Cool idea, but it seems to target a pretty narrow demographic:
- wealthy enough to live in NYC and buy at least
one cup of coffee every single work day
- cheap enough to want to save a few bucks a month on coffee
- can't be bothered to carry a credit card around every day
- can be bothered to carry a smart phone around every day
- trendy enough to frequent NYC coffee shops
- untrendy enough to be seen using "coupons" in public
- techy enough to consider installing a coffee buying app
- non-techy enough to not have built a crazy $10k
coffee roasting-grinding-brewing setup at home
Fortunately for them, starting in NYC, that still leaves around thirty million potential customers.
I own 3 espresso machines and have access to 5 no matter where I am (Splitting my time between Tel Aviv and the bay area) and I still drink coffee outside.
Ha, I was thinking of the same thing. Who knows, maybe he's built for this kind of thing. On that note : if he can get a good night's sleep after all that caffeine, then I envy this man's constitution, which can absorb so much caffeine and still not reel from it! Poor me has to strictly follow a no-caffeine after 6 p.m. rule if I have to get any sleep. Actually, come to think of it, the only time I can handle coffee gracefully is right after I wake up from sleep.
Can't put in words how much better I sleep after moving to decaffeinated coffee.
I do like a nice coffee but I'm content with instant[1] decaf (and even if I have 10 cups a day it's not more caffeine than the equivalent of a single cup of caffeinated coffee).
Not spending £3/$5 a day on coffee helps too. It means I'll pay my mortgage off 2 years early.
I find it's really hard to make a homemade espresso that comes close to the one you get from a café around here. But then again maybe I should invest 10k on a new machine (and then 20k to renovate my kitchen to fit it in).
> It's pretty difficult to find anything outside on par with the quality I can get at home (most of the time..)
It really depends on where you are. I find that espresso in the gourmet cafés in large American cities I tried is mostly on par or slightly worse than the average espresso in Rome. The grains and the roast can be pretty good, but it's often brewed slightly long for my taste.
Espresso here is so dense it's almost solid and that's the thing I can't reproduce at home.
I got mine second hand (insolvency auction) for $900 for a machine that would have cost $6,000 when it was new a couple of years ago, and later I spent $400 on a grinder that goes for $1200 new. Both in good working order, apart from having to replace the hopper on the grinder ($70 for a piece of plastic was annoying).
Totally worth it though. The grinder (and coffee beans - buy them no later than a week after roast) are the most important part really.
It's not quite like having a coupon or carrying a credit card, but more like insurance. You're insuring that the maximum you'll pay for coffee every month is $45. If you think of it that way, it's a pretty good deal, and doesn't come with a ton of friction (you're more than likely already carrying a smart phone). Now you certainly could pay less than $45/month on coffee with coupons, but this takes away the hassle from both the consumer and from the coffee shop.
I'm curious if the discount being offered to individual coffee shops is negotiated or if it's a flat rate. I would imagine that each shop charges different amounts for a cup of coffee, although maybe it falls around some uniform distribution. Certain locations probably skew one way or the other though; does a cup of coffee cost more or less in midtown or the financial district than SoHo?
Doesn't every coffee place in NYC use the same blue coffee cups?
I haven't been in awhile, but I remember the slice of pizza being pretty consistent from shop to shop and something about it being related to the cost of the subway. I could imagine coffee having a similar pricing scheme throughout the city.
I'd forgotten about the NYC blue coffee cups, but yes, I think that was the case in the past, or at least, it is according to wikipedia. Here's a link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthora
I'm assuming these guys are targeting the more shi-shi fru-fru latte scene and not your blue collar cuppa cha which I associate with the anthora cups.
>Fortunately for them, starting in NYC, that still leaves around thirty million potential customers
The population of New York City (5 boroughs) is 8.337 million people.
The population of Manhattan is 1.626 million people. During the day, commuters from the other boroughs and outside the city nearly double Manhattan’s population to 3.1 million people.
I can't imagine them doing this outside of Manhattan, but even if they do according to the Metropolitan Statistical Area, the entire population of the New York metro area is 19.9 million people.
The entire population of New York State is 19.651 million people.
>untrendy enough to be seen using "coupons" in public
>can't be bothered to carry a credit card around every day
Where do you get this from?
