Saturday, May 8, 2010

Seriously

A cup of my favourite Americano coffee at my favourite Starbucks clone coffee house, just jumped by almost 20 cents, increasing from $2.25 to $2.44. Do you realize that that computes to an extravagant $73.20 for one cup per day in a 30 day month... and many of these custom coffees cost upwards of $4 or even $5... and some people appear to be addicted to them, drinking several each day. I guess my age is showing again because I can remember when a good cuppa joe would cost a dime, and an alcoholic might not have been able to run up a booze bill to the stratospheric level of this coffee shop's charges.

How many cups of coffee can you squeeze from a single 1 Kg, $8.00 tin of MJB, or any other grocery store brand, at between 5 and 8 grams per 17 oz cup of coffee (according to the fine print on the can)? That equates to between 125 and 200 cups doesn't it? Or 4 to 7 cents worth of coffee per cup?

Now I realize that the barristas, as the servers who build these fancy drinks are now known, must certainly require at least one university degree in coffee brewing to qualify to use the horrendously loud, steam emitting contraptions that have replaced many of the good old coffee drip machines. Surely the Starbucks of the world are entitled to make a modest profit, but $5.00 for a cup of java... gimme a break Matilda. That's enough to drive a good man to drink.
 Etiquette or ostentation?  Tea anyone?
And then there are the tea sippers and servers. Every Tom Dick and Harry (is there no female equivalent to these inconsequential names?) who has been able to dream up an exotic name for a tea flavour, appears to have done so, and they all seem to be competing to make their brand the most expensive in the world. Most of them also insist in packaging their particular herbal poison (I don't like tea) in colourful little envelopes, and wrapping their tea leaf concoctions in little cotton bags with an attached thread and another colourful label dangling from that. Oh my, I'll certainly have to train my pinky finger to stand out from the cup handle so that I can adequately advertise my superior upbringing.

No wonder that so many nations are now having problems balancing their respective budgets. Certainly many of their citizens now realize exactly what the consequences are for living beyond their individual means.

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