Here are two methods to make coffee along with some ideas about why "the economy" is so messed up and why, probably, it won't get fixed any time soon.
When I dropped off my daughter at preschool this morning, I briefly flirted with the idea of running through the Burger King drive-through for a large coffee. BK coffee three years ago was 1.25 for a large. It has crept up to 1.85, a sum, which frankly, is hard for me to part with. I stopped buying coffee at Starbucks long ago when my "Large House Coffee, no cream, no sugar" tipped the money scale at over two dollars. So today I opted to drive home and make my own most excellent coffee. This is how I make it, in case there is any other cheapskate reading that is interested.
I start with 100% Colombian coffee. I tend to go for the store brand at 2.20 per pound. But for me, it has to be Colombian. I also prefer the shrink wrapped packaging. When I get home from the store, it goes right in the freezer section of my fridge. It could probably live in the pantry at this point, but I am a creature of habit, and after I open the package, that's where it goes. Back in the freezer, in as airtight a condition as it can be. Next, I use a rounded tablespoon for every two cups of coffee I want to make.
At this point, I am going to give two methods of preparation, one involving a coffee maker, and one that doesn't involve a coffee maker. If a coffee maker is available, I grab two filters, stick one in the basket, add the coffee, then put the second filter on top. I fill the maker with my predetermined amount of water, close the whole thing up, plug it in and turn it on. When it is done, it is helpful to have a thermal carafe to keep it hot rather than leave the coffeemaker in "hot" mode.
This morning, I had to use my "college" method, because the piece of crap cuisinart coffee maker, (bought at a high end department store, by the way), not yet one year old, stopped working last week. In the "college method" I stick the water in a pan or teakettle on the stove. As the water heats up, I round up a vegetable/noodle strainer, a second pan and some durable paper towel. I line the bottom of the strainer with the paper towel, then add the tablespoons of coffee. When the water is boiling, I pour the water over the coffee through the paper towel and strainer and into the pan. Total process takes about the same amount of time as it would to get coffee through the drive-through or at Starbucks, assuming there is at least one person with a fancy-shmancy coffee order ahead of you. Total cost: probably less than a quarter.
Which brings me to my daily rant. Why does regular coffee takeout have to be so ridiculously expensive in the first place? And why does Starbucks choose to close shops rather than just lower their basic price for a large cup of coffee to more reasonable price? I bet the cost for my regular large cup of house coffee costs Starbucks little more than it takes for me to buy and make it myself. Even with labor costs and rent, I can't see that cup costing any more than 50 cents. Yet, instead of lowering prices and making it up on volume, they choose to close the shops and lay off the workers.
To me, this is one of the problems with "the economy", at least in my part of America today. Take the housing market. "Conventional wisdom" used to be that housing costs should figure no larger than 25 percent of a person's monthly income. A person looking to buy a house would be advised that the proper ratio of house price to salary was 1.5. For a person making 100 thousand a year, their house should cost about 150 thousand. This standard has steadily eroded over the course of my adulthood to where very few people buy houses using that ratio, because houses are simply not available in that range. Even in my area of the "New South", where houses are "affordable", housing prices are way out of line for the average person. If only there were a "reset' button that could bring living costs back into proper alignment with what people are actually making.
Unfortunately, it looks like things are going to be more in line with the Starbucks model. Houses will sit empty as people become homeless, car manufacturers, refusing to, (among other things), lower prices of new cars, will lay off workers and close up shop, and over priced coffee makers made in China will fail. But for those of us lucky enough to keep a roof over our heads, there will still be the "college method" of coffee making.