Were You There

In the 1990s, John Sylvan was drinking 30-40 cups of terrible office coffee a day. He noticed the problem: make a whole pot and it goes stale, or nobody agrees on what type to brew. So he invented the K-Cup—a small plastic pod you pop in a machine for one perfect cup in 30 seconds. He teamed up with his college roommate Peter Dragone and named the company Keurig, Dutch for “excellence.” The plan was simple: offices skip Starbucks, get their coffee at work. It would actually be environmentally ne