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Nov 20, 2003 - The Price of Coffee
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our winner
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 Congratulations to jbaker(93121) who did the best job ranking Santa Barbara’s coffee houses by the price they charge for cappuccino. jbaker wins a $10 Peet’s coffee card that can be used to purchase 3.703704 single cappuccinos.
If you were at any of 27 coffee shops in town yesterday, you might have seen the dedicated staff of edhat.com scrambling in, smelling-the-coffee, glancing at the price list, and whisping quickly out the door. The only sign that we were ever there was the edhat.com business card left carefully tacked to the community bulletin board. On our journey we did not always find a bulletin board, but never failed to find the price of a small cappuccino. The lowest was $1.75 found at the 3 Espresso Roma (one of them is actually called Cafe Siena) shops. The second lowest was Loading Dock @ $2.00. The third lowest was Muddy Waters @ $2.15. You can see a complete ranking below.
In order to help edhat.com subscribers navigate the crowded and confusing world of espressos, cappuccinos, macchiatos,
and lattes, the innovative staff at edhat.com constructed this cool map for your reference. You can mouse over the dots on the map to see the shop and what they charge for small, medium, and large cappuccinos. If the shops are too close together for the scale of the map, you can click on the grouping for a more detailed map.
>> Espresso Romas
>> Show All
>> All But Starbucks
Now, with 27 coffee shops in the Goleta/Santa Barbara/Montecito area, competitive market theory should insure that the price of a small cap would be consistent among stores. The basic ingredients of a cap (coffee, milk, and a paper cup) are pretty much commodities, and there does not seem to be too much difference in labor cost for the hard working people who steam the milk and work the espresso machine ( let’s just say that they’re definitely not living next door to Oprah!). But competitive market or not, there seems to be a huge variation in markups, as the prices ranged from $1.75 all the way up to $2.70 (Peets, Bean & Tea Leaf, and Santa Barbara Roasting). That 95 cent premium represents a 54% difference!
In the spirit of Santa Barbara County unification, prices at The Loading Dock in Orcutt were checked. For the South-County-centric, Orcutt is an unincorporated town just south of Santa Maria (home to quite a few edhat.com subscribers we might add!). BTW, The Loading Dock is a very cool place to hang out for a cup of coffee. It is a large funky converted, duh, loading dock, with indoor and outdoor seating and rustic views of grazing cows. Tell them “Ed sent you” and they will look at you like you have two heads.
We hope you are pleased with our careful collection of data and methodical analysis of the information. At the end of our journey we told the coffee barista at Espresso Roma that she, in fact, served the cheapest cup in town. Without any hesitation and without a single bit of enthusiasm, she replied “Oh”.
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