> wealthy enough to live in NYC and buy at least one cup of coffee every single work day
Brooklyn has more affordable housing and is becoming gentrified with a median per capita income of $43,567. It's easy to commute to Manhattan from some affordable neighborhoods.
Addressing your points 2-7: This clearly isn't a revolutionary, disruptive startup, it's a clever play to incrementally remove a little friction, but every little helps. It may not remove enough friction to be worthwhile, but I can't fault them for taking a shot.
Point 1: As you suggest, that's probably not such a small population to start out with, and it's not like NYC is the only coffeedrinking city on earth, or that coffee is the only drink enjoyed by city-dwellers.
Point 8: There's almost no point in paying insane NYC rents if you spend the majority of your time in your apartment.
The model is scalable outside of NYC, and "can't be bothered to carry a credit card around every day" critique can be applied to any service that tries to improve payments flow (Square, Starbucks' mobile app).
Do you think the market is limited at first is an initial wedge for them? What's to stop them from later creating other properties related to topics like fitness, or eating out for example?
I'm a huge espresso lover - made sure to have an espresso machine everywhere I spend more than a few hours (office x 2, apartment x 2) and I still find myself buying coffee when I'm outside.
I've used them while in Israel (and I know one of the founders), I only have good stuff to say about them.
There are 2 benefits from using it, obviously the first one is the huge cost saving but the second is the fact you can drink at several places and you get to discover some good places.
When you pay for your espresso sometimes you tend to stick with the place you know have good espresso, however with CUPS I get to visit new places from time to time (mostly when I see on the app that a nearby cafe is a member) and I get to experiment with new blends.
Also I found that some places have amazing savings for members - some places will give you drinks and other things at a discount and usually will welcome you as a regular (meaning you get a better service).
I hope they spread everywhere and make this an international membership meaning if I visit NYC I can use my app from Israel.
As someone who works out of coffee shops a lot, there is pretty much ZERO appeal for me to use this kind of service, since I view my coffee costs as "rent" and prefer to pay full price plus a tip to be viewed as a good customer.
Bringing in an app saying "I'm a cheapskate that doesn't want to pay full price" is not the message I want to give to coffee shop staff.
But working from their coffee shop is? I would think a "good customer" to them is someone you walks in, buys coffee, and then leaves. Sure it helps that you probably meet people there (expanding their reach) but a half dozen people setting up camp in your coffee shop all day can't be ideal.
Actually, no... It is the 'empty restaurant syndrome', you have probably done it yourself, in some strange town, not knowing where to eat, you go past a few places and choose one that other diners have also chosen, walking past the empty place as if it has the plague.
Hence a few customers that hang around for a while are good for drawing in other customers.
Dude was setting up shop ... if I walk by a coffee shop and see 12 mobile offices I don't think "this must be a good coffee shop" I think "they must have good wifi and not give a shit if you work there". It would appeal to my business-owner side, but not my consumer side.
> I would think a "good customer" to them is someone you walks in, buys coffee, and then leaves.
No, that would be a "great" customer in their eyes. I am merely trying to not be a jerk of a customer, while still spending some time working in their shop.
Yeah, I do this too, though I try not to stay for more than two or three hours, and make sure I always have something in my cup. Fear of getting overcaffeinated drives me to other places.
I do think a shared promotional community between the coffee shops around here (Seattle) would be good, but most are doing pretty well so no one feels any pressure.
The coffee included with the $45 plan (there are two tiers), is not $3 coffee. It's black coffee. In DC, a small drip coffee or pour over runs around $1.80 or so. It's $85 a month for the plan that includes lattes and other more expensive espresso drinks.
A small latte usually runs around $3 or so. An espresso might be $2.25-2.50. Two small lattes a day (not a lot of caffeine) would save you a ton of money a month with this plan.
If you drank even one cup of coffee a day, you'd save money with this, with either plan. A lot of people drink a cup in the morning and the afternoon, and that's where the savings really add up.
I'd personally be more interested in a hybrid plan that got me unlimited black coffee and a certain amount of espresso drinks a month. I know they have a more expensive plan with espresso drinks, but I don't want that daily. How about a $65 plan?
