I promise this is a coincidence; I had no intention of writing about coffee for two articles in a row (previously: “Iced Coffee Savings“).
Yesterday, Starbucks started instituting pricing changes on some drinks, lowering the prices of easy-to-make, popular drinks and raising the price on larger, more complicated drinks. There weren’t a lot of specifics, but two different articles mentioned the frappucino as one of the targets for a $0.25 price increase. I’ve worked at two different Starbuckses, and that is not a difficult thing to make, but it does require people to wait a little longer, especially in the summer.
Easy drinks will see a price cut of five or ten cents, nothing to get real excited about. The thing that people usually forget about Starbucks is that – and I’ve heard this from managers of the store – it’s supposed to be a place you go to treat yourself once in a while. If a five cent price decrease at a gourmet coffee shop manages to save you a significant chunk of money over the course of a year, you’re already pretty wealthy, and you don’t need the discount.
Here are some insightful comments from the same story at the Huffington Post:
I’ve always believed that the price should be based on how long it takes to describe what you want.
From a business perspective, I believe this is a good idea. However, haven’t bars been doing this for years?
it would help alot if starbucks would charge $20 for an iced caramel frappuccino. that’s probably the only thing that would keep me from drinking every one I get my hands on.
ok, $50
And just for fun, here are my favorite two drink recipes of all time (I swear I have seen people order these):
- Three-quarters decaf quad grandé soy extra-hot no whip mocha valencia
- Triple venti upside-down non-fat extra caramel caramel macchiato
In a first, Starbucks lowers price of some drinks, Lisa Baertlein, Reuters, August 20, 2009
This is a cliché, but I need my coffee in the mornings. I prefer it iced, except in the very brief winters we have here in Texas, and for a long time, I was a loyal customer of the Starbucks Iced Coffee in a Can.
I’d have one every morning at least four times a week, at a cost of about $2.00 each. They cost more in the convenience stores, but at my former employer they’d have them stocked in the cafeteria downstairs. It was the perfect amount of caffeine, deliciously flavored, to help me self-medicate my A.D.D. And in terms of the Expensive Coffee-Related Drink factor, two dollars is on the low end of the scale.
And then Starbucks stopped selling them. Like Pudding Pops and the Bar None candy bar, my favorite treat was yanked out of my grasp with no alternative presented. Since then, I’ve gone back and forth to iced tea, water, some truly awful “energy+coffee” replacement that Starbucks is now doing, the bottled Frapuccino, and my more normal “iced venti vanilla latté, please.”
None of them have really satisfied in the same way. I just want roughly 8-10 oz. of iced coffee, and I want it to be easy. Well, I found a way (thanks to my wife) to make it easy, and cheap, through this cold-brewed iced coffee recipe at the New York Times.
The recipe makes a measly two drinks, so I just tripled the recipe to make a full week’s worth (give or take a day for the vanilla latté, which is something I like to do for myself on Fridays, anyway). I tried it out for the first time this morning, and it was an instant success. All I had to do was put some ice in a glass, pour in the coffee and go.
There are about three cups’ (the measuring kind) of ground coffee in a one pound bag, which is enough to make the modified recipe three times. That’s eighteen mornings’ worth of iced coffee for $10, presuming you’re buying the expensive ground coffee at Starbucks. Which I will probably continue to do. Nobody’s perfect.
If you don’t own a notebook computer but you still want to write term papers or browse the web from Starbucks, apparently the staff doesn’t mind. Recently, one Starbucks location in New York City was invaded by a few individuals who brought old Windows PCs, monitors included, to do some “work” and film the event for posterity.
It was the latest mission from Improv Everywhere, a group of undercover “agents” who create “scenes of chaos and joy everywhere” (but mainly in New York).
Some Starbucks customers believed these were public computers and stood behind the “agents” waiting for their turn to use the machines.
The Starbucks staff never gave us any trouble at all. In fact, it didn’t seem like it occurred to them that the three computer users might have known each other. One employee walked by me and laughed. I asked him what was going on and he pointed at the three computer users and declared, “They mean BUSINESS…” The manager told me that it must be “midterms” and that they were probably students from FIT, a college across the street… he didn’t put together that we were all part of a prank.
The Improv Everywhere report includes photos and videos of the “mission.”
Mobile Desktop [Improv Everywhere]
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