The Seattle Times ran a second story on coffee house pricing today that used quotes from this blog. The story is titled Coffeehouse customers steamed about higher prices (2025: article offline). The point that seems to be lost in all the feedback I’ve received is that I’m not in the industry and don’t understand why prices are increasing**.** I’m just a customer.

We all have our pricing stick points. A business can increase prices to that level, and we will not push back; however, as soon as they do, we, as consumers, will push back. That push back might mean cutting back or walking away completely. Coffee is no different than other industries.

When a certain Seattle coffeehouse raised its espresso price to $2.71 (post-tax), I stopped going there. The $300 I probably would have spent there was spent at cafes that kept their espresso price under $2.25 (post-tax). Fifty cents isn’t a lot of money, but when you consume as much espresso as I do, it adds up. ;)