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$4 toast: Why the tech industry is ruining San Francisco
- joepour 13y agoWhilst I agree, nobody should be paying 6 bucks for coffee and toast, you haven't felt the pain of getting breakfast in Sydney! Makes $6 look like a special!
- prawn 13y agoSaw so many full breakfast specials advertised in London for $5-7. In Australia, the big breakfast without a drink is often $18-22. A juice or milkshake would be $6-8. I'd dream of $4 toast!
- barrkel 13y agoYou might get something described as breakfast at a greasy spoon for £3, but I wouldn't recommend it. If you get coffee, it'll be a stewed hotplate at best. £3 should definitely buy you a semi-decent coffee though: http://www.londontoolkit.com/blog/eats/coffee-shop-chains-in-london/ http://www.londontoolkit.com/blog/eats/coffee-shop-chains-in...
- tsotha 13y agoYou can certainly get a full breakfast for $5-7 in San Francisco. You just can't go to the techie-hipster-yuppie places.
- pathy 13y agoAgreed! In Stockholm you can pay $6 for a cup of coffee alone. Ok maybe not cup of black coffee but $6 for a cup of cappuccino is no problem.
- vraid 13y agoEven a single espresso is in the range of $2.5 to $4.
- jakub_g 13y agoFrench Riviera, the price would be similar or slightly higher. No SF-like big tech industry, but lots of rich Frenchmen and Russians, and tourists from all the world, who pump the prices up.
- exDM69 13y agoYeah, while the rent in San Fransisco may be outrageous, and other prices may be expensive compared to the rest of the US it is still pretty cheap compared to some other parts of the world. Overall, the prices in the US for many commodities and services are ridiculously cheap compared to many European countries for example. And don't get me started on the gas prices... You can't get a coffee and a toast in a cafe for $6 in my home town (in Europe). You'll be paying $8 to $10 at least.
- onion2k 13y agoToast might not be 'worth' $4 to you, and certainly the raw materials of toast don't cost $4, but that doesn't mean it doesn't provide $4 of value to the person buying it. That's what you have to measure. To me, a good cup of coffee and a nice breakfast in a quiet cafe with friendly staff is worth at least $4. And I choose to spend my money that way. Valuing toast especially highly is not the problem with the tech industry. The problem is inequality. While tech generates huge returns for investors people in tech will earn a lot. What needs to happen is that money paid needs to be spent - on toast or anything really - rather than being further invested. By spending, money moves around the system, gets taxed, gets redistributed between everyone relatively fairly. If tech workers earn more than they can reasonably spend then they end up investing it in houses and companies, meaning the money stays with the few and pushes the poles apart - the poor get poorer and the rich get richer. That's the problem. If everyone bought $4 toast then all the coffeeshop workers would earn more and the tech workers would have less to spend on houses. That would be a good thing.
- oleganza 13y agoLets also not forget that Fed prints tens of billions of dollars per month. All this money has to go somewhere and today a good chunk of it goes to all sorts of investors buying stocks and pre-IPO shares of tech startups. That's the only logical explanation for crazy valuation of profitless Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and others. Also, the only explanation for why most people producing real goods on factories and farms in US and all over the world are getting poorer while guys coding services that waste money for years still get huge salaries. I'm not saying that all of Silicon Valley is producing worthless stuff. I'm saying there is a distortion on the market caused by "free money" (compared to money that has to be saved and withdrawn from others, less profitable activities). Without it SV would still be a great and pricey place, but not hugely at the expense of everyone else like it is today. PS. Before we start a flame about "crazy libertarians", consider what's more crazy: me questioning Fed's policies, or the fact that war in Iraq costed $6 trillion and killed 1 mln people (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_cost_of_the_Iraq_War http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_cost_of_the_Iraq_War). That wouldn't be possible at all if the Fed couldn't create money out of thin air. Once you deal with morality of this situation, only then please criticize me about my opinion on QE and other monetary policies in general.