It's a great idea though. If you live and work in an area with coffee shops supported by this, you can basically have a monthly fee that covers all of your coffee needs. You can also no longer worry about having any coffee equipment in your apartment. Saving space is important to city dwellers.
If this came to DC, I'd strongly consider signing up for it. It's a great way to encourage people to go to non-chains, and to make paying at non-chains easier. Many of the big chains, including Starbucks, have long had ways to pay for drinks with an app. That's part of what this product does, and why small coffee shops would want to get on board.
By "pourover", they don't mean machine drip coffee. It's the coffee a barista individually brews per order on a pourover cone. I've never seen it cheaper than $3, including DC.
I know. I've gotten it for cheaper in DC, and at Starbucks they'll often make pourover for the same price as drip coffee if you order at an odd hour.
I would imagine not all of the coffee shops on this list do pourover, and not all users will want to wait for a pourover, if there is fresh drip coffee.
Well, I do now, they only recently changed the coffee machines to ones that produce drinkable coffee. Before that I'd spend money to get decent coffee, probably far more than this service is offering. Starbucks etc in this country charge much more for regular coffee, probably due to a much lower volume / amount sold.
I'm not sure this is possible in a retail setting. There are rules around incentivizing the purchase of alcohol. Which is why you don't see promotions like buy one get one free... with the exception of happy hour and bottomless brunch sort of deals. Which have a whole different set of rules and exceptions.
I'm sure there are several services out there that send you a monthly amount of beers, preferably different kinds and whatnot. If not, that needs to be a thing, :D.
This will only exacerbate an existing problem at coffee shops in NYC: The "Coffice" phenomenon where people use the coffee shop as their office.
Now these people will feel justified basically becoming a tenant of coffee shops and leeching 4-5 coffees a day, leaving this startup with the empty CUPS. :)
I never understood the coffee shop thing. I hate working at coffee shops, people nosing around at what you're doing, never enough desk space, that feeling of guilt once you stay there too long, etc.
For me: I work solo from home, so sometimes I go to the coffee shop for a change of atmosphere & to be around people for a while. I find the white noise of the cafe helps me focus, as does having people around me. It's nice having someone serve you instead of having to make your own coffee/food, and sometimes the food is nicer than what I'd make myself at home. But I try not to stay too long & only go at times when the cafe is half empty.
The subscription only gets your their ice coffee which is amazing and incredibly strong. Everything in both of their stores is for sale (maybe even including the furniture) but yes, only one location has a cafe.
Yep. The article said there is a similar program in Israel.
“They say they’re drinking more coffee than before, about 20 percent more,” says Rotem (who, by the way, drinks four to six cups on a bad day). “Our users save around 30 percent on coffee.”
When I used to live in Norway you could buy a coffee cup (an actual cup) from Statoil (petrol station) and you could drink free coffee with that cup forever (in Statoil stations of course). That was 7 years ago though, so it could have changed by now.
I'm pretty sure that's still a thing (in Denmark at least). It's a different economic proposition, it's more of a "loyalty program" to make Statoil the default choice for gas than an effective way to pay for coffee. Also, the quality of the coffee wouldn't be competitive in NYC, to put it politely.
I've never though about it, but what Americans call "regular coffee" in my country is called "American coffee". When I ask for a "coffee" I probably get a latte or in Spanish "café con leche".
Not quite. The "Americano" (espresso with hot water) common in countries with the espresso coffee culture was invented during WW2 when the GIs requested bigger cups of weaker coffee.
The american "regular coffee" is (weak) drip brewed coffee.
1. That origin is just urban legend. Americanos started in the 70's.
2. Per ounce, you're technically correct about the strength of espresso vs. drip/brewed coffee. But brews have variable strengths, and most Americans drink 12, 18, and 24 ounce drip coffees (which ends up being more caffeine than even a quad shot of espresso).
Regarding #1, the urban legend legend is itself an urban legend. The only sources for "Americanos" originating in the 1970s is a dictionary entry and Wikipedia, neither of which are further sourced or authoritative.
2: I mean "strength" in a broader sense than caffeine content. I get more jittery from drip coffee (or french press, my personal poison of choice) than I do from espresso - I seem to recall having read that a shot of espresso contains less caffeine than a cup of regular coffee because of the quick extraction. But espresso has a much more intense (stronger) flavour.
