Ahem, ahem. Attention, if you please. Today, ladies and gentlemen, one MMC and one friend of MMC may just have located the ‘laide’s best priced coffee. Today, my friends, one MMC may even have stooped to scraping dregs with an unwashed spoon. Order 1: skinny latte to take away, please. Your regular is a two-shotter? Nice. The Price: $2.50. Nicer. Order 2: ditto plus a third shot. Price: $3.30. A dollarish per shot? It’s a Christmas miracle!MMC knows what you’re thinking. It’s not Christmas yet, damnit! And also, where and when did this Christmas miracle occur? Well, if you guessed Adelaide uni, you’d be close. If you guessed David Jones, you’d be closer. Between the DJs hosiery and the North Tce traffic, there’s a purple sign that reads Chris Jarmer @ Air. While I h8 the awkward namesakery, it turns out CJ serves both damn good food and damn cheap coffee. Between 8 and 11am weekmornings, love is @ the Air.
Coffee pricing is a bit of a slippery fish. Or a kettle of fish? Either way, it’s a bit fishy. On one hand, MMC hears that coffee is all profit. Your cup could cost the café mere cents. On the other, a baristacquaintance testifies that the perfect pour demands a fresh, full-ish jug of milk each time. So as you wave goodbye, cafes are pouring money down the drain. Which tale is true? And why has one week of MMC traversed $2.50 - $4?
Apparently, our moolah is not just buying us brownish milk. @ Air it also buys classy takeaway cups, lids handy. And The Pour: what MMC called clumsy @ $3.30, we call unpretentious for less. It’s shiny smooth… But where were we? Oh yes. Other than choc dust and cardboard, we’re paying for pretty seats in prime real estate. Just today, a reader asked MMC to suggest a prime-location for lap-top leeching – somewhere that wouldn’t object to the sloppy student-type sipping oh-so-slowly. With the right combination of camouflaging commotion and concentrate-able calm, you can stay for hour/s. Everyone knows cafes are more fun than libraries.
So coffee’s expensive ‘cause one cup = an hour of atmosphere in a sprawlingly beige restaurant. Commuters on one cup don’t pay the rent, but beer’s cheap because everyone’ll have anothery. Gotcha. Lingering’s easy @ Air because the greeting’s not immediate. The Service: a bit scatty across a dishdirty counter. For some reason, our coins are dropped into a glass instead of a cash register. Hey, if it saves time. One-woman (woot!) no-nonsense barista show. You give me the money, I give you the coffee. How now, brown cow.
Lesson: that fuzzy first-sip feeling - the embarrassing skip-step, the endorphin wash palate to brain – what do they call that? Economicshelp,org calls it inelastic demand. Cafes call it the reason for unspoken oligopoly, a.k.a. 'howsabout we all charge threeish? Those dopes are addicted!' It’s weird, ‘cause unlike fossil fuels, there’s no worldwide shortage of beans. So why did MMC write an entire ranty blog on price? As friend of MMC reasons, we may be caffeine addicts, but as consumers we have a choice. That last $20 could buy five cups at a four-dollar-franchise, or 6-7 elsewhAir.
Link: The Economics of the Price of Coffee
turns out you were being paid by Air the whole time
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