Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Brother Can You Spare $3.60

One more cup of coffee for the road,
One more cup of coffee 'fore I go
To the valley below.
Bob Dylan, “One More Cup of Coffee,” singer/songwriter

I did Starbucks for about a year, three days a week; it was my breakfast on the run. I have since stopped once I started adding it all up. Now I am very happy or should I say Grande happy.

Starbucks is raising U.S. prices on coffee, lattes and other drinks by an average of 9 cents a cup next week to help offset soaring costs for milk and other commodities, a spokesman said on Monday. What the spokesperson should have said was prices are rising to help meet profit projections for shareholders.

This will Starbucks' second price increase in less than a year. Try not going to the ubiquitous coffee shop and watch what will happen to prices. But, the smart money people know that we’ll do nothing.

"There will probably be some grumblings initially, but at the end of the day I think people aren't going to change their pattern of buying," said Morningstar Inc restaurant analyst John Owens.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's amazing how much money I've saved since I stopped drinking caffeine. $4 for morning coffee (even as an occasional treat that adds up), a buck or two for iced tea at lunch and dinner...and now somehow I always seem to have extra cash on hand.

Chandira said...

Money and calories. A 16oz soy latte has about 200 calories in it! Yikes! That's about 14 lattes per extra pound of body fat. Makes you think, huh? Then there's the cakes...

I have got into coffee in the last year, I never used to drink it. Then I remembered they did decaf. :-( I'm an addict. I confess it. I'm trying to only make it 2 a week.

alice, uptown said...

To think that a pound of good coffee runs less than $6 in NYC, I can't imagine why sink that into two cups of badly brewed espresso, much less tip the "barista" who can't be bothered to sugar my coffee.

Twenty years ago, we had "coffee; coffee light; and coffee light with sugar, " each for 50 cents a cup. Where are those Acropolis cups now?

The Misanthrope said...

Jane: It adds up very quickly. $5 a day equals $100 a month.

Chandira: You should find another way to get your caffine.

Alice: Have the time I would end up with a coffee that was not what I ordered.