Like come on, people are otraged about the most minor stuff, but somehoe can’t be bothered to boycot or change the situation with convenience pricig, where same stuff you buy at a store is 10-20x the price per unit.
“Youre taking advantage of my tiredness, making me pay more of my hard-earned money for the privilege of being too tired to prepare my own food/drinks myself, essentially making me work more hours for having worked too many hours and being tired as a resilt of it. So: making me more tired for being tired already”
ITT: people trash talking potential customers rather than being outraged at surge/convenience pricing that is going to start invading more and more things.
It doesn’t fucking matter if people don’t like Starbucks or they victim-blame because they didn’t make coffee at home. Pricing to charge customers more based on whatever temporary metric is going to reach into everyone’s wallet sooner than you think. Grocery stores are already contemplating this. It’s been a thing for everything from Uber rides to airline or concert tickets for a while now.
My favourite convenience pricing is at arenas and movie theaters. Conveniently you aren’t supposed to bring in outside food
I’d be mad about it applying to necessities like groceries.
I don’t have a problem with luxury coffee or junk food costing more at busy times of day. Once people know the pattern, it will shorten wait times for people willing to pay, and drive price-sensitive customers to alternatives. It’s the same phenomenon as the airport bar charging $20 for a beer, but applied to time instead of place.
making me pay more
No, you’re choosing to pay more. Make your own coffee at home. Or hell, don’t drink coffee. Nobody’s making you do that, either.
A slightly better example might be convenience stores in low-income areas where many people don’t have access to transportation to the more affordable grocery stores. The fact that you immediately jumped to Starbucks (something many people consider a treat of sorts) as something you’re forced to buy out of convenience shows how privileged you are to have this “problem”.
you’re choosing to pay more.
Not everyone has a short enough commute/work day starting late enough for that to be feasible
Or hell, don’t drink coffee. Nobody’s making you do that, either.
Sure. Make people forego the one socially acceptable drug, on which they depend on for mental energy and a tiny amount of joy amidst being ground down by a society designed to suck every last drop of energy out of them until they’re no longer profitable.
That’s MUCH more reasonable than questioning the holy right of the already obscenely rich to exploit people whenever they can. 🙄
The fact that you immediately jumped to Starbucks (something many people consider a treat of sorts) as something you’re forced to buy out of convenience shows how privileged you are to have this “problem”.
Not really, no. As explained above, not everyone has the opportunity to make the coffee themselves and with Starbucks forcing out competitors left and right, many people simply don’t have a less “indulgent” place near their work or commute.
If anyone’s privilege is showing, it’s that of the people victim blaming rather than allowing people to resent being taken advantage of.
not everyone has the opportunity to make the coffee themselves
Can you expand on this? Why can’t you make your own coffee and put it in a thermos?
Because if you don’t like it, you can just not pay. Being outraged over it makes no sense at all.
Seems you overlooked this part:
being too tired to prepare my own food/drinks myself
Last time I checked, people need to eat and drink stuff to live and sometimes even (the insolence!) enjoy life.
And before you go rattling off “just buy a shitload of rice and beans and cook for a week at a time” or whatever: some of us are not able to due to either physical or mental difficulties and dismissing that is ableist as fuck.
Convenience pricing?
I genuinely don’t understand what you mean. Are you saying that people should be outraged that coffee shops like Starbacks charge a lot more than if you brew your own coffee?
Why should anyone give a fuck? It’s not like anyone is forced to buy coffee. The alternative is to simply do it yourself so just do it.
If you appreciate the convenience of getting a coffee on the go prepared by someone then yeah, it is going to be more expensive. After all someone has to be paid to do that for you, and maintain the facilities, equipment, etc.
If people are too tired and don’t have enough time to prepare stuff at home, then that’s what they should be outraged about.
I just clock my 35 hours a week with 8+ weeks of paid vacation and have plenty of time left to prepare food at home and make snarky comments to Americans online about how they should book a one-way ticket already.
If people are too tired and don’t have enough time to prepare stuff at home, then that’s what they should be outraged about.
They are. That’s how these greedy fucks can get away with fleecing otherwise reasonable and often frugal people.
You can be outraged at two outrageous things at the same time. Especially if one is what enables the other.
Okay, but the profit margins of takeaway food and drinks really aren’t that high. Commercial real estate is expensive, the logistics are much less efficient than supermarkets, and it’s labour-intensive as well. There is no conspiracy to rip off ordinary folks, especially considering it’s pretty easy to enter the food retail market.
In fact, takeaway is actually quite affordable in the US compared to rich European countries. The Big Max Index, for example, is about 40% higher in Norway and Switzerland.
because you can just not
it’s shit coffee not air
Not that simple, think about it this way: if it was easy not to pay then nobody would pay, but people do and sales show it
People make the choice to buy overpriced coffee at places like Starbucks. The excuse “I’m too tired to make my own coffee” is just ridiculous.
