Drinks

In brief

The crypto-native Rekt Drink brand has expanded into 7-Eleven stores, starting in Southern California.
The brand has sold more than 600,000 cans of its non-alcoholic, sparkling waters.
Rekt initially began with a free NFT drop that didn’t mint out, but has grown substantially since.

Rektguy didn’t mint out its free NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain in 2022—but three years later, the brand has become incredibly familiar with the phrase “sold out,” with the Rekt Drinks brand clearing out successive drops and reaching more and more consumers along the way.

The brand, which weathered a brutal crypto bear market thanks in part to the strength of its fervent community, has now sold more than 600,000 cans of Rekt Drinks, a non-alcoholic, flavored sparkling water that comes in a variety of different flavors. And this week, the brand earned placement at 7-Eleven, starting with a trio of stores in Southern California.

Rekt Brands co-founder Ovie Faruq (aka OSF) told Decrypt that it’s “kind of funny” that the original Rektguy NFT offering didn’t mint out. The project, which started as an art collection and a “side quest” for Faruq, has since morphed its way into a leading Web3 brand, with beverages helping it expand beyond the blockchain.

(Disclosure: Ovie Faruq’s Canary Labs is an investor in DASTAN, the parent company of Rug Radio and Decrypt.)

“We sort of had a decision to make. We didn’t really promise anything, there was no roadmap, no promises made—it was really just meant to be an art collection,” he said of Rektguy. “But over the next two years, we seemed to just have this really super sticky, tight-knit community that stuck around.”

It was during the summer of 2023 when ideas started to blossom about potential expansions.

“We spoke a while about Rektguy versus Rekt as a concept. We had put the logo on a few things, and it sort of felt like this Rekt thing could be a brand,” Faruq said, adding that the goal became getting the logo in as many places as possible.

Drinks felt like a natural connection, according to Faruq, thanks in part to the ability to manufacture them cheaply—plus the connection to Rektguy’s imagery, which features a hooded skeleton holding a drinking bottle.

With no experience in drinks, the team brought on an advisor who had started a drinks company in the UK. Through trial and error, they got cans of Rekt into the hands of attendees at NFT Paris in 2024—and they liked it.

“The feedback was really good. It was surprisingly good,” said Faruq. “Considering we had no experience in drinks, we just kind of like made up this drink to fuck around and find out, so to speak. It was really, really good feedback.”

From there, the team decided to try to manufacture a bigger batch and sell them, leading to its first major sale of Liquidated Lime drinks last October—a collection of 222,000 drinks that it sold out in 48 hours.

Prior to the sale, Rekt built out a rewards program to incentivize users to engage with the brand, rewarding Drank Points to those who participated in social quests and drink purchasers as well. By earning points, users were later eligible to claim Rekt Coin (REKT), an Ethereum-based token tied to the brand.

“I was really inspired by the Solana phone,” said Faruq about the Solana Saga, an Android smartphone that initially faced weak demand, but then sold out once the Bonk meme coin offered to buyers surged in value. “No one touched it, tons of supply left—but as soon as people could claim a $500 BONK airdrop, the phone sold out in like 24 hours.”

After its initial success, the brand teamed up with Ethereum layer-2 network Abstract for a drop of Abstract Apple, a new flavor of its sparkling water, selling out even faster than before.

“After that, we just had tons of people reaching out to us for collaborations,” said Faruq, whose brand also dropped drinks via collabs with NFT marketplace OpenSea and Solana decentralized exchange aggregator, Jupiter.

But beyond the crypto walls, the connections didn’t always come easily.

“No one’s really heard of us outside of crypto. We did the first sale, and people are sort of wondering if this is a one-hit wonder sort of thing,” he said, adding that the brand’s crypto origins initially led to some skepticism, as well. “You tell people the story, they expressed some interest, but there wasn’t really a ton of movement,” he added.

But after the Abstract and OpenSea drops, the brand started to pick up some momentum that has carried into its placements in 7-Eleven stores, placing Rekt alongside giants of the beverage industry.

“With 7-Eleven, I just think we had a very strong pitch to them,” said Faruq. “This is the perfect product for a 7-Eleven store, and we can get a ton of people out to the stores when we launch it and make it some really big thing and a really good launch. They were onboard.”

The brand carried out its first 7-Eleven activation on Thursday, overselling its initial planned supply of 600 cans in the process. The cans were priced at $2.80 a pop, or $10 for a 4-pack. Another event took place Friday, with the last set for Saturday. And early 4-pack buyers each day will earn an allotment of REKT tokens, as well.

“[You] never really know if people will turn up to stuff when it’s not a crypto event,” Faruq told Decrypt of the initial Thursday event. “But we had a good turnout, and all the drinks selling out was obviously nice.”

Edited by Andrew Hayward

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The drip coffee is meh, granted. But more than perhaps any semiautomatic machine in its price range, the Ninja Cafe Luxe Premier is geared to absolute ease and versatility—with an intuitive digital user interface that helps you along. Depending on your chosen drink, the Ninja Luxe will recommend the appropriate grind size on its display screen and help you dial it in. (This may take a couple tries.) Milk frothing is easy, and the automatic milk frothing is shockingly good. Plus, you can froth cold foam, for silly cold-foam drinks. See what I mean? Ninja is fun. We look forward to testing Ninja’s new Cafe Luxe Pro ($750), which costs a little more but adds a welcome auto-tamper and hot water spout.

Best Budget Latte Machine

Mr. Coffee

One-Touch CoffeeHouse

This Mr. Coffee machine was once our top pick. Why? Because it sits so nicely at a comfortable intersection where ease of use meets automation and affordability. This is about the lowest-priced machine you can ever expect to find with automatic milk frothing at the press of a single button, with options of late foam or cappuccino froth. Just load fine-ground coffee into the portafilter, tamp it down, and twist it on. The machine will mix up a cappuccino or a latte macchiato at the press of a button.

