Why do people pay $4.00 for a cup of coffee at starbucks or espresso stand? When you can buy instant 100% coffee that makes 80 cups for $4.00?
by 
HappyGoLucky
ANSWERS: 10
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Because they won't let you make your own coffee in a coffee shop and you'd look a bit silly lighting a primus stove to make it in the street.
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Good question- But I guess it's the same reason that people go to a fast food restaurant when they can just whip up a cheap meal at home. People's lives are busy and most just don't have the time anymore to stay at home and spend an hour making a home cooked meal. It's fast and conveinient just to go out and pay for quick service.
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Well, I don't buy expensive coffee at Starbucks but I do have to say that if you love the good taste of great coffee, I'm not going to drip down to instant. Yuck!!! I'll still do okay buying beans for $6-18 a pound and making it at home.....just don't ask what the burr grinder and coffee machines cost! lol!!!
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Time and convenience. I buy coffee by the pound, pre-ground for about $10. I've never had an instant coffee that tasted good.
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Convenience (I don't carry a portable coffee machine with me everywhere I go) and because I make lousy coffee.
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Instant coffee is cheap because it's actually made from cheap, trash coffee product.
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Because it's nice and i don't have to make it :)
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Because you are buying coffee made now for you at the place you are, and also the right to sit down in a comfortable chair in a clean and heated room for a reasonable time while you consume it, and for some one to clear up and wash the cup after yo. My son worked as a barista at another coffee chain (and, incidentally, sneered loudly at Starbucks as the worst coffee amongst his competitors). In his training, he was told that the cost of the ground coffee in a standard cup was $0.06, and the total cost of the cupful was $0.24. Everything else is paying the server, the rent, cleaning, taxes, furniture etc. That is what you are *really* buying, not coffee.
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There's all sorts of reasons why the Starbucks formula works. The simplest reason is that it tastes great, smells great and right around the corner (EVERY corner!). As or the implication that everyone pays "$4.00" for a coffee - well that's simply not true.I never do - and I am a daily customer at Starbucks. If you pay that much you are usually paying for a specialty coffee - a latte, a *ccino, a mocha blah blah blah, a skinny yada yada yada. But I recognize the point you're making. When it is so grossly and blatently overpriced, why would people pay for it? That's easy - for the same reason people eat at restaurants where food is 'presented' rather than 'served'. Symbols, status, prestige and the rather distressing phenomenon of self-expression and identity expression through consumer choices. In other words - it's worth $4.00 because it reinforces your belief that you're someone who knows what they want and won't settle for less. That's a huge, if sad, positive insentive.
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Just be happy your car doesn't run on coffee.
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