“Your coffee is how much?”, “wow, that’s expensive!”, “Price gone up?” Are remarks we hear, and while not often, it’s often enough that we should address it.
The Reality of Running a Coffee Shop
When the price of your coffee rises by 10p, 20p etc it is (I can assure you), not funding a house in the country, a new Ferrari or a Caribbean holiday…it is (and only just) keeping the lights on and the staff employed. Whilst the crazy inflation of the last few years is over when prices jumped up to 20% every year, inflation is still going up especially in the food and drink sector, this means our coffee beans, milk, staff wages, insurance, energy, packaging, National Insurance etc have ALL increased. If we wanted to make money a flat white would have to cost £4.50 to £5…can you imagine the outrage of a local cafe charging £5 for a flat white? …we can. People would simply stop coming.
So Why Do Other Cafes Manage to Keep Lower Prices?
The reasons here are many and complex but I’ll do my best to suggest why.
Owner Operator vs Employed Team - Smaller shops tend to be run by owners who work day to day in the store making the coffee, chatting to the customers, clearing the tables etc etc. They might have one or two staff to assist or to give them a day off…but often it’s them. This massively keeps wages down…often the owner operator makes little or nothing…but they don’t have a big wage bill (wages are a huge part of a store’s costs).
At Carbon Kopi you might see me behind the till on occasion, or fixing a machine etc, but rarely do I do a full shift in one store. I have to be available to look after all the locations, we rely on managers to do the day to day leaving me to do payroll, accounts, maintenance, and filling in the gaps. Simply when you have more than one location…this is the reality.
Coffee Might Not Be Their Main Business - Maybe they are a brunch place, or a bakery that sells coffee. In which case brunch and bakery allow them to subsidise the cost of a cup of coffee.
At Carbon Kopi we have ALWAYS been and will ALWAYS be Coffee first, cakes, pastries, sandwiches etc all compliment our offering, but it’s the quality of our coffee that hopefully gets you through the door. Good quality coffee costs more, from the beans we use to the professionally trained baristas, to the quality of our milk. It ALL goes into the price of a cup.
Fear of Charging What Coffee Is Worth - Some businesses are actually scared to charge what a cup of coffee is worth, they look at the businesses around them and feel they should compete there. You can’t compete with a bakery or a brunch spot if your main offering is coffee…YOU MUST charge what a cup of coffee actually costs…otherwise you aren’t in this coffee world for long.
We Get It
As a customer this is hard to swallow, you see prices increase in every aspect of your life and when your daily coffee goes up it’s natural to assume it’s unfair, we promise you it’s what we have to do to survive and keep making the same high quality product we always do. We have been running stores for about 7 years and we have made the mistakes (and we will make more), but what we can’t do is sell our product for less than it costs to make…or we won’t be here in the future.
The VAT Problem
I’ve complained about VAT in previous posts, that situation hasn’t changed. 20% VAT is killing hospitality, our European neighbours charge 10% on hospitality businesses, they value the jobs they bring, the joy they bring, we DO NOT have a government who believes this, we have a government who wants to create more jobs, but wants to tax to the max the businesses who want to provide them whilst allowing companies like Starbucks to use clever tax schemes so they avoid their corporation tax responsibilities. This needs to change…either the government needs to change or the policies need to…at this point I don’t care which.
What We Promise
All we ask is you enjoy your coffee and your time with us (this we have control over, this we try everyday to be better at…we aren’t perfect but we want to be). If something’s not right, tell us, we will fix it, never be afraid, it’s your hard earned money paying for something and our responsibility to get it right…we will always put you first…we just can’t be the cheapest coffee in doing that.
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