07.29.08
What ever happened to brewing your coffee at home? Bye-bye Starbucks!
So Starbucks is closing down its least profitable stores worldwide. So what. What ever happened to people taking a few minutes to brew their own pot at home. At $4.00 a cup no wonder this country is in debt. Forget the escalating price of petroleum, or the drop, or the rise, or the drop … You get the picture. I thought yuppiness went out with the 90’s. I guess yuppies still need their designer paper cups. It’s just that now the yuppies have grown old and have become accustomed to being lazy, designer craving fools.
A 34.5 oz. container of Maxwell House French Roast (coffee) sold for $6.99 buy one get one free ($3.495 a container), when I last bought it three weeks ago. I bought four containers. The week before at the competing supermarket I picked up four containers at $6.99 each also B1G1. Between Daniel and I, we drink two pots of coffee each day at 6 scoops a pot. One container lasts two weeks. So 28 pots of 5 – 10 oz. mugs per pot comes to 140 mugs per $3.495 which means I spend $0.02496428571428571 per cup. Admittedly, this is only the cost of the coffee.
There’s also the cost of the electricity to heat the water which takes 8 minutes a pot at 1000 kWh = $0.02 including taxes and fees. Then there’s the price of the coffee pot from 7 years ago at Costco, $69.99 depreciated over 3 years (so now it’s free). The price of the water, it’s free seeing as I have a well, but yes there is the cost of electricity to pump the water, rental on the space in the basement for the water tank, wear and tear on the well pump (I’m giving it to myself for free as a perk), OK maybe not lets add $.02 per pot. The paper cone filter which I reuse to make two pots is $0.00495 (100 filters @ $0.99 per 100). Milk, we go through 2 gallons a week, but I mix powdered milk half and half with whole milk ($3.97 a gallon). I buy one gallon a week plus the cost of the powdered milk ($9.99 for 20 quarts or 4 pounds dry is $1.998 a gallon) plus the 7 pints of water 112 oz. to make the gallon of dried milk divided by 50 oz. per pot is 2.24 times $0.02 (the standard I chose for the cost of water) per 50 oz water is $0.0448. The cost of milk every two weeks comes to $5.968. Daniel has one bowl of cereal one morning on the weekends, but I’ll not take this into account which will make my estimated cost per coffee cup high. I drink the rest of the milk almost exclusively in coffee. Then there’s half & half for my coffee (1 quart @ $1.89) every two weeks. Is there anything else I’ve forgotten? I can’t think of anything, but I’m beginning to get a little lost.
Lets look at the cost of a cup of coffee in my house.
Costs per 2 weeks
Coffee $3.495
Water $0.56
Electricity to perk the coffee $0.56
Milk for the coffee $5.968
Half & Half for coffee $1.89
Total $7.858
Divided by 70 mugs every two weeks comes to $0.12 per cup of coffee rounded up, and remember, my estimate is high.
What the yuppies spend for two cups of coffee, I get 70.
Go figure.
O.P.W.