Americans Perplexed By A 15 Cent Cup Of Coffee – 1954

Go into the supermarket and examine just about any product. You will notice shrinking packaging and products. You are getting less and paying more.

Tropicana orange juice just shrunk again – from 64 ounces to 59 ounces to 52 ounces and now 46 ounces. Coffee is sold in a pound can, but contains about 11.3 ounces of product.

In 1954 the price of coffee was rising, and the answer was not shrink the cup, but raise the price. A 50% price hike to be exact, from ten cents to fifteen cents.

Even after World War II many places still sold a nickel cup of coffee.

The original news slug reads:

Storm In A Coffee Cup
New York – Americans are among the biggest coffee-drinkers in the world. The United States buys 92 per cent of all Latin-American coffee and 16 per cent of African coffee or 76 per cent of the total exportable world production. It is no wonder they are alarmed at the rise in coffee prices. An almost inevitable result of the upward swing of the cost will be the appearance of “the 15-cent cup-a-coffee” to replace the ten cent cup. There are still a lot of people who cannot understand why the “five cent cup” had to fade from the scene. Here coffee enthusiast Emanuel August illustrates what has happened to the “cup-a-coffee” and wonders “what’s next?” credit: United Press 1/15/1954

The truth is even 30 years earlier the five cent cup of coffee was losing money for restaurateurs and coffee shops. A 1924 article noted a National Restaurant Association representative remarking at its annual convention, “that with Brazil’s fixed costs, we are essentially paying people to drink it, by selling coffee at five cents a cup.” The cost was seven cents a cup.

Today, most people don’t think twice about paying 2.95 for a Starbucks “venti” (large) cup of coffee served in a glamorous cardboard cup.