Consumer math: pricing games, part0: coffee

Self-tutoring about shelf prices of coffee: the tutor mentions some ideas.

The following is by my understanding.

I drink a lot of coffee – black, in case anyone’s wondering. You can be pretty sure that, any post of mine you read, I was drinking coffee as I wrote it. So, if you’re also drinking coffee right now, you might say we’re having coffee together. Cheers:)

I nearly always buy bean coffee rather than ground. Typically it’s fair trade and organic. Over the decades I’ve watched the choices on the shelves evolve.

I like good coffee, but I’m not rich. I can’t justify spending whatever an asking price might be for a bag of coffee. Therefore, when looking at coffee, I’m paying attention to the price per unit.

I mention, back in my post from May 3, 2022, that I remember from the 70s the “smaller package” trick: a product looks like it’s got a surprisingly low price, until one realizes it’s actually a smaller package than was there last time. This can be done quite deftly, so the consumer might not even notice until they get home.

Perhaps five years ago I started noticing the “smaller package” trick with coffee. There were a few extra complications which made the situation interesting albeit annoying. Here’s what happened, as I get it:

One of the brand leaders in quality bean coffee was local here in BC. When I was buying coffee, starting from around 2002, I would always look at that brand on the shelf as an option. I didn’t always buy it, but often did. Back then, its bags were always a pound (454g). Its coffee was often the best. To my knowledge this was the reality on the shelf for around two decades.

Unbeknownst to me until a few weeks back, said company was purchased, at least mostly, about ten years ago by a foreign company. Perhaps not at first, but within a few years, they started putting smaller bags of beans on the shelves where their one-pound bags had been.

A pound is 16oz and also 454g. I started seeing bags of coffee 340g (about 12 ounces) and even 284g (about ten ounces). To my knowledge, said company, acquired by the foreign one, was a leader in this new sizing. Yet, they were also a leader on the coffee bean shelves. Therefore, their experimental pricing skewed the wider consumer market for coffee beans, at least around here.

At the same time, some stores always have coffee at more reasonable prices, while some usually charge more for the same coffee.

With the inflation due to COVID, etc, the “good” market price for quality coffee beans seems settled at around 1kg (908g) for around twenty four dollars, or around 12 dollars a pound. At that rate, 340g, which is about 3/4 of a pound, should be about nine dollars. So, 340g of quality beans for ten dollars, at a store where they always charge more for it anyway, might be a deal one can live with now and again, especially if one particularly loves that coffee.

Jack of Oracle Tutoring by Jack and Diane, Campbell River, BC.