Month: October 2019

When did coffee get so expensive? Unfortunately, we probably have Starbucks to thank.

Starbucks is not known for cheaply brewed coffee. Looking at the prices of any specialty drink you will find extremely high prices considering it is just coffee and considering the relatively small amount. At Starbucks, according to Smithsonian.com, you can order a drink that costs more then $45! But, let’s examine the rest of the market.

I, a new college student, splurged on a Keurig. It might possibly be my new best friend. It brews specialty drinks within seconds in the comfort of my own room.

But, for a box of Keurig K-cups, which are the only coffee pods that work in the Keurig machine, typically cost upwards of $11.  For 30 ounces of coffee grounds from Folgers, I would spend less than $10.

The point of a Keurig and Starbucks is the specialty drinks that cannot be easily made at home. But for the price, I can’t help but question if this is really what I, a college student, should be spending my money on. Unfortunately, it seems as if Starbucks has set a precedent. People like special coffee drinks they can’t find anywhere else. And if they can’t find it anywhere else, the prices can just keep on rising.

The Starbucks precedent has seemed to have bled into the rest of the coffee industry as well. As I discussed in last week’s post, Pumpkin Spice Lattes have overrun the coffee industry this fall.

Dunkin’ introduced its own Pumpkin at Dunkin’ campaign. As Dunkin’ tries to catch up with the strides that Starbucks seems to be making in the coffee industry, their prices rise with it. This means that Dunkin’, a once notably cheaper coffee chain compared to Starbucks, now has to raise its prices to stay relevant.

This sounds as if coffee brands feel as if raising their prices will make them comparable to other brands. This might be because some people associate price with value. Dunkin’ is still brewing the same coffee they always have, but now, maybe, people will see it as a true player.

For Starbucks, the decision to raise already high prices wasn’t an easy one. In fact, the company cites the need to close all of its locations last May for anti-bias training (which I discussed a few posts ago) as the reason it had to raise the price of its coffee by 20 cents in an article with Fortune. Though it does not seem like that much of an increase, it is sure to add up over time. And, more than anything, if consumers to continue to buy Starbucks despite the increase, who is to say that Starbucks will not continue to push the limit.

Let’s face it: those of us who drink Starbucks are probably going to continue to drink it for a long time. The price increases are just subtle enough that we miss it. And c’mon… a little price increase for anti-bias training… I can’t be mad about that. Overall, Starbucks makes good, specialty drinks that I can’t make myself. If I have to pay 4 bucks for it, I guess that’s what I’ll do.

The first time my mother took me into a Starbucks she was mad. How was she supposed to know which size to order if the sizes weren’t small, medium, large? Why weren’t the names at least somewhat indicative of what size the drink was?

My mom ordered a tall drink, only to find that the “tall” was the smallest size on the menu! Why? I guess we’ll never know. But really, that’s the Venti Footprint.

According to Reader’s Digest, the original CEO of Starbucks chose to use exotic size names to make people feel like they were drinking something more interesting than a regular coffee drink. Starbucks has never been one to follow norms, so their drink sizes are no surprise.

But, this past summer, controversy arose over the price and the size of Starbucks drinks. Everyone knows that the cost of a regular cup of coffee at Starbucks is relatively larger than most other coffee chain locations. The cost of iced drinks is no different. As summer rolled in, and iced drinks rose in their popularity once again, videos surfaced throughout social media questioning the value of iced drinks. Instagram uses shared that an iced venti, Starbucks’s largest cup size, had an equivalent amount of liquid as a grande without any ice. This sparked outroar. If Starbucks was already overpriced, why were we paying so much money for less than anticipated?

And that was the birth of the light ice movement. Rather than ordering a grande drink without ice, Starbucks drinkers decided to buy venti drinks with “light ice.”

All this means is ordering a drink that has less ice than normal. So, for the same price, they are getting less ice in their drinks and, theoretically, more of the liquid. Unfortunately, Starbucks baristas fill cups with the same amount of liquid each time, no matter how much ice someone gets in their drink. Unless you like a room temperature drink, it seems like this option doesn’t mean much for you.

A shining example of people’s frustration with the amount of liquid in each drink came when a Chicago woman filed a lawsuit again Starbucks, according to Spoon University. She claimed that the amount of coffee in her iced coffee drink was not the amount advertised. The author of the post on Spoon University put this woman’s claim to the test, and she found that Starbucks did advertise a greater amount of fluid ounces in their drinks than was actually there. This is disappointing, to say the least, because people are already paying a staggering amount for coffee, let alone paying for less than previously anticipated.

That is why Starbucks announced a “Trenta Cold” size for people who wanted a larger drink with a reasonable amount of ice according to Eater. Of course, the larger cup size comes at a higher price. But, if this blog shows you nothing else, it is that people will spend the money on Starbucks no matter the funky sizes and questionable amounts of liquids.