If it ain't broke don't fix it. That appears to be the attitude consumers have toward Keurig Green Mountain (NASDAQ:GMCR) and its effort to get people to upgrade to its 2.0 machine. 
 
 GMCR reported fiscal Q1 results on May 6. All things considered, the quarter wasn't bad on the face of it. Sales up a bit, adjusted EPS up a bit, and even though GMCR missed estimates the results were still in the same league. 
 
 The problem was exactly what I was concerned about in my previous GMCR article, Keurig Green Mountain's Results Are Worse - Maybe Much Worse - Than You Think, following the Q4 results. Q4 is obviously the best seasonal period for selling brewers (mostly as gifts) yet the quarter ended with an obscenely high unsold finished goods inventory of brewers. That didn't bode well for the seasonally inferior Q1. 
 
 The overwhelming majority of sales are for pods as opposed to brewers, kind of like razor blades versus razors, but brewer sales and usage will ultimately lead the long term. Pods were up 7% while brewer sales plunged 23% due to bad sales "below expectations" of management for the new 2.0 Keurig brewer. 
 
 GMCR specifically stated that "high inventory levels at retail" was to blame. Sometimes borrowing a page out of Peter Lynch's book and staking out retail stores pays off. I mentioned in my prior article that "as I did my shopping and browsing I kept seeing fully stocked shelves of the machines with rarely anybody looking. It's not because the brewers aren't popular - they most certainly are - but feels like anybody who really wants one has one by now." In short, Keurig 2.0 isn't the iPhone. There is no urgency from most consumers to upgrade. 
 
 GMCR lowered guidance due to "the impact of near-term challenges related to this complex product transition." Pardon my bluntness but that sounds like a crock. The challenge is, in my opinion, that people are happy with the original and aren't interested for the most part in fixing what isn't broken. 
 
 The conference call addressed concern about a misconception that the new machine only brews GMCR's brands. However, I don't think that's the only problem or there would have been better sales for the older unit instead of the huge decline. No doubt that some people did indeed upgrade this quarter so the new machine was likely a headwind that could only help yet it clearly wasn't enough. Something else is going on and I suspect it is GMCR being closer to market saturation for the brewers. 
 
 Maybe the upcoming Kold system, which is a whole different story making a whole different type of drink, will get GMCR back in hyper-growth mode, but I see the general coffee brew continuing in deceleration mode for the foreseeable future. 
 
 Disclosure: The author has no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours. 
 
 The author wrote this article themselves, and it expresses their own opinions. The author is not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). The author has no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article. ||||| Keurig Green Mountain Inc. on Wednesday cut its guidance for the year as earnings fell 4% on low demand for its new brewing system. 
 
 Shares fell less than 1% in recent after-hours trading. 
 
 “Our top-line growth, however, was below our expectations... ||||| 
 
 Keurig Green Mountain K-Cup coffee packs. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images) 
 
 It’s been called the “razor blade business model.” A company sells a product like a battery-operated razor blade handle at a relatively low price in order to sell a complementary consumable product later, like the astoundingly costly Gillette Power Fusion Proglide cartridge, $18 for four blades, which then get thrown away. 
 
 But it could also be called the Keurig “K-Cup” business model. Once a consumer buys the coffee machine, the coffee drinker may spend as much as $50 to $60 per pound on the coffee contained in the K-Cups, considerably more than the cost of even Starbucks’s breakfast blend, which goes for about $11.95 per pound. 
 
 Some years back, thousands of Keurig single-serve machine fans found a cheaper alternative, however — refillable, non-disposable K-cups, little plastic coffee grounds holders, which the company graciously sold under the brand of “My K-Cup.” 
 
 Not only was it cheaper, but the coffee drinker had more choice, as “My K-Cup” could be filled with any brand of coffee off the shelf. 
 
 But in August 2014, when Keurig introduced its “2.0” line of coffeemakers, it stopped making “My K-Cup” for it and made the machine incompatible with any K-cups already in existence, as well as with any unlicensed disposable K-cups made by other companies. 
 
 It was $50 a pound and a trail of waste — or nothing. 
 
 [K-cups inventor: ‘I feel bad sometimes that I ever did it’] 
 
 That was two provocations, but two too much. The reaction was fast and furious, on sites such as Amazon, as well as on Keurig’s own social media sites. 
 
