Sure, it can keep your vegetables crisp, your milk cold and your eggs fresh – but that’s so yesterday. Coming soon in a kitchen near you: a refrigerator that can do all of the above – and brew you a cup of coffee, to boot.
It’s all thanks to Christien Aristakian, a Florida woman who felt that her refrigerator was taking up too much room and offering too little in return. “It’s this giant thing that’s sitting in the middle of your kitchen and all it’s going to do is keep food cold?” she told the Wall St. Journal.
During a routine GE customer service call, she asked a GE representative if the company could make a refrigerator with coffee-making capabilities.
“About three months later, two GE engineers installed a prototype of a coffee-making refrigerator door on Ms. Aristakian’s existing GE Café refrigerator for her to test and critique,” reports the WSJ. “For compensation, she got to keep the final product, which will hit stores this fall for $3,300.”
The new fridges will feature doors equipped with a Keurig-branded brewer. The option will be similar to Keurig’s single-serve brewers, making one cup of coffee at a time.
And if hot coffee isn’t enough to satisfy your refrigerator daydreams, consider this: Whirlpool now offers refrigerators with Bluetooth-enabled sound systems. And some Samsung’s refrigerators can dispense sparkling water, make phone calls, display TV shows and play Pandora Internet radio through built-in speakers, among other features, according to the Wall St. Journal.
In short, this long underappreciated appliance is getting closer to Aristakian’s dream every day: “I always thought it would be awesome if my fridge could do everything,” she said.
Learn more about this product on GE’s website here.
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