I’ve started to save a lot of money by making coffee at home and never realized the huge range of price in homemade coffee. From $18 per pound for fair trade coffee beans from Ethiopia to $2.50 per pound for generic label coffee from the grocery store. How much you spend – or save – on coffee says a lot about you.
How much do you spend on coffee beans?
I already calculated that making coffee at home from beans that cost $15 per pound costs about $.28 per cup. SOOOOOO much cheaper than buying a $2 cup at Starbucks! Many of you echoed my findings, but did you realize that even $.28 per cup of coffee is relatively expensive compared to the low-end brands out there?
How little can a homemade cup of coffee cost?
(pp= per pound)
$18 pp – Peet’s Coffee Fair Trade Organic Ethiopia Sidamo
$16 pp – Medium roast at my local independent coffee shop
$14 pp – Starbucks Pike Place Roast, the beans they use for the barista-made cups of coffee in store
$11 pp – Stop & Shop grind-it-yourself beans (11+ varieties, you chose the grind and quantity)
$5.42 pp Folgers Classic Roast Medium Coffee (Ground)
$5.22 Maxwell House Original Medium Roast Coffee (Ground)
$4.65 pp Stop & Shop Breakfast Blend Coffee Light Roast (Ground)
$4.24 pp Chock Full O’Nuts Original Medium Roast Coffee (Ground)
$2.55 pp Guaranteed Value Coffee Medium Roast (Ground)
If you make coffee at home with the cheapest brand available, in this case Stop & Shop’s Guaranteed Value brand (I think of it as a low-end generic brand as Stop & Shop also has an eponymous generic label that is quite good) that cup of coffee would cost you $.05 per cup ($2.55 / 50 cups of coffee).
Yes, folks. That’s a nickel per cup of coffee.
A little background on how I calculate the cost of making coffee at home:
1 pound of coffee beans = 100 tablespoons of ground coffee
I use two tablespoons for each large cup of coffee. So that $2.55 pound bag of coffee beans makes me 50 CUPS OF COFFEE at a cost of $.05 per cup ($2.55 / 50 cups = $.05 cents).
A $.05 cup of coffee is 1/40th the cost of buying a cup at Starbucks. Another way to look at it: You can make 40 cups of coffee at home or buy one cup at Starbucks. Of course, Starbucks coffee tastes a lot…different than the Guaranteed Value beans.
To be fair, making a cup of coffee at home with Starbucks beans costs $.28 per cup ($14 pp / 50 cups = $.28 per cup), compared to $2 in the shop. So the homemade coffee with Starbucks beans costs 1/7th what it does if you pay a barista to brew it. Another way to look at it: You can make seven cups of coffee at home or buy one cup at Starbucks.
Is this comparison valid?
After comparing prices per pound, I realized that there are other ways of comparing the cost of homemade coffee. For instance, you might compare cost per cup, because you may use more of one brand of coffee than another brand. Or you could compare how many cups of coffee the package says you will be able to make. On the Maxwell House and Folger’s brand of coffee, about 33 ounces of coffee would make more than 200 cups of coffee, according to the package. That’s less than two ounces of coffee per cup! Eghads! I can’t image how watery that coffee must taste.
Welcome to Bargain Babe! I’m Mara, and I’m so glad you’re here. I am an obsessive bargain hunter and penny pincher, and I am determined to live a full life without EVER paying full price.
I am one of the long term unemployed so coffee not made at home is completely out of my budget. Periodically Von’s Market offers Yuban’s 29oz (ground) coffee during their $5 dollar Fridays sale and I buy 4-6 when it happens. Also, we prefer the dark roast version which is usually more expensive than the regular roast except on those sale days. These sales allow me to be the coffee addict that I am.
@Marilyn Fielder I bet when you go back to work you’ll still to your at home coffee habit. You can certainly appreciate how much money it saves and it will make your paycheck all the more satisfying knowing that you are not wasting any of it.
As for buying 4-6 pounds of coffee at once – do you freeze it? How do you keep it fresh for so long?
I’m a coffee addict. I drink coffee 2-3 times per day. I think the budget of my coffee is $3 per week. And I think I agree with you that homemade coffees are less. That’s good of you.
@Marie How detailed of you to have a budget specifically for coffee! What other line items do you budget for – small ones that others might not have thought of?
My husband is the serious coffee drinker (buys Starbucks whole beans at good sale prices; grinds beans for one-cup-at-a-time.) I asked him what he thought about your post:
Makes no sense to compare supermarket generic to Starbucks. Quality and taste are way different. Also, even though it is a no brainer that “at home” made is cheaper than bought in coffee shops or restaurants, the cost at home also includes the costs of water, filters, energy to heat water, and clean-up.
@Diane I agree that taste is different, which I nodded to in the post. But it is a valuable comparison – it’s important to know how much you are spending on an item and how much more or less it could cost, other factors aside.
I didn’t go into the nitty gritty details of how much water, filters, energy, etc cost in making a single cup of coffee, but that’s because it is too variable. Just as I didn’t add up the cost of driving to a coffeeshop, parking, etc. There are just too many factors that make the cost X for one person, and Y for another. But the thing we can compare for all of us is the cost of the actual coffee.
If you want to look at it that specifically and add up the cost of water, filters (I use a french press so that is $0), electricity, I’d love to see what you come up with!
Buy green and roast your own
There is ford and Chevys and Rolls and Ferrari’s, if you do not care what it looks like or how it tastes as long as its black in a cup you are good to go, it’s coffee!, But, if you are a coffee connoisseur that also likes fine wine, excellent Brandy then you do not mind paying a little more for top of the line, it’s that way with just about any product. I personally like the better beans and coffee. I also have an online top end coffee market.