With Coffee, the Price of Individualism Can Be High

Mitalena Coffee offers high quality coffee for affordable prices. The article below explains how expensive convenience can be.

With Coffee, the Price of Individualism Can Be High
By OLIVER STRAND

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/08/dining/single-serve-coffee-brewers-make-convenience-costly.html?_r=1

SOMETIMES it’s hard
to tell how much coffee
costs, even if you know what you spent. At least that’s the case with many of
the single-serve brewing machines that are soaring in popularity.
For example, the
Nespresso Arpeggio costs $5.70 for 10 espresso capsules, while the Folgers Black
Silk blend for a K-Cup brewed-coffee machine is $10.69 for 12 pods. But that Nespresso capsule
contains 5 grams of coffee, so it costs about $51 a pound. And the Folgers, with
8 grams per capsule, works out to more than $50 a pound.
That’s even more
expensive than all but the priciest coffees sold by artisanal roasters, the
stuff of coffee snobs.
An exclusive
single-origin espresso like the Ethiopia, Gedeo Single Origin Espresso from
Sightglass Coffee costs $19 for a 12-ounce bag, or about $25 a pound. La Cima
beans for brewed coffee from Stumptown Coffee Roasters, a Grand Cru selection
grown at Finca el Injerto, a renowned farm in Guatemala, is $28.50 for a
12-ounce bag, or $38 a pound.
In fact, most
high-end coffees cost less than $20 a pound, and the coffees you find on
supermarket shelves are substantially cheaper. A bag of Dark Espresso Roast
beans at Starbucks is $12.95 a pound, and a bag of Eight O’Clock beans for
brewed coffee at the Food Emporium is $10.72 a pound.
How much of that
coffee goes into a cup varies according to who (or what) controls the machine.
For instance, a Lavazza Gran Crema espresso capsule has 7 grams of coffee, the
standard for most chain coffee stores. But independent coffee shops regularly
pack 14 to 22 grams into an espresso shot.
When it comes to
single-serve systems, you’re not just paying for coffee, you’re paying for
convenience and the technology that makes it possible to brew a single cup in
seconds. Pop in the pod, push the button: it’s a sure thing every time.
Supermarkets and specialty stores are filled with items that make it easier on
you, and it’s up to the shopper to determine if it’s worth it.
Some decisions are
easy (rendered pork fat, fresh pasta); others are a toss-up depending on who’s
in the kitchen (chicken stock, salad
dressing). Where single-serve coffee falls on that spectrum depends on whether
you regard coffee as something you make or something you drink.
“Americans under the
age of 40 are thinking about coffee pricing in cups,” said Ric Rhinehart,
executive director of the Specialty Coffee Association of America. “If you
asked my mother how much coffee cost, she would have told you that the red can
was $5.25 a pound and the blue can was $4.25. If you ask people in their 20s and
30s, they’ll say coffee is $1.75 to $3.75 a cup.”
This generational
shift helps explain why single-serve coffee is the fastest-growing sector of the
home market. According to a study from the National Coffee
Association, single-serve coffee is now the second most popular method of
preparation after conventional drip brewers, by far the dominant method. In
2011, 7 percent of the cups of coffee consumed in the United States were made
with a single-serve brewer, up from 4 percent in 2010.
The premium that
single-serve coffee commands makes it especially lucrative. Julian Liew, a
spokesman for Nespresso, said single-serve coffee is 8 percent of the global
market, but accounts for 25 percent of its value. It’s likely that the number
will continue to climb.
According to Keurig,
4 million of the company’s K-Cup brewers, for regular drip coffee, were sold in
the 13-week run-up to Christmas 2011. During that same period, Green Mountain
Coffee Roasters sold more than $715 million in K-Cup packs. The pods and brewers
are now front and center at stores like Bed Bath & Beyond and Staples.
Keurig licenses its technology to other companies, and last year, Dunkin’ Donuts
and Starbucks started making K-Cup pods. Keurig even sells a refillable filter
that you can pack with your own coffee.
Nespresso has sold
more than 27 billion capsules worldwide since it was introduced in 1986. Later
this year Ethical Coffee Company plans to sell Nespresso-compatible capsules for
around 20 percent less on Amazon.com. So the United States might see
something novel for single-serve coffee: a price war.