This machine has a forgiving (but not overly intense or nuanced) pressurized portafiter, which means it will work with almost any “espresso-grind” coffee from your local café or the grocery store. Just note you’ll still get a better shot of espresso if you buy a grinder and use fresh beans from a good specialty roaster. But all in all, this is about the easiest $200 latte machine we know. Like, the hardest thing about it is that the milk canister can be removed and stored in the fridge, and you have to clean it out once a week.

Best Budget Superautomatic Espresso Machine

Photograph: Café Appliances

Cafe Affetto Automatic Espresso Machine

The Cafe Affetto is one of the few fully automatic machines that we’ve enjoyed in this price range. The Affetto features a built-in steaming wand, produces 20 bars of pump pressure to ensure your espresso is fully extracted, and is a slick little machine. It’s very slim and fits comfortably on a small apartment countertop without having to rearrange everything. Because coffee production is automated, you just need to fill the water tank and put whole beans in the hopper, and you’re good to go. You can brew one or two shots with just the press of a button, and there’s a programmable button to create your favorite drinks (like an Americano with just the right amount of water).

The milk frother does a lot of the work on its own. Just pour some of your favorite milk into the frothing pitcher, submerge the wand, and hit the steam button. If you’re new to frothing milk, you don’t even need to move the pitcher to produce a creamy and consistent microfoam. We tested the frother with dairy milk, oat milk, and soy milk. It produced soft and creamy café-grade froth each time. Just make sure it’s topped up with water and beans and that you clean out the spent grounds container regularly, and it works like a dream. —Jaina Grey

Best Semiautomatic Espresso Machine

Courtesy of Breville
Courtesy of Breville
Courtesy of Breville
Photograph: Matthew Korfhage

The Breville Oracle Jet (8/10, WIRED Recommends) is my favorite of the seven new espresso machines I’ve tried so far this year. It’s the one I recommend as my top pick in WIRED’s guide to the Best Espresso Machines, over other estimable contenders from Breville that include the Barista Touch ($1,000) and the Barista Pro ($849). And it’s the one that best mixes full-flavored, nuanced espresso with the ease of machine-guided, touchscreen operation. It’s versatile, it’s powerful, its PID controller means the temperature is quite stable, and it makes absolutely lovely cups—espresso that’s denser and more intensely aromatic than the coffee made by any other machine on this list, whether in bringing out the fruity berry notes in an anaerobic light roast, or the dark chocolate of a roasty Italian.

In the finicky, often difficult world of classic home espresso machines, the Oracle Jet is a paragon of simplicity and machine-guided brewing: It’s a miracle that one can so easily pull such delicious and nuanced shots, that remain so sensitive to the character of each bean. But that sensitivity still makes the Oracle Jet a little more finicky than other machines on this list. And while the automatic milk frothing is quite good, it’s not as failsafe as our favorites here. (I still like steaming milk manually on the Breville, versus using the auto-froth.) But if you want espresso that will distill he beauteous character of fresh-roasted beans but still don’t want to try overly hard—on a machine whose intuitive touchscreen tutorial will guide you to lovely flat whites and capps? This is your huckleberry.

Best Pod Latte and Cappuccino Machine

Photograph: Keurig

Former WIRED reviewer Jaina Grey loved this machine. It’s the best Keurig that Grey ever used (8/10, WIRED Recommends), but it especially offers a terrific frother. (Though check out our updated pod coffee maker guide for more recommendations.) This K-Café doesn’t technically make espresso shots, because grounds aren’t pulled under pressure. But it does make a delicious 2-ounce “espresso style” shot that can taste almost as strong. So why is it in this guide? The frother. It has three settings—cold, latte, and cappuccino—and it’ll froth milk to perfection with the tap of a button, ready to be poured from the stainless steel carafe. It’s a latte maker that’s simple to use and easy to clean—and the milk is so beautifully foamed that it’s tempting to use this device to froth milk for espresso made on other machines.

Best Handheld Milk Frother

Sometimes making a whole latte or cappuccino using an automated machine can be a time suck. Not to mention, sometimes all you really want is frothy milk. That’s where milk frothers come in. These machines beat air into milk, or milk substitutes, to get that nice creamy froth. Former WIRED Reviewer Jaina Grey loved this handheld from Subminimal, a highly specialized immersion blender that makes properly textured creamy, light, airy, wonderful milk. One screen makes fine-textured milk. One makes “ultra-fine.” But note that Subminimal has also added a milk frothing pitcher called the Nanofoamer Pro ($159) that costs a bit more, but is currently sitting prettily atop our guide to the Best Milk Frothers.

Other Automated Latte and Cappuccino Machines We Liked

Courtesy of Casabrews
Photograph: Pete Cottell

The delta between home espresso machines and the commercial workhorses used by busy third-wave shops is still thousands of dollars, but that hasn’t stopped both beloved brands and scrappy upstarts from infiltrating the space with more approachable units. Skip the junk and level up to the Casabrews 5700PRO (7/10, WIRED Review), which offers an unfussy take on the art of homemade espresso drinks.

Instead of bewildering noobs with a million settings and onboard tutorials, this 12 x 11 x 16-inch tank of a machine keeps it simple with easily accessible controls for things like temperature and dose volume for extraction, and run time for the onboard grinder. It’s a single-boiler machine, not a dual boiler, which means you can’t froth your latte milk at the same time as pulling a shot, but the texture of the frothed milk is perfectly malleable and up to snuff for a basic leaf or rosetta pattern.