Decaf Coffee

[monkeyboy]

Buy a cup...same price as regular
Buy a can....a lot more than regular

 

[LuvOrlando]

your observations are so funny and you are totally right.

 

[monkeyboy]

your observations are so funny and you are totally right.

Call em like I see em

 

[scrapquitler]

Buy a cup...same price as regular
Buy a can....a lot more than regular

You know, I've never thought about it that way, but you are totally right!

I'd guess it has to do with the fact that when you buy coffee at Starbucks/Dunkin Donuts or somewhere else, there is SO much markup on it that it doesn't matter...a pound of coffee makes like 100 cups of coffee and you can buy it for anywhere from $3 and up, but they sell ONE cup for like $2...they are making so much on the single cups that decaf could cost $20 lb and they'd still be making a ton of money on it!

 

[tvguy]

Walmart's regular and decaf cost the same.

 

[bicker]

Alton Brown answered this question in his hallmark episode True Brew.

Regarding coffee beans or ground coffee: The various decaffeination processes all degrade the quality of the coffee to some extent. There are two ways the folks who sell coffee can address this fact: They can just live with it, resulting is a significant quality difference between regular and decaf (the decaf being inferior), or they can use superior beans for the decaf (Alton called these "gold" beans), so that after the impact of the degradation, the decaf is just as good as the regular. The companies that choose the former approach generally will charge the same for regular and decaf beans or grounds; the companies that choose the latter approach generally will charge more for decaf.

Note that this does not translate over to coffee by-the-cup. (Alton didn't actually address this...) it shouldn't surprise anyone that the cost of the beans/grounds is a relatively small percentage of the cost of coffee by-the-cup. Most of the cost is labor, facilities, utilities, and of course the cost of customer acquisition. Therefore, there isn't much driving different prices for regular and decaf.

 

[LOVETHATMOUSE]

That's so true. I'm a decaf drinker and get so ticked off that you can't buy all the great flavors in decaf either. We have a Keurig and all I can find are hazelnut (yuk) and french vanilla (borrring). I want the pumpkin spices, peppermints, chocolates...all the flavors that regular cups come in. I have to buy the flavored creamers to have variety in my coffee life LOL!

 

[bicker]

(Just another note - courtesy of my father's wife's sister - generally, they use lesser beans for flavored coffee, since the flavoring tends to overwhelm the subtle nuances that differentiate a great coffee bean from one that is merely good.)