for your morning cup.
We look forward to testing the new coffee-dispensing GE Café Series French-door bottom-freezer when it hits stores. If you can't wait that long, check our Ratings of refrigerators and coffeemakers for models that aced our tough tests—albeit not at the same time.
—Daniel DiClerico (@dandiclerico on Twitter)
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5 secrets to a long lasting kitchen
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