OPs example of too tired is ridiculous. The only time I get a black coffee from Starbucks is if I’m in a bind for time, downtown without my thermos, or I’m traveling away from my ChemX.
It’s all about convenience not replacement of my much better coffee from home.
Where I live, there are loads of places you can get coffee from that are cheaper and don’t belong to anti-worker, anti-consumer US megacorporations. Your mileage may vary here, of course.
I don’t think it’s matters. If you think a local coffee shop isn’t paying the minimum wage you’re dreaming. Starbucks is the McDonald’s of coffee. All fast food jobs are designed for teenagers/part-time college students. Local coffee shop sure as hell can’t afford a benefits package. Starbucks at least offers to reimburse for your four year college degree.
64% of local coffee shops close in the first five years. I’m sure it’s not because they are paying their baristas soooo well.
https://perfectdailygrind.com/2026/09/opening-coffee-shop-2026/
There is no such coffee job in America that pays a living wage, offers medical/dental/vision, and retirement. The reason for that is it isn’t a career.
The only way to not feed into that machine is to make you’re coffee at home. I’m sure you’ve never ordered anything from Amazon, or used AWS either.
Good luck with that
This may come as a surprise to you but there are countries where even minimum wage workers have health insurance etc.
It isn’t a surprise. You are talking to an American about an American company. Your concerns for said American company happen to be standard practice in the country that it was created in.
This may come as a surprise to you, but context matters.
Because a large part of that price is actually due to the convenience. Sure, there is still a large markup but it also has to pay for the rent at that convenient location, the people preparing it for you, the equipment and maintenance, the energy bill for keeping the lights on and heating, insurance, etc. etc.
None of those things apply when you make it at home. Costs for a supermarket are also much lower per item, cheaper location, less personnel needed to sell you a bag of beans and a whole cart of other stuff vs. preparing a coffee.
Time is money.
It’s not like expensive convenience has a monopoly. If you don’t want to pay more, do it yourself.
This doesn’t work for stuff like tickets where there is a convenience fee for them to not print you a physical ticket. So you’re paying for their convenience.
Exactly. I’m mostly amazed at how widespread it is, because damn that’s a lot of people paying inflated prices I never would.
Even if every person prepared their own food and drinks 99% of the time we’d still have restaurants and coffee shops.
Mostly with convenience pricing I’m thinking about things like how a convenience store can be next to a supermarket and charge you a 20% markup on the exact same item, and people pay because they can’t be bothered going into the grocery.
A convenience store next to a supermarket isn’t very convenient unless the supermarket is huge. Most convenience stores tend to be closer to you and stay open more hours than supermarkets. I’m ok paying more for that. Convenience stores here are run by neighborhood people, supermarkets are run by rich businessmen. Starbucks is not that kind of shop though.
Convenience stores where I am are generally franchises, and some are literally in the mall 30 seconds walk away from the grocery. Same opening hours, same location, etc.
Not sure what’s the point to them then. If you’re at the mall you’re already inconvenienced
My point exactly! They exist only to serve people who can’t be arsed to go into the grocery to get something.
Well, how do I calculate if the time-money I save on preparing food > price money ai give up for said food?
Just see how much you get paid an hour and divide that by minutes.
Then see how much the same food costs at a grocery store plus how long it took you to prep cook and wash dishes vs how much it cost to buy it at a restaurant and how long you had to wait for it
For me it was about making things simpler. We bought a dual level countertop oven that I use for like 90% of our meals. I season and put proteins in the bottom tray and then prep some veggies and toss them in the top tray, then 20 mins later we have a meal. If you use foil you basically only wash your plates and forks.
if you buy multiple meals worth of groceries at a time its just as quick to get home and make a meal as it would be to drive by a place and pick up food. If you make a big meal like a huge pot of spaghetti then even faster each subsequent day.
Why would I be outraged at things I can easily avoid if I want to? If I wanted to complain about prices it’d be at spring events and concerts. I can typically buy a 6 pack for the cost of 1 beer.
Believe me, if every of your life was spoken about before it arrives you would complain, because you’d want simplicity and convemience, which would become a form of rest
What are you even trying to say?
I live rurally (no Starbucks), but recently had to catch a train from Edinburgh for the second leg of a family holiday. It was delayed by an hour and was raining, so we went into the nearby Starbucks. 2 small hot chocolates for the kids and 1 coffee for my wife and I was down £23. I was caught in the slipstream and stressed so didn’t have time to process how much this would cost. We could have got a bag of snacks and drinks for the journey for half that. Robbing bastards.
