Our Opinion – Bean and gone

When my favourite café in Ōrewa changed hands recently, I wasn’t alone in being a little annoyed when the price of my morning fix went up.

Granted, I could just say no. My daily flat white is hardly one of life’s essentials. Or is it? And besides, it’s less about the coffee than the community. And it’s rather pleasing to be greeted by name, by someone who knows what I’m going to order before I get past ‘hello’.

But back to the price. A quick review of selected cafés across the Coast found that a medium (roughly 8-10oz) two-shot flat white ranges in price from about $5 to $6.60.

Do yourself a favour – don’t calculate how much a daily coffee at that rate sets you back a month – money that could be going into the mortgage, etc. I refer back to the point about ‘life’s essentials’.

So, is what we’re being charged for coffee reasonable? Let’s start with the price of beans.

Commodity prices for the two most commonly-used beans, arabica and robusta, have risen significantly this year, in part due to fears of shortages arising from challenging weather patterns in Brazil and Vietnam. Drought, floods and rising temperatures attributed to a changing climate can diminish crop yields and push up prices. Export trends and production forecasts are also cost factors.

The price tag goes beyond the price of the magical brown beans. Milk, energy, freight, rent, wages and other costs have all increased – and all affect café owners, as they do the rest of us.

Of course, when looking at a range of cafés’ prices for a similarly-sized flat white, the comparison is not a fair one. A fast-food outlet where trainees churn out coffees using beans of indifferent quality can hardly be compared to a café whose skilled baristas use a top of the range espresso machine fuelled by premium grade beans from the world’s best coffee-growing regions.

We can choose where we buy our coffee, and sometimes the location and atmosphere can weigh more heavily than the quality of the beverage.

With few exceptions, those who own and work at small, independent cafés are hard-working, dedicated individuals who don’t exactly make a fortune, but enrich our lives in many ways. So, unless we stop drinking the stuff, I guess we should happily hand over our hard-earned dollars for our morning coffee, without grimacing. I’m certainly going to try, anyway.

Patrick Goodenough, reporter