Is it just me or is coffee becoming too expensive?

Yeah, $7 for a latte

Yeah, I was at Starbucks this morning and saw someone pay like seven dollars for a cold brew which is insane because it's basically just water with caffeine in them but then I started thinking about how my grandfather used to grow coffee beans on his farm back in the 70s and he told me stories about working from sunrise to sunset harvesting everything by hand and there was this one summer where everyone got sick from eating a bad batch of beans at a local fair which sounds like something out of a movie but it was real and they had to destroy three tons of crop that would have fed the entire town for months, so when you think about the labor involved in getting those beans to your cup seven dollars doesn't feel as ridiculous as it does on paper. But then again I also see people paying fifteen dollars for a bottle of water at an airport which is just plain robbery and has nothing to do with labor costs or fair trade economics — that's pure markup strategy by corporations who know you have no other choice in that specific moment.

Yeah I feel this every time I go into that cafe on 4th and see the menu price for a drip coffee which used to be like three dollars is now basically whatever they want because there are so many chains everywhere now you can find a Starbucks or something within like five minutes of any intersection in most cities and when supply is unlimited prices just drift upward over time because no one has an incentive to keep it cheap since people will just walk down the street to the next place that's also charging six dollars for a latte which brings up an interesting point about how we evaluate value versus cost as consumers — my uncle used to say that something's only worth what you're willing to lose by not having it and I remember this one time he took me out to this tiny diner in Nebraska where the coffee was fifty cents and tasted absolutely terrible but he insisted on drinking two cups because of some story about his own father who owned a cafe in the thirties during the depression and how people back then would drink anything that wasn't kerosene. That story always sticks with me because it makes you realize how much our current expectations are shaped by periods of scarcity we can never fully understand even though we live in unprecedented abundance — which is also kind of depressing when you think about it, if everything is cheap and accessible then nothing feels special anymore and coffee becoming expensive isn't just a pricing issue it's an inflation of the entire experience of wanting something.

Honestly I think we're at this point where you can't even get a decent latte without it being like nine dollars and then they have to charge extra for oat milk which is absurd when that was standard three years ago but the thing about coffee is what it does to your routine because my dad has been drinking his morning cup since before I was born and he used to get a bag of beans from this little shop downtown called The Grind on Elm Street — do you know where that is because they moved locations last year and I kept going there for two years without realizing it which is embarrassing but the point is coffee isn't just a drink it's like an emotional anchor and when the cost goes up it feels personal because your daily ritual becomes this negotiation every morning with yourself about whether you can afford to feel awake today.

Not at all — I'm paying $6 for a latte every morning now and it'

Ugh yeah -- I went to my usual spot this morning and they raised their latte by 50 cents. It's ridiculous at this point. I think it's a combination of everything (beans getting more expensive, labor costs, the general inflation wave) but I just wish there was some kind of cap on how much coffee shops could raise prices year-over-year.