- hkmurakami 13y ago>I have a great business idea: luxury sanitation. White-glove garbage collectors and high-end toilet systems. Except for the little fact that high end toilet systems are already a thing in places like japan. (See Toto's offerings)
- shalmanese 13y agoI found it worthwhile reading a differing perspective on the story: http://www.psmag.com/navigation/health-and-behavior/toast-story-latest-artisanal-food-craze-72676/ http://www.psmag.com/navigation/health-and-behavior/toast-st...
- unlucky 13y agoThis is a repost from 4 months ago. Original thread is here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6253248 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6253248
- aaron695 13y agoWhen people want to pay large sums of money for 'quality' quite frankly that's great. We are in a world with resources diminishing and a jobs market decreasing. Artisan style products are our best bet at keeping it at bay for a while.
- fractalsea 13y agoI can understand why this would benefit the jobs market, but in what way you this help prevent "diminishing resources"? It's my understanding that quality products tend to be more resource and energy intensive to create, unless possibly in the case where these quality products are explicitly advertised as eco friendly etc.
- aaron695 13y agoDepends on the way you think about it. People earn $x. They spend it on products. $x worth of fancy bread style thing vs $x worth of plain bread style things, I'd guess the plain bread uses more physical resources.
- sanoli 13y agoWon't they end up eating the same amount of bread in the end? The expensive stuff then would waste more physical resources.
- Jacqued 13y agoBecause you'd buy a lot less things. There are 2 reasons to that : - they are more costly, so you can't afford as many - their quality means they last anywhere from 2 to 50 times as long as their crappy equivalents ; so again you have to buy them less often. Take shoes : a man could buy only 8-10 pairs of really good shoes throughout his entire adult life and be set. Of course, those would be $500 high-quality shoes (not random 'designer' shoes). Or he could buy 60-80 pairs of cheap crappy shoes that quickly wear out and become painful to wear, and are not worth maintaining since they're so dirt cheap. Then the high quality shoes are probably made by a craftsman in the U.S. instead of an exploited worker in a third world country, so that's a more fulfilling job. And you don't have to transport the shoes across the globe on gigantic boats, so that's another eco-benefit.
- lmm 13y agoBetter that we spend our money on high-quality versions of "the simplest facets of life", like coffee, than doing weird things that are just status symbols, like opera. And I don't think it's at all fair to say small businesses languish as a result. Small businesses are booming by providing these things.
- jaimebuelta 13y agoDon't underestimate showing status. Bragging around of the artisan coffee you take every morning can be every bit about showing status as any other thing. Humans are very good at that...
- route66 13y agoOpera is a weird thing and just a status symbol? You deserve to pay $30 for your coffee! But maybe it's the cultural divide between <fill in yourself>
- lmm 13y agoIf you've grown up with opera it probably fits into your culture. But if you're now much wealthier than your background (as is the case for many tech folk), better to spend that money on high-quality versions of what you like than try to ape the tastes of people as wealthy as you.
- ItendToDisagree 13y agoYou seem to be implying that "poor people" can't enjoy Opera or by extension 'classical' music? I don't think the author was meaning to make the comparison to highlight wealth rather than something that may benefit you beyond "I ate some expensive toasted bread".
- sanoli 13y agoWhat if it doesn't fit into your culture? So everyone who wasn't aristocracy when growing up can't truly enjoy opera or classical music? They're justing aping the taste of the rich? Opera is, comparatively, much more different than pop music than, say, comparing a cheap $1 toast from a $4 one.
- guard-of-terra 13y agoI never realized USA was such a cheap place. Here in Moscow, toast with coffee might easily run 10$ and that raises no eyebrows.
- kristopher 13y agoVery similar here in Japan (Both Tokyo and Kyoto). The price for a glass of soda usually starts around 500 JPY (about $5 US). 100 JPY on the street in a vending machine and 150 JPY from inside of a train station :)
- roel_v 13y agoI'm in a second-tier, if I'm generous, but realistically a third-tier city in the Netherlands and €7.35 will buy you breakfast with coffee for take away only - sit down will cost more. Not sure where the writer is coming from - goods and services will cost more than the sum of its raw materials, news at eleven. He complains about the settlers eating toast and it not costing as much - sure, if you make your own toast, you won't pay as much either. No settler had even the option to just go out and buy toast and coffee.
