The trouble is that of the few remaining mom and pop places, they are typically run by folks that started working early and had limited education. They are fodder for manipulation. POS systems get in or cheap/free at times, charge for the service and “surface insights”.
“You could be charging most for X”
“this is your best seller on weekday afternoons”
And these decent folks, like many of us, can have some imposter syndrome. We don’t want to look like rubes so we press the button to test higher prices on X.
I stopped drinking coffee when it became too expensive. Problem solved. :)
Remember when everyone was buying those Keurig cups? So crazy they were like 80 cents a cup just get yourself coffee at Dunkin at that point
Yeah people seem to be OK with paying a lot for their coffee it seems… :)
I mean, I kind of understand it. When I was working, i was rewarding myself with nice coffee, just to have something nice during the day…
Now I don’t work anymore and it has led to removing a lot of stupid costs and unhealthy habits.
Idk, it costs me 3€ to get a 250g pack of ground coffee. 5€ to get a 250g pack of sustainable zapatista coffee. I can make many cups with a single pack. And yet, the price for a single espresso is usually 3€ or more in my area.
Of course the beans are always getting more expensive, but it’s still nowhere close to that price.
You’re paying for time, that’s the most expensive part of all restaurant food. Time in employees wages, time in the building’s rent cost, and so on. The coffee beans are probably the third lowest costing part of the cup of coffee, just above the water and electricity.
Not to be that guy, but we have been under-paying for coffee for many years now. The price of beans kept going up, but customers were locked into what a cup of coffee should be and extremely price sensitive about addressing the reality.
A catch-up is underway all over the world.
Note. Not a cafe owner and I don’t have anything to do with coffee except drink it.
i heard g7 viet coffee is good, but pricey.
You better be tipping big too if you can afford $5 coffee
In my country, this is about 15-20 US cents per sachet, imported from Indonesia. It is cheap and processed, but once mixed in a cup, it’s available at any roadside stand to go along with a bread roll, crackers, or a cigarette.
Looked it up on Walmart and it goes for US$27 for 30 sachets.
Heavy tariffs, I presume?
Not likely, just campitalism doing it’s thing. If people buy it at ~$1 each, they’ll sell it for that, and try to raise the price again next year.
Local coffee shop here is also a roaster and a helping hands non-profit. Even years ago the price of a cup was too much for me to spare, so I’ve always opted for their beans. The have a subscription with a slight discount and recently started selling 5-pound bags so my price per ounce is even lower than it was in the past. One of the few thing that hasn’t gone up.
$2.50 for that was nuts to begin with.
Y’all coffee drinkers are still gonna buy that shit though aren’t ya. Whatever the price they set, you will buy.
Not defending the price of a cup of coffee at all, but as someone who roasts their own coffee (both cause I love the process and am a cheap bastard), its only fair to point out the price of green beans is almost exactly double the price it was 3 years ago.
Again, plenty of ways to slice the astronomic price, but at the end of the day I would only half blame the restaurant here on the mark up
https://www.macrotrends.net/datasets/2535/coffee-prices-historical-chart-data
Do you use robusta or arabica? My understanding is that arabica is what’s skyrocketing in price, but many coffee shops use robusta beans which are more climate change tolerant (and cheaper).
This feels more like oil companies arbitrarily jacking up prices in 23 and using Russia invading Ukraine as an excuse (despite only a small fraction of our oil coming from Russia).
The only people using robusta (at least in the US, I cant speak for other markets) is bottom tier trash like Folgers. No real coffee shop uses it.
Vietnamese-style coffee is the one exception I know of. But yeah, I feel like anyone who likes coffee enough to avoid mass-market Folger’s trash would be very surprised if they happened to sip robusta while expecting arabica.
Your post made me wonder proportion of the price corresponds to the beans. I’m surprised it’s so high honestly, and it may still have gone up since 2024.
Plus tip
Coffee prices will continue to go up; most people do not realize that already today climate collapse is responsible for part of the inflation. Coffee and chocolate plantations are suffering from erratic weather and droughts. In addition, demand for coffee is continuously increasing too; but overall all crops are suffering from lower productivity, so food will get more and more expensive… even if we manage to not pass the 2.5C global heating.
Small scale growers/roasters have had 0% pressure to increase prices as their business does not rely on Brazilian hektofarms. You can get vastly better coffee at a comparative price if you care about the taste of your coffee.
The price of coffee in a cafe has fuck all to do with coffee prices.
The cost of coffee in a cafe is more about staff and rent, sure, but when the raw ingredients go up, it still affects the price.
Let me think about this.
Sure does. They would lose money if the cost of the beans was more expensive than the coffee sold for to the customer.
We’re going to be left with robusta beans, and I’m pissed.
No. You get artificial flavours and freeze dried instant coffee.
There’s really no value in going to a coffee shop any more unless its to socialize, and the social element is dying by design. The coffee quality is never better than you can make at home for a tenth of the price, and most places are now redesigning their interiors so that they encourage people to move on, not hang out.
I mean look at the chair in OP’s pick - sit on that for more than 10 minutes and you’re going to have a crimp in your back. That’s an intentional design element to keep you moving and not taking up space for new customers.
You give me a coffee shop with big ass sofas and a piano and chess sets and wifi and I’ll gladly pay $5 a cup to hang out. I’ll probably end up spending another $20 while I’m there. But the coffee alone just ain’t worth it.
You give me a coffee shop with big ass sofas and a piano and chess sets and wifi and I’ll gladly pay $5 a cup to hang out. I’ll probably end up spending another $20 while I’m there. But the coffee alone just ain’t worth it.
I agree with Chandler. I heard Central Perk is cool.
Totally agree. There’s one or two privately owned coffee shops that still have tables and chairs made for sitting and doing things at.
Forget it with any of the big chains. I’m halfway expecting some anti-homeless architecture on their small ass stools next time I’m there…which won’t be ever since they priced me out.
Same with other super cheap drinks like iced tea, soda, etc.
Fuck em. I refuse to pay those exorbitant prices for your shittily brewed iced tea and coffee.
I didn’t mind paying a buck for shitty diner coffee. We had a deal - you serve cheap-ass shitty coffee for a buck, free refills, I make it tolerable with creamer, and that’s that.
Now you wanna make a killing on something shitty that I know exactly how much it costs? Fuck you.
I used to love to go to diners, but the way they’ve raised prices in the last 10 years or so, nope. I’m done.
Having worked in restaurants I have insight into how the costs work. I want you to be successful, but not when you’re gouging me.
Last diner breakfast I had was $50 for 2 people. Wtf? That’s 10x what I can make it for at home.
So as these places go tits up, they have no one to blame but themselves.
