Marketing at its brightest for people who aren’t?

In today’s look at utter daftness in the food industry, the main prize goes to Nestlé for a new product it's marketing in the UK.

Nescafé 3 in 1 – a product designed for people who are not capable of putting a teaspoon of instant coffee into a mug with a teaspoon of sugar, water from the kettle and some milk.

If you’re incapable of this, then 10 sachets will cost you £2.10 – that’s £1.21 for 100g or, more to the point here, 21p per cuppa.

Nescafé instant coffee granules cost £2.68 for a 100g jar. Which sounds good by comparison – until you realise that according to the company, a serving is 1.8g of coffee, which means that the jar will give you 55.55 cups.

As opposed to 10.

In other words, for the same number of cups of coffee as you'd get from the jar, you'd need to spend £11.66 on the sachets.

Even though you have to pay for sugar and milk, it still works out considerably cheaper to do that rather then buy these sachets.

So what extra bang for your buck do you get in these magic little sachets?

Apart from instant coffee. With sugar. And milk.

According to Ocado.com, the ingredients are:

Sugar (52%), Whitener (38%), (Glucose Syrup, Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil, Skimmed Milk Powder, Acidity Regulators (E340ii, E451i, E452i, E331iii), Milk Proteins, Vegetable Fat, Emulsifiers (E471, E472e), Flavourings, Anti-Caking Agent (E551), Stabiliser (E339), Salt), Instant Coffee (10%).

Yeah. Right. Sounds delish.

Is there really anyone out there who can’t find the time to make an ordinary cup of instant coffee?

I’m minded to think that anyone who answers ‘no’ actually deserves to be ripped off.

Just wait until they produce a version for people who like their coffee black and unsweetened.