9 ms·
Starbucks is raising prices almost every month now
- bradleyjg 3y ago$3.75 - triple shots with soymilk $1.45 - cold foam $0.80 - syrup Why, though?
- radicaldreamer 3y agoCold foam inflation rate is out of control!
- dylan604 3y agoWhy what? Nothing in this world is free. $1.45 - cold foam << That foam isn't going to make itself, so you have to charge to pay the employee making it. The equipment that makes it doesn't run on wishes, so you gotta charge for the electricity to run the equipment. The equipment doesn't clean itself, so you have to help pay for the cleaning fee since it was dirtied at your request. $0.80 - syrup << Just like anything thing like beer/shots/etc. Things cost money when you buy in a retail with mark up. It's not rocket science. Ever paid for a shot? Of course you can buy a bottle for the same price as a round of shots for you and your mates. As a side note, in all of those movies where someone is at the bar and then tells the bartender to "leave the bottle". Like, is that something you can actually do, and if so, what's the tab on that going to run? Of course, you're not supposed to think about the movie like that. I just can't help it.
- bradleyjg 3y agoWhy what? Why would you drink this?
- dylan604 3y agothat's an entirely different discussion. i can't stand drinking coffee. it tastes like someone took a bean, roasted it, soaked it in hot water, then strained it through a filter. nothing I just said even remotely sounds enticing. now, grind those beans up and sprinkle on some tiramisu, and I'm all about it.
- falcolas 3y agoModern machines, especially those that Starbucks uses, effectively does make foam (and the shots) with no intervention by the baristas save refilling the milk. Yes, there's a cost to the machine, but latte prices are completely divorced from their costs.
- throwaway35777 3y agoStarbucks is the only chain where I've never been served a bad or stale cup of coffee. The value of a guaranteed good cup of coffee to a white-collar professional making $80/hour is much higher than Starbucks' price. I'd be willing to pay at least $5. They just have to boil the frog to deal with price expectations.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y ago> Starbucks is the only chain where I've never been served a bad or stale cup of coffee. To each their own I suppose. They are rather consistent, I'll give them that.
- luzer7 3y agoYou can also ask for a remake with no questions asked.
- jerlam 3y agoTo me, their coffee is consistently bad, so I have to assume that what I got is the way they wanted to make it. A remake will not change things.
- throwaway35777 3y agoUntil writing my comment, I never realized people thought Starbucks coffee is bad. Where can one get good coffee? I want to try!
- beanjuiceII 3y agoHasn't been my experience, also the damn cups are almost guaranteed to get coffee on someone.. the place is over priced garbo
- hehhehaha 3y agoBut the CPI tells us that inflation is at 3%, so this can't be true!
- oldpersonintx 3y ago[dead]
- sp332 3y agoThe Fed said they were only looking at core inflation, which excludes housing, energy, and food. Companies immediately started soaking consumers for those.
- jdlshore 3y agoYou’re implying causation, but doesn’t the fed always look at core inflation?
- sp332 3y agoWell they don’t like the rest for short-term trends because they are more volatile. But I think they would be important even if you could only use them for longer timescales.
- jonhohle 3y agoYou know, the things every citizen can do without!
- busymom0 3y agoThat's like the most important part in our lives.
- geraneum 3y agoBoth _can_ be true. They may be price gouging.
- hehhehaha 3y ago
- mkmk 3y agohttps://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APU0000709112 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APU0000709112 Price of a gallon of milk over time
- arcticbull 3y agoYou should really use a basket of goods, there are a lot of reasons why a single commodity may change in price. This is kind of why we have CPI and PCE. Here's real-dollar food PCE. It's up about 38% since 2007 or just over 2% annualized increase above inflation. [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DFXARX1M020SBEA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DFXARX1M020SBEA
- suyula 3y agoSeems more reasonable to use milk when talking about Starbucks.
- arcticbull 3y agoI would probably use coffee... or at least a blend of their inputs based on quarterly filings or something.
- dehugger 3y agoAnyone who's worked at Starbucks can tell you that milk is 90%+ of the commodity being consumed. The back area of every store is just a massive cooler to store milk jugs. The beans themselves are almost a foot note in comparison.
- jonhohle 3y agoIt may just be me, but I don’t think in terms of “real-dollars” (which are in fact fictional). The non-inflation adjusted graph[0] showing around 30% increase in the last 4 years matches my grocery bills more closely. Previously on HN[0] I broke down a grocery bill and found we were paying >40% more from 2021-2023. 0 - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DFXARC1M027SBEA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DFXARC1M027SBEA 1 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38026990 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38026990
- jerlam 3y agoYou know what they say about a frog and a pot of boiling water.