 Rhonda Ungericht, among many others, vented on Keurig’s Facebook page: 
 
 “My sister bought a new Keurig and did not know it only takes Keurig K-cups until her third call to Keurig. Now my brother-in-law cannot use the coffee I got him for Christmas. I bought him Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee which you do not carry. And I have the original Keurig but when it dies, I will never buy another Keurig product. This borders on the unethical forcing people to buy only the K-cups you make. And you owe me $50 for the coffee!” 
 
 Keurig’s explanation was a model of what not to tell angry consumers. The company said the change was for the consumer’s own good. 
 
 “The My K-Cup accessory and other reusable filters are not compatible with Keurig 2.0 Brewing Technology,” the company explained on Facebook, “because the brewer has no way of determining what beverage is being used or how much coffee is being added, and therefore cannot adjust to factors such as brew strength and amount of water, which could represent a safety concern…” 
 
 [VIDEO: Coffee in America, by the numbers] 
 
 Clever competitors moved quickly to fill the void, with ways to, in effect, hack into the Keurig technology. The Rogers Family Company’s “Freedom Clip” was sold patriotically as “Our Gift To You and Everyone …. Freedom Of Choice!” 
 
 “We at Rogers Family Company® believe that your right to choose any option is imperative. That’s why we have developed this easily installed ‘Freedom Clip’ for Keurig 2.0® brewers. Just place the clip in your new brewer and it will see all k-cup type pods as ‘Authorized K-Cups®.’ This clip is our gift to you. Now go forth and brew with freedom.” 
 
 
 
 Green Mountain Roasters President and CEO Brian Kelley, center left, and Senior Vice President Mark Wood cut the ribbon to open the company’s first Keurig retail store in Burlington, Mass., on Nov. 8, 2013. (Brian Snyder/Reuters) 
 
 Worse for Keurig, as executives acknowledged Wednesday during its quarterly earnings briefing, sales of Keurig machines tanked and they began to accumulate on the shelves across the country. Sales of brewers and accessories declined by 23 percent, the company reported. Its stock price fell 10 percent in after hours trading. 
 
 With that, Keurig’s CEO did what he had to do. He capitulated Wednesday in a call with market analysts. 
 
 “We heard loud and clear from consumers,” said Brian Kelley, “who really wanted the My K-Cup back. We want consumers to be able to bring any brand and bringing the My Cup back allows that. 
 
 “My K-Cup was a terrific addition for the consumer. It wasn’t used a lot, but for the consumer it was a nice element to have if they were given coffee as a gift. . . . We took it away because My K-Cup” wasn’t going to work with our new system. 
 
 “Quite honestly, we were wrong. We underestimated the passion the consumer had for this. We missed it. We shouldn’t have taken it away. We’re bringing it back.”
– "Our top-line growth ... was below our expectations primarily due to the slower than expected transition to the Keurig 2.0 system," Keurig Green Mountain Inc. CEO Brian Kelley explained in an earnings call yesterday, per the Wall Street Journal. Seeking Alpha sees it as the anti-iPhone scenario: "People are happy with the original and aren't interested for the most part in fixing what isn't broken." But at the Washington Post, Fred Barbash lays out a different problem: the "My K-Cup" one. The coffee packaged into each K-Cup costs customers dearly: on a per pound basis, they spend up to $60, or roughly five times what they'd pay for a bag of Starbucks coffee. Enter the My K-Cup, a refillable option that freed consumers from the expense and brand limitations of Keurig's K-Cups. The problem? The K-Cups that worked in previous models (both those made by Keurig and its competitors) lack a special ink introduced for the 2.0. Those cups no longer work, and neither do My K-Cups; no new refillable option was introduced. The complaints came in short order. As a one-star Amazon review for the K550 2.0 puts it, "If you want a machine that brews a good cup of coffee then this will work for you. If you want a machine that puts all sorts of restrictions on what type of k-cups you can use this is also the machine for you." The Post reports the company's initial line of defense was that the move was born out of safety, as the machine wouldn't know how to properly brew a coffee Keurig didn't package. Other companies introduced hacks (one competitor mailed out a free override device), and yesterday, Kelley "capitulated," as Barbash puts it, saying "we heard loud and clear from consumers"; the My K-Cup will return. (Here's why the inventor of K-Cups doesn't use them.)