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Coffee has a marginal and fixed cost. Digital products like apps only have fixed costs and marginal costs for manufacturing and distribution is zero or near zer

Coffee has a marginal and fixed cost. Digital products like apps only have fixed costs and marginal costs for manufacturing and distribution is zero or near zero. This allows lots of new methods that aren’t possible for physical products. For me, I buy software when it has a good value (I like Omni products) but the argument that people should buy apps because they buy coffee is disingenuous and not useful without more info. I certainly wouldn’t buy coffee for 3-4 if it didn’t require a building and barista and shipping coffee across the world and roasting beans, etc. If coffee could magically appear in my hand for almost $0, then I certainly wouldn’t pay so much. Of course, there are still costs like design for digital goods, but they are very different.

Jtsummers 5y ago
At my previous office one of the guys brought in a $300 espresso machine that (most of us) chipped in to pay for, we had an "espresso club" with $2/month dues for 15 people other than that one time we asked everyone to chip in an extra $20 to cover the new machine (replaced the much cheaper Mr. Coffee machine that he donated to us at no cost). We made much better drinks than you'd find at Starbucks for a fraction of the cost. Over 4 years we asked people to pay, about, $120 total (regular dues, the better machine, and once to replace some broken cups or mugs), that's approaching $0 to get a coffee to appear in your hand (and for most of the people it was "magic" as they didn't operate the espresso machines, they showed up and a coffee was handed to them).