- TheGlav 3y agoThe party pack of twelve soft tacos at Taco Bell costs $30 if you want sour cream. It costs just as much to add a few dollups of sour cream to the tacos as it is to by a bulk tub of tub of sour cream at one of the warehouse stores.
- viraptor 3y agoThat's... the idea of restaurants, right? You can get all the ingredients in bulk yourself and save on the labour costs by making it yourself.
- friend_and_foe 3y agoThis reminds me of a hilariously unaware post on reddit a couple of years ago. A guy found a "hack" to Whole Foods sandwiches to get them cheaper... by walking around the store, getting the ingredients to the sandwich, buying them and making the sandwich himself. Some people are so domesticated by advertising it just doesn't occur to them to do things themselves.
- tomdell 3y agoIt seems like Starbucks and a lot of other fast food chains are chasing short-term profits at the expense of long-term viability. A quick check shows Starbucks' gross profit has gone up 12% each year in the past 2 years - that's pretty significant for a stable business that isn't really changing much, and it doesn't seem sustainable. The profit of McDonald's is up 10%, 5%, and then 29% year-over-year, respectively, over the past 3 full years. My question is - why? Isn't raising fast food prices so much to increase short-term profits an incredibly poor business decision? A major part of the appeal of fast food is low cost. If people fall out of the habit of going to McDonald's, Starbucks, etc. - which they will when they realize they can get higher-quality food/coffee/whatever at a local business for a lower cost - then I think it would be extremely difficult for these chains to win back their business.
- Solvency 3y agoBecause they keep raising prices and people keep paying and their YoYs keep going up. So they'll keep doing it. It, unfortunately, works.
- cj 3y agoIt works until it doesn’t. I’m sure there are also more complexities, e.g. not sure how much control local franchise owners have over price.
- makomk 3y agoIf I remember rightly, Starbucks' profits two years ago were down fairly substantially compared to their pre-pandemic levels and their long term goal seems to be to try and return the business to that same stable level of profit.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- selcuka 3y agoI guess it's because an inflationary environment is the best time to increase profit margins, because the average customer won't be able to tell the real increase when everything else gets more expensive as well. It is relatively harder to justify price changes when inflation is near zero.
- ks2048 3y agoI wonder if there is a database of Starbucks prices over time around the world?
- mucle6 3y agoI have been eating out and spending a lot of money lately, but then I read somewhere that $28 per day is 10k per year. So I started a budget and Starbucks was one of the first things I cut
- Bilal_io 3y agoYeah Starbucks would be at least 10% if that. At $5 a day, 5 days a week, you get ~260 days * $5 = ~$1300. And if your chosen drink from Starbucks is more expensive, and you order more than once a day, then double or even triple that figure.
- dylan604 3y agoFrom time to time, I'm just too damn lazy to get up and cook, so app delivery it is. Or I have food, but forget to thaw something, so it won't be ready to cook in time, so app delivery it is. I know there's a "you so lazy" tax. I've heard that on top of tips, delivery fees, app fees, they even modify the prices. Today, I went to one of the places I like to order from in person (such a rare thing for me to do). While there, I used app delivery to view their prices to the actual menu in front of me. Every single plate was at least $3 more expensive on the app. I deleted the app then and there.
- batiudrami 3y agoOf course! The delivery apps take 30% as well as delivery and service fees and most restaurants aren’t prepared to eat that loss or margin. It’s especially obviously for items that have fairly standard costs (like a Kebab in Australia is about au$12 everywhere) but in the app they’re $17, plus fees.
- vsskanth 3y agoI usually visit when I'm at an airport, so like twice a year. Every time I go, the experience gets worse. Last month I realized I paid like 12 dollars for two flat whites with a really painful to opt out tip system. On top of that I realized they got rid of the milk and sugar and I now have to beg the barista. That was the last straw.
- damon_c 3y ago> That was the last straw. Oh now you want a straw?
- 6th 3y agoNo, that was the last straw. There's no more. Supply and demand dictates buy buy buy. Straws are going to the moon!!!
- orev 3y agoNot saying Starbucks is the best in the world, but airport and co-located stores (e.g. inside a Target, grocery store, or hotel) are absolutely the worst versions of Starbucks. They’re more like a cut down version that sometimes uses instant coffee, has a limited menu, or are just constrained by the difficulty of operating in an airport. Don’t base your opinion of them based on what you’re getting in an airport. P.S. Most airport versions of a restaurant are typically the worst versions.
