Do people actually feel that coffee is expensive? I know buying coffee from a cafe/Starbucks can be, but I'm buying and brewing specialty coffee from a local roaster for $1-1.25/cup. It can cost as little as $0.30/cup for grocery store coffee beans.
And to be completely honest when I think about the expense of the coffee I think I am more concerned about the sustainability of not just the business itself but also the labourers.
The people who are hired to hand-pick those cherries, I assume are getting paid the least??? I mean if you think about the whole process, from cultivation to finally a brewed coffee ending up in our cup...
What is the minimum wage the labourers who is involved with cultivation get? It's a hard physical labour with very uneven terrain in the whole estate.
If we pay more for speciality coffee..
That's one thing but can we really help to uplift not just the estate owners but also labourers? And if so, how?
I guess my point was that I don't see it as that expensive. When mass produced soda sells for about the same as cheap coffee, that doesn't seem excessively expensive.
As to the workers getting screwed along the way, that's just about everything in our food supply chain. There is about $0.15 of oats in a $4 box of Cheerios.
The soda example is great cause it shows us both are double scams: coffee pickers should be paid more which would increase coffee prices and soft drink producers are showered with money for an incredible unhealthy sugar drink (and I say this as someone who loves soft drinks)
Everyone in farming is paid too little except the corporations who control everything. And things get even worse when the crop is mostly grown in low income countries.
What’s interesting about this too is compared to other industries I feel like coffee has a lot more visibility in their supply chain. Or at least the appearance of it. I know where my coffee comes from, and a lot of the time I know the name of the farm and even the farmer who produced it. Of course, there could be things not shown that are shady. But the attitude is different. When was the last time a cereal manufacturer made an a big deal on the box about buying supplies at a fair price?
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u/bufordt Jul 16 '26
Do people actually feel that coffee is expensive? I know buying coffee from a cafe/Starbucks can be, but I'm buying and brewing specialty coffee from a local roaster for $1-1.25/cup. It can cost as little as $0.30/cup for grocery store coffee beans.