Iced coffee scam

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[Sorry, but some drinks should just be served hot--not just coffee but tea as well. Coffee-flavored yogurt and ice cream are one thing, cold coffee is quite another.]

ICED-COFFEE $CAM DUPES JOE SCHMOES

Mon Jul 8, 2:21 AM ET

By GERSH KUNTZMAN

A FRIEND and I needed a mid-afternoon coffee break the other day. I got a large coffee. He got a large iced coffee. Mine came in a 20-ounce paper cup. His came in a 20-ounce plastic cup. My cup contained 20 ounces of hot coffee. His cup contained 12 ounces of cold coffee and lots of ice.

My coffee cost $1.48. His cost $2.25. Yes, he got less coffee and paid 77 cents more for it. But my friend's experience was hardly unique; all around the city, iced coffee has become a bigger scam than ImClone stock. An exclusive Metro Gnome investigation revealed that iced coffee should actually be cheaper than regular coffee!

In interviews, coffee-shop owners offered a litany of reasons for the iced-coffee tax, including the high cost of ice-making, the high cost of those fancy clear plastic cups and even the high cost of making the coffee stronger to compensate for the melting ice.

So let's break it down, one lame explanation at a time:

* Those Fancy Plastic Iced-Coffee Cups Cost More Than Paper Hot-Coffee Cups: While it is true that clear plastic cups are more expensive than standard cups, the cost differential is minimal, explained Dennis Mehiel, CEO of Sweetheart Cups, which supplies thousands of coffee shops in the city.

"A standard CD20 [clear plastic cup] and lid will cost a retailer $100 per thousand while a P520 [standard paper] will cost $83 per thousand," Mehiel said.

Per cup, that means an iced-coffee cup costs 10 cents, while a hot-coffee cup of the same size costs 8.3 cents. The difference is 1.7 cents.

* Ice Costs a Lot to Make: A standard Manitowoc Q133W, a dandy little baby that you'll find in delis all over town, makes 5 pounds, or 88 ounces, of ice per hour. To do so, it will burn .54 kilowatts of electricity and use 2.1 gallons of standard tap water, according to the manufacturer.

So do the math: Electricity in the city costs 16 cents per kilowatt-hour, so it costs roughly one-hundredth of a cent to make the 4 ounces of ice found in the typical cup of iced coffee. And with 748 gallons of water going for $1.35, the water costs all of .018 cents.

Total cost of making 4 ounces of ice: Less than one-fifth of a cent.

* Iced Coffee is Stronger: According to Mike Maisel, owner of City Food Bar in Manhattan, it takes 7 ounces of ground coffee to make a gallon of regular coffee, while it takes 8.4 ounces to make a gallon of iced-coffee coffee.

If a pound of coffee costs $5 wholesale, a 20-ounce cup of regular coffee costs its maker 68 cents, while iced-coffee coffee costs 82 cents.

But thanks to all that ice taking up precious space, a 20-ounce iced coffee contains 4 to 9 fewer ounces of coffee. That means that the coffee in a 20-ounce container of iced coffee - which coffee vendors say costs more because it's stronger - actually costs 2 to 23 cents less.

If you add up all the numbers above, a 20-ounce cup of iced coffee should cost up to 21 cents less than a 20-ounce cup of regular coffee, depending on how much cheap ice is occupying space that should be filled with rich, expensive coffee.

-- Anonymous, July 08, 2002

Answers

cuppa! cuppa!

LOL

-- Anonymous, July 09, 2002


uh, oh. Guess I'm in the cathouse. I *make* instant iced coffee for my mid-morning break when I'm working outside. Sometimes I get tired of tea. I like coffee hot, but not when the humidity is at 99% and the temps are 90+ . . .

-- Anonymous, July 09, 2002

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