- paleotrope 3y agoThe Starbucks I've been too in the last two years (NE Ohio, Massachusetts) have all been like that. Creamer and sweeteners are behind the counter now. Seating is harsh and uncomfortable. The floors are dirty now. The whole experience is hostile.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y agoI mean, sure, this would annoy me to, but I don't understand the "Shame on you Starbucks" ending. Starbucks is the epitome of an optional luxury with a million possible replacements. As the commenter said, "I am slowly turning to my Nespresso machine to make my drink now", which is exactly what should happen. Starbucks will raise their price until the point that people no longer think it's worth it. I wrote about this in a related comment recently, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39889890 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39889890. There are many "nice, but not extravagantly fancy" restaurants that I would go to when it was about ~$60 per person. Some of these same places are now $100 and above per person, and at that price I won't go.
- Gigachad 3y agoI see this so much these days. I totally get being upset about rents, utilities, and supermarket food. But Starbucks and such are entirely unnecessary, there are no ethics or shame involved here. If it’s not worth the price, don’t buy it. You don’t have to buy it.
- dylan604 3y ago> Starbucks will raise their price until the point that people no longer think it's worth it. You not it's not too expensive when people are still buying it. If it were truly too expensive, nobody would buy it. I can't remember where I first heard that, but I do remember having a hyperbole comment after that that was followed with, "just because you can't afford it doesn't make it too expensive. it just means you can't, not that others can't". sometimes, you just want to throttle pedants
- pradn 3y agoIt's probably better for society for people to frequent third-places more. More sociability, connections - the human touch. It's of course just selling overpriced sugar drinks, but there's also this aspect.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- curiousllama 3y agoA quick google shows that Starbucks actually has raised prices the _least_ of major fast food chains over the past 10 years. (if you trust [1]) Looks like they're just trying to catch up. Bad timing. [1] https://financebuzz.com/fast-food-prices-vs-inflation https://financebuzz.com/fast-food-prices-vs-inflation
- davemp 3y agoConsidering most fast food places are comparable in price to local restaurants with table service, I’m not surprised. A pretty disproportionate amount of value is being extracted rather than added by these franchises.
- nox101 3y agoSome people clearly don't care about the price. I saw a food delivery person delivering a single drink from starbucks to someone in my apartment complex.
- tiltowait 3y agoThe Starbucks near me is only $0.65 cheaper than a pour-over[0] at my local specialty coffee store, which has (IMO) better coffee, better variety, and my patronage supports a small local business instead of a multinational behemoth. I'm not saying no one should ever go to Starbucks, but it does bum me out that so many people I know will only go there. [0] Yeah, a pour-over takes longer than getting a cup from the pot they already have going. Most specialty shops I've been to also sell drip coffee. I just mention pour-over to show that you can get an excellent cup for only a bit more than what you pay at Starbucks.
- VHRanger 3y agoAt least here in Canada: Starbucks has obvious, measurably worse coffee than most other chains. Just order a black espresso to see. Starbucks is banking on the fact that most people order drinks, and the quality of the coffee is indiscernible among the milk and sugars. At this point, Starbucks has worse coffee than McDonald's and is only a step above Tim Hortons (which itself is on par with truck stop coffee).
- Havoc 3y agoInteresting timing. The Europe side internal coffee shop at my work is also Starbucks except company run and raised prices a lot today too.
- more_corn 3y agoI have discovered a brilliant way to fight inflation. If something is too expensive don’t buy it. This works surprisingly quickly. The best way to communicate with a business is to stop buying stuff from them. Businesses quickly learn that raising the price comes at a cost. This doesn’t work for required things, but it is important to buy required things on your own schedule.
- goalonetwo 3y agoThis only works if everyone does it. Obviously most people don't seem to care for those price hikes at Starbucks. You can make sure they studied the profit/loss on that move.
- cykros 3y agoNice to hear Starbucks is incentivizing people to participate more in the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaign, and encouraging drinking better coffee at the same time. If you're not a brick you probably shouldn't be going into a Starbucks.
- SebFender 3y agoI've been making my own cappuccino's for the past decades and always laugh at the prices I see the rare times I take one while out. Buying my expensive machine has practically been an investment at this point... lol It's clear that going out for anything in the past years has become not only a luxury but a head scratcher most times. Invest in your setup and skills - not only will you save in the long run - you will learn things and have fun doing it.
- SebFender 3y agoJust for fun, here are my numbers rounding things up for fun with current prices... Milk 5$ for 2 litres, decent coffee usually around 20$ for 350 grams, water filters 100$ a year, machine 5k good for at least 20000 shots (based on my last one that lasted more than a decade). The price of my cappuccino comes to around 2$ cad. This is of course based on low volume and little over head. Of course if I would add utilities and space it would be higher such a businesses do - but it's a decent reference based on more than 20 years of doing it.
- interludead 3y agoIt's been a long time since I've visited Starbucks