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Coca-Cola buys Costa Coffee for £3.9bn
- mosselman 8y agoOn the same front-page on HN for me right now is: "Time Magazine Sold to Marc Benioff for $190M" It is a shame that the difference here is so big. Many people would rather pay $3 for a cup of coffee multiple times a day, than pay a fraction of that for valuable content. Edit to clarify: I understand that consumer products are different than content and that news is not a direct competitor to coffee products. What I mean is that news companies are struggling to get enough out of the advertisement model whereas nobody expects to get coffee for free/less in exchange for advertisements on their cups.
- albertgoeswoof 8y agoPeople value living their own lives over reading about other people living their lives
- rawTruthHurts 8y agoAnd I don't care about Trump's policies or Brexit anyway.
- ben_w 8y agoI wish I didn’t have to care. Unfortunately, I have to block myself from accessing quite a lot of newspapers because despite it being highly relevant, none of the news about Trump or Brexit is actionable.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- malux85 8y agoCola Cola is Sugar, Coffee is Caffeine. You're never going to go broke appealing to evolutionary biochemistry.
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y agoCoca Cola contains caffeine too, 32mg per can.
- adwww 8y agoCosta coffee contains sugar too, 49300mg in a Chai Latte..
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y agoA 600ml bottle of Coca Cola contains 6.49e+13 picograms of sugar.
- bufferoverflow 8y agoI recently discovered that 100g of red apples have more sugar than 100ml of coke.
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y agoYeah wow! This¹ website says a Fuji apple, my favourite, my dogs also love them too, contains 16.6g of carbs of which 12.7g are simple sugars, whereas Coca Cola contains 10.6g of sugar per 100ml. Amazing! Rather than quote nutrition difference between the two I'll just give a subjective opinion: when I eat an apple I just generally feel ok, nothing different really. Coca Cola makes me feel ill, it upsets my digestive system and makes my nerves feel a bit jangle. I don't think I'm alone.
- matkins 8y agoMaybe Time wasn't so valuable after all, don't you think?
- geezerjay 8y ago> nobody expects to get coffee for free/less in exchange for advertisements on their cups. Some services actually give away coffee without requiring advert revenue of any kind. Moreover, coffee vendors such as costa coffee or starbucks aren't mere coffee vendors. Edit: I'm really interested to know what exactly did I said in my post that could possibly justify the downvotes.
- marban 8y agoThese shops don't sell coffee — They're real estate companies for ultra-short term coworking and third-place/feel-good lifestyle. Just like McDonalds (in some European countries at least).
- walterbell 8y agoJoe and the Juice is innovating on interior design/aesthetics, product (juice and coffee) and margins.
- hannob 8y agoI always found Joe and the Juice absolutely unbearable because they always seem to play annoying music far too loud. Not at all comparable to Costa Coffee or other places where you can drink a relaxed cup of coffee, let alone work.
- hellweaver666 8y agoJ&J have started moving into the Netherlands lately too... they have opened four or five stores just in Amsterdam (annoyingly kicking out some really great local places in the process). The coffee scene there is crazy compared to the UK... way more independents. I could see Costa popping up here soon as Coke take on Starbucks at a global level.
- AJRF 8y agoAgree about the overloud music, but I find J&TJ's coffee absolutely the best you can get on the high street. Fantastic stuff, but totally agree with your point about the music. I would love to be able to post up there and work, but I unfortunately need almost complete silence to focus.
- walterbell 8y agoNoise-cancelling headphones? The volume seems to vary by city, it was low/background in a city location with plentiful floor space when they were at 20% capacity, super loud in another city where the location had much less square footage and were at 90% capacity. Could be a crowd control mechanism.
- eastendguy 8y agoYeah, this concerns me as well. I do think "bundle" deals (coffee + $1 more for a newspaper) might actually work. I know that I pick my local coffee store just because it has free newspapers and magazines to read (it is part of a local bookstore). But I know plenty of people that are not willing to pay anything for "news", and their argument is always that there is enough free content on the web. The quality of news is something that is very difficult to assess, unless you are a domain expert.
- benbristow 8y agoThere is lots of free content on the web though. TinyTinyRSS keeps me in the loop with bigger outlets and then communities like Hacker News/Reddit for everything else.
- vatueil 8y agoLink to the discussion about Time Magazine: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18001786 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18001786
- growlist 8y ago> valuable content If I could buy a paper here in the UK that gave me a good mix of local and broad global coverage, focused on the facts rather than pushing its own agenda and stopped telling me how to think, speak and behave, I'd buy it, but that paper doesn't seem to exist.
- gmac 8y agoThe FT might be the closest? I recently switched from the Guardian. But it plays up financial issues and plays down social issues, as you might expect.
- growlist 8y agoThat's a good suggestion actually, but still probably more anglosphere focused than I'd prefer.
- cshenton 8y agoThe Economist is the closest thing I can think of. They seem to be doing fine so maybe it's a good business model.
- growlist 8y agoI'm still boycotting the Economist after they came out in support of the Iraq war!
- mosselman 8y ago> but that paper doesn't seem to exist. The reasons for this are plenty of course, but having to rely on advertisements for survival makes it hard to focus on facts. Instead you have to focus on sensationalist news in order to garner more views/clicks/readers in order to sell more advertisements.
- growlist 8y agoEven non-commercial BBC seems to be going clickbait, apparently scared to death of declining relevance.
- tim333 8y ago>rather pay $3 It's not so much that I'd rather pay $3 for a coffee than valuable content but that the content is available free and nice coffee isn't so much. I used a long time ago pay cash each day for a paper copy of The Guardian and similar but there's so much free info now it doesn't really make sense anymore. It's a bit like air to breath. It's worth a lot but why pay if its free everywhere?
- baxtr 8y agoWasn’t this discussed intensively just recently? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17884299 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17884299
- leifg 8y agoAm I the only one thinking "Well that amount is peanuts in the tech world". After all Facebook bought Whatsapp for $19bn.