Taming of the Brew
BY peter, September 19th, 2007
We’ve always felt good about making our own coffee at the office. Our Krups Coffeemaker gets the job done and saves us from paying $2+ each for a grande. We originally bought our coffee beans from Starbucks, picking from the various Ethiopian/Colombian/Mexican bean varieties and having them freshly ground. A 1-lbs. bag would cost us $10 to $12 and lasted up to 10 days. For about $35 a month, coffee was plentiful.
A Brewed Awakening
A couple of weeks ago, I stayed at home in the morning to wait for the cable guy. I desperately needed a coffee fix but couldn’t risk walking ten minutes to the nearest Dunkin’ Donuts. I instead went to the Korean grocer right across the street to see if I could find anything. On one of the shelves, I found rows of ground coffee in colorful tin cans. I had never bought coffee in cans because I was always under the impression that pre-ground beans were not “fresh” and somewhat inferior. But since I was feeling the onset of a caffeine-withdrawal headache, I quickly grabbed a can of Chock Full ‘oNuts and headed back. I paid less than $4 for a 13-ounce can.
To my surprise, the Chock Full ‘oNuts tasted bold and flavorful - nothing suggested that it was of lesser quality. Had we been overpaying for Starbucks beans? I checked with the rest of the team, and we agreed to give the canned coffee a shot. Even if we were to buy four cans a month (3.25 lbs), we would still be saving more than 50% compared to 3 lbs. of Starbucks beans. Perhaps to more distinguished palates, a move of this kind might have been intolerable, but to our novice coffee noses, we just needed something that was decent to drink and strong enough to keep us awake.
The New York Times, in its 2006 annual advice to college graduates, warned against buying coffee at Starbucks. The article even links to this calculator to help you put things into hard numbers. Office brew isn’t free for us, but it does beat $2+ per cup. And to go from 30 cents a cup (Starbucks beans) to 10 cents a cup (Chock Full o’Nuts) makes us feel even more fiscally responsible.