That 30 minute limit would be the dealbreaker for me. I often drink one cup just to get caffeine in, then immediately start another for either flavor or more caffeine or to have something to do.
Are margins on coffee good enough to support this long term? High end coffee is quite expensive as is square footage in small trendy coffee shops.
I suppose the odd abuser who parks their butt for 3-4 hrs a day in the coffee shop can be dealt with in other ways e.g. they must order food to keep a seat. If they are forced to walk to the coffee shop each time they will likely max out at a few coffees a day.
I would imagine they are going to try to aim this at the business crowd. My coworkers and I often go and get coffee together. We almost never actually sit down. We talk on the walk to and from the coffee shop. We might take the coffee to a nearby park.
I agree that this won't make business sense with people who use coffee shops as an office.
I used this service while I was in Israel, and it's really amazing. CUPS pays the coffeeshops for each cup you consume, so the shops treat you like a real customer, not like a "groupon" customer. Honestly the biggest benefit is the spontaneity of it all "should I get coffee? eh fuck it why not."
$45 is not for the usual Starbucks Double Grande White Chocolate Mocha with soy milk and two shots of vanilla flavoring, that would be $85. With at around a 8% discount (rewards) and a price of $4 per drink it comes out to around 23 drinks. Or 1+ per weekday for the same amount.
This is great. I wish I could get this in the suburbs, with Tim Hortons on delivery.
Recently I purchased a Keurig k-cup brewer. The machine wouldn't always pump out water, so thinking I was screwed I ordered another Keurig brewer, this time the Vue. $150 for the first Keurig, $100for the second. In the meantime I purchased bullet proof coffee to give it a shot, thats an extra $45. So, in a matter of 1 week I spent about $300 on just getting my home coffee situation together. And I still go to Tim Hortons on my way home from purchasing coffee at the grocery store, or if I am out.
FWIW, I called Keurig thinking they wouldn't do anything and they sent me a brand new k-cup brewing machine that is in a box right next to me. But I do love my K-Vue machine, its the best single cup @home experience I have been able to find and I probably drink about $45 worth of coffee out of it each day.
The last paragraph of the article says, "For whatever it’s worth, fiendish subscribers must adhere to at least one limitation: They must wait 30 minutes before ordering another coffee."
Yes, there is that limit –– and a good one. You could get around it maybe if you were with some friends doing a klatsch with staggered drinking rates and drink start times, but then you'd just look really cheap.
you could just ask for an empty cup and split the drink with a friend. then a little bit later, get another one. During a long talk with a friend, you could continue to do that and go through several cups. I don't think a random barista who makes 10 bucks an hour will care, especially if you leave a tip. The owner probably won't care because he makes more money every time you get a cup of coffee.
That's a really good point though. I wonder how many people will get a coffee for a friend waiting outside on their subscription or even split a subscription.
Water from the tap is not free, it is a cost everyone pays in some way or another (built into rent or part of property taxes). Even if you still live with your parents, a dollar they spend on the water bill is a dollar less for you.
Tap water for drinking is effectively almost free, and free water fountains are indeed ubiquitous. It's the two 30-minute showers a day that kill your parents water (and heating) bills.
> Tap water for drinking is effectively almost free
The average 2013 annual water rates bill in England is £390, or $650.
> and free water fountains are indeed ubiquitous
I've just been on a day-trip to England, through two major regional airports. I paid about £12 in total for bottled water during the day, suffering inflated airport shop prices, because there was not a single water fountain ( I asked ). Average price of a 750 ml bottle was around £2.20 and I had to gulp-and-chuck frequently due to passing through security three times.
> The average 2013 annual water rates bill in England is £390, or $650.
Most of which is non-drinking uses of water, such as bathing, washing, dishwashing, cleaning, flushing, garden irrigation, filling the pool etc.
I just paid £170 (IIRC, I don't have the bill handy, but around that amount) for 65 m^3 of water. That's £.0026 per liter. The general recommendation is for an adult to drink 2 liters of water a day and let's say an average english family has four adults that get all their daily liquid intake from the home tap (safely overestimating, I think you'll agree), that's £7.60 a year. I'm sticking with "almost free".
