The $7.00 Cappuccino
If you drink Specialty Coffee on a regular basis you’ve no doubt noticed the price increase of your daily indulgence. Inflation, cost of goods, the ebb and flow of the coffee market, and tip creep all have a part to play.
What used to be a $3.00 cappuccino with a $1.00 tip has morphed into a $5.00 cappuccino with 15%, 20%, and 25% tip options. (In California a popular Specialty Coffee chain has cappuccinos priced as follows: Santa Cruz: $4.50, San Francisco: $5.00, Los Angeles: $5.25. Prices will fluctuate depending on geography, and these prices were neither the cheapest nor the most expensive I found.) If we take the median of $5 plus 8% sales tax plus a 25% tip we’re landing around $6.75.
This is no joke for a daily habit. There’s also no shortage of basic breakfast options at any given cafe in the $12-$17 dollar range. Throw in a modifier or two (oat milk, add an extra egg, etc.) and you’ll face a tab close to $30 for your coffee plus a snack.
I added some items to a cart as an experiment. 6oz cappuccino ($5), add oat milk (.50), avocado toast ($13), add poached egg ($2), tax ($1.28), 20% tip ($4.10), total = $25.88.
A Note On Tipping
I have issues with tipping culture in general but setting that aside, if you have the gall to flip around a tip screen with a button that says 25% on it, you better be blowing my mind.
While I’m a business owner, I worked as a Barista for over ten years, and like them or not, I understand the role tips play in the lives of service workers. I also understand that you as a barista, didn’t choose the numbers that pop up as tip options, those are chosen by leadership. So perhaps the same note to business owners is prudent here. Business owners: If you have the gall to program a tip screen with a button that says 25% on it, you better be training your team to blow my mind.
A Screaming Deal
As annoying as price creep is, Specialty Coffee may still be underpriced considering the amount of effort and intentionality that goes into growing, harvesting, processing, sorting, shipping, roasting, and finally preparing it. Anyone who’s ever visited a coffee farm would be shocked at how much work goes into creating a product that’s so easy to take for granted.
What’s more, the best coffees in the world are a bargain. What would you expect to pay for a great bottle of wine, a top-tier cigar, or a rare whiskey? Coffee offers a flavor experience that’s more complex and nuanced than any of those at a fraction of the cost. But a great raw product isn’t enough.
While wine and whiskey come to us ready to drink, coffee, especially espresso, requires skillful preparation. I see many baristas going through the motions of making espresso but with little attention to detail and an absence of passion that’s hard to quantify—it’s almost an energy or aura that you can’t see but feel. (You know when you’re watching a true professional work.)
Again, my goal is not to take jabs at baristas. Employees are a reflection of leadership—they will put their energy into what leadership values, whether leadership states those values explicitly or not. But employees are also their own individuals, and despite being part of a less-than-stellar culture, we each have the opportunity to take ownership and hold ourselves to the highest standard possible. That’s a whole different article in and of itself. Back to the cafe!
Hospitality
The cafe is no longer the only place to get great espresso beverages. With the plethora of equipment and information available, the dedicated home enthusiast can make cappuccinos just as good, if not better than what they’d get at a cafe, and they can make it exactly how they like it, every time.
Amazing coffee is a must but by itself, it’s not enough. Our real opportunity is to create memorable experiences. Experiences that are so amazing that people can’t help but tell their friends. Experiences that fill people up with positive energy that they pass on to the people they interact with. These experiences are a gift and aren’t trivial. Our daily interactions at the coffee shop have more impact on our lives than the once-a-year vacation we take with our family—to undervalue them is a mistake. These experiences, good or bad, shape our lives.
Hospitality is a craft in and of itself. To treat people as guests, not customers, to see yourself more like an actor in a Broadway play than a register operator in a cafe. We have tremendous influence on the emotional state of our guests. I’m not talking about simply being nice. I’m talking about truly seeing people, meeting each individual where they’re at, and leaving people feeling fully taken care of. To be of service is a privilege, and if we carry that mindset into whatever we do, there’s no limit to the impact we can have or what the market will support.
Regardless of where we sit on the price spectrum, we should be aiming to take pride in our work and delight our guests, but when the sum total of the experience doesn’t match what we’re charging, we’re stealing. Great coffee being the bargain that it is, I’d happily pay $7 for a perfect cappuccino with the service experience to match. But $7 for an OK cappuccino with mediocre service—no thanks.