#64: What Kind of Coffee Lover am I? How Much am I Willing to Pay for a Cup of Coffee?

Making Coffee with Lucia Solis

This episode also comes on the heels of our recent trip to London.

Our very first stop was the Nagare coffee shop in Shoreditch in North London. Nick and I do what we usually do when we step into a coffee shop and order the pour overs. They had 2 different coffees on the menu for a pour over so we got one of each and sat back at our cute little table in a cozy cafe, and it was only when we looked down at our empty Kinto ceramic cups that we finally realized we had paid 18£ ($23 dollars!) for 2 small cups of black coffee.

I experienced sticker shock because we have been living on farms in Colombia and Guatemala for the last 4 years and we are very out of touch with big city prices. I knew London was going to be expensive but I was not emotionally prepared to spend $11/cup on our daily coffee.

Nick and I needed more coffee that morning but if we got 2 more cups at Nagare, we would be close to $50 and we hadn’t even had breakfast yet.

In my head, a voice was saying, dang $11 is an expensive cup of coffee. And then immediately another voice said, hold on....

"don’t we want the price of a cup of coffee to rise?"

Aren't low coffee prices a big part of the problem with our supply chain?

The conversation about the price of a cup of coffee is one I have often. What should coffee cost? Who gets to set the price? How does price reflect value?

The conversation about price and value is often at the forefront of my mind because there is such a disparity between what a coffee producer gets paid for growing and processing the coffee and what a consumer pays for a cup of coffee made from their raw material.

Resources:
https://www.macrotrends.net/2535/coffee-prices-historical-chart-data

https://ourcountrygarden.co.uk/british-gardening-statistics/

https://www.carelink24.org/doctors-prescribe-gardening/

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/02/21/headway/peat-carbon-climate-change.html

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Cover Art by: Nick Hafner
Into song: Elijah Bisbee