> ... also coffee is almost entirely water... so by your logic it's "almost free" as well.
No, not by my logic, not by anyone's logic. Almost the entire price of a cup of coffee covers the "bean" and "labour" part of it. The contribution of the cost of the water to the final cost of a cup of coffee is ... almost nothing at all.
you pay yourself to put a pot of coffee on at home? I thought you were talking about tap water? A 10-cup pot of coffee at home is like $0.10 of ground beans. I meant that is pretty close to how "free" my tap water is.
Coffee is not VERY good for you. That's a story you tell yourself so you don't have to stop drinking it...because you can't stop...you need it...you're life would be nothing without it. GRRRR...I'm so itchy without my morning...uhhh...water.
Yes water costs. Jesus, point out the small things.
Coffee is not good for me because you think I'm just telling myself that it is? Do you have an actual reason (supported by evidence) for your claim it's not good for us? Because all I see in your contribution is straw-man cynicism.
Anecdotally I've found I'm more alert [in the mornings particularly] without caffeine but cutting it out hasn't helped me normalise my sleeping patterns.
If you want to normalise sleep patterns, I strongly recommend text "Good sleep, good learning, good life" (http://www.supermemo.com/articles/sleep.htm) It is quite long but IMO very well worth it.
Seriously, my point was, whilst everyone ran around hyperventilating at the thought of saving money on coffee (oh my god oh my god oh my god cheaper coffee) they (possibly - I didn't perform any research) overlooked the quite probable (I'm actually not a mathematician) fact that they're already drinking too much, and such a scheme will cause them to drink even more (up 20% you say?).
I love sarcasm. I hope I didn't offend anyone. I'm in a weird mood today.
Those health benefits are more for people in their 80s. The coffee bean is actually a poison that the coffee plant uses to deter herbivores. Not to mention a recent Danish study that suggests pregnant women should abstain from caffeine as it's lethal to the fetus.
Your first claim is illogical. THC is an insecticide, yet not a single human has ever died from consuming cannabis. NOTHING is "Good" or "Bad" without proper context.
"Suggest" is not a very convincing word to me. Sounds more like a hypothesis than a conclusion. I highly doubt any ethics board would approve a double-blind clinical trial exploring how much coffee consumption is required to kill a human fetus in utero. Who are these monstrous Danish scientists!?
You're absolutely right -- everything turns to poison in excess.
Fun fact about THC though: "[...] babies of women who used cannabis at least once per week before and throughout pregnancy were 216 g lighter than those of non-users, had significantly shorter birth lengths and smaller head circumferences."
That's still more hypothesis, not conclusion. "Self-completed questionnaire on use of cannabis before and during pregnancy." = Observational study = result can ONLY be a hypothesis.
It's right there in the conclusion "may be associated" = "they do not know if this is true at all".
Next step would be to run a double-blind clinical trial, and have an unknown-half of the subjects smoke pot and compare that to the control to test if their hypothesis is true or not. Until then, it's only conjecture.
>Those health benefits are more for people in their 80s.
What are you basing that claim on? None of the studies mentioned specifically in the wikipedia section specifically mention people in their 80's, and many of the studies look at total mortality.
>The coffee bean is actually a poison that the coffee plant uses to deter herbivores.
I prefer to base my decisions on epidemiological studies, than arbitrarily applying the label "poison" to things
Time saved in procuring said grounds, making the coffee, cleaning the press, increase in variety and availability (many locations) and likely increase in quality depending on your skills/preference.
No need to carry a french press and coffee grounds (and hot water source) when you wander outside. Yes, coffee is cheaper if you make it at home, but people still go to coffee shops.
People don't want to take the time/resources to invest in making it themselves. Simple as that. Some people are fine (stupid?) with paying for the convenience.
Wait, before you all drink up, check out the CAFFEINATED documentary (the actual documentary starts at 4:19). Ever wonder why Barack Obama doesn't drink coffee?
Same here. I love coffee but as with other drugs I get this vague notion that it's not always good for me. There's plenty of research over at http://pubmed.com and http://liebertpub.com if you're interested.
It'll be fun watching this play out.