- brotchie 13y agoI had the same reaction! Coffee and some good toast at a nice Cafe in Brisbane (Australia third largest city) would also run around $10.
- hornetblack 13y agoI would say the same of Sydney.
- 13y ago
- johnchristopher 13y ago> [..] that cater to the bored and overprivileged, peppering their descriptions with buzzwords like “organic” and “fair trade” and “artisanal,” the most meaningless of them all. Call me a socialist, a hippie or whatever but fair trade isn't something meaningless.
- goldenkey 13y agoThe FLO (Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International) sets a floor price of $1.40 per pound of coffee, which is supposed to be a "higher than market" price, but is actually hardly more than what growers were being paid to begin with. This is like assuring an employee that she will be earning more than the $7.25 minimum wage entitles her to, and then only paying her $7.26 and a lollipop. In many cases, growers can make three or even four times as much per pound if they don't sell within their Fair Trade contracts. This is like a Blockbuster clerk being able to earn more cash if he just takes all the videos home and charges admission to his living room. For a nonprofit organization working to combat the exploitation of impoverished countries, the FLO makes a rather tidy sum from licensing fees. For every pound of Fair Trade coffee a retailer sells, they have to pay the FLO 10 cents -- that's like Drew Rosenhaus collecting 50 bucks for every Terrell Owens jersey that gets sold (this is hypothetical -- we are well aware that no Terrell Owens jerseys are being sold). In 2009, the FLO had a budget of $10 million, 70 percent of which was funded entirely by those fees. In short, the anti-exploitation organization is using Third World coffee growers to generate revenue, which as you may notice is very nearly the literal definition of exploitation. This has led many in the industry to argue that the FLO exists primarily to market Free Trade coffee, rather than to protect the interests of growers. This is the same relationship that Disney has with children. On average, retailers are charged 65 cents more per pound of Fair Trade coffee. That might not sound like a lot, until you remember how retail markup works. Take a look at the $1.40 that the growers sell their beans for, and compare that to the $9 or $10 you pay for a pound of decent, non-Billy-Bob-Thornton-poop coffee. That's a 700 percent increase. If the retailers are being charged 65 cents more on average for that Fair Trade label (almost an additional 50 percent), then you can guarantee that's going to mean an additional 300 to 400 percent price increase for you, because retailers need to have a large enough markup to make a worthwhile profit. Otherwise, they'd just filter day-old coffee from the break room through the manager's sock, call it something with "Nicaraguan" or "Colombian" in the name, and sell that to you.
- ksec 13y agoThis isn't a SF problem. It is a problem everywhere. Heck the much widen range between the rich ( or the average in SF ) and the poor. And you see this in much worst from in India, China. Luckily these place have many other areas or choice for the "poor" to choose from. Another example would be Hong Kong. Where NO ONE could afford to buy a flat. I would love to see Rent compared in SF and Hong Kong.
- xacaxulu 13y agoVote with your wallet. Good or bad, you don't have to pay for it. Make toast at home if you are really that into slightly burnt bread. It takes what, like 3 minutes to make coffee and toast at your house. And I really doubt that the tech industry is ruining San Fran. Even if they were, toast prices at one place you went to one time wouldn't be the first metric I'd grab.
- icebraining 13y agoWhen you buy toast at a coffee shop, you're not just buying toast, you're also "renting" a table in a social place. You can't make that at home.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- cmb99 13y agoIf the author only paid $4 to escape that ornery-looking, club-like loaf of bread he baked at home, he should probably consider himself fortunate.
- mc32 13y agoIf tech workers are the scapegoat for all the ills of SF, why aren't grossly overpaid actors and actresses the scapegoats for the decadence in Hollywood? No, Hollywood decadence is accepted, but you get techies with a small salary multiplier and people get upset, you have the 100 to 10,000 (income) multiplier in Hollywood and that's quite alright. I don't quite understand the incongruence.