Name: Tea.
Age: Thousands of years old.
Cost: £2.20.
How much?! £2.20.
For a teabag and some hot water? That’s an outrage. Well, it’s what the Toast Cafe and Deli in Wrexham charges. But you’re not the only who feels strongly that it’s too much: one pensioner sent the cafe an angry letter berating them for the price of their tea.
What did it say? Since you asked, it said: “MYSELF AND MY HUSBAND CALLED IN FOR A CUP OF TEA. THE PRICE WAS A SHOCK. £4.40 PENCE FOR TWO CUP’S OF TEA. ITS KNOW WONDER O.A.P.S CANNOT GO OUT.”
Furious. It might be worth pointing out that the customer mailed the letter to the cafe, which cost another 85p.
How did the cafe react? By posting the letter on its Facebook page, explaining that the cost also factors in overheads such as: “Advertising and marketing, accounting fees, cleaning products, repairs and maintenance, electricity, wages, kitchen and front of house equipment, licensing, payment processing fees, point of sale software, bank fees, telephone and internet, water, waste removal, rent, loans, delivery fees, subscriptions/memberships and so on.”
But £2.20 is a lot of money. It is. However the cafe looked at similar independent establishments in the local area and found others were charging between £2.29 and £2.50 for their tea. The average price was £2.42.
What? £2.42! Exactly. And that’s still more than a pound cheaper than the average cost of a cup of coffee (£3.51 for a latte).
So tea still represents good value? Depends how much you drink! One cup of tea a day at £2.42 a pop is £16.94 a week. Or £67.76 a month.
What are we to do? Well, you could always make your own tea at home. Without any cafe overheads to pay for, it only costs about 3p.
Better. Much. In fact, you could make 28 cups of tea and it would still cost less than the postage you’d spend on mailing an angry anonymous letter to a cafe. It’s a real bargain when you think about it like that.
But what would happen to the cafes if I only made my own drinks? Oh that’s easy – they’d close. The businesses around them would suffer as a consequence and you’d end up contributing to the demise of the British high street.
So I either hurt myself by buying a cup of tea, or destroy businesses by making my own? That’s right. Ain’t capitalism grand?
Do say: “One cup of tea, please.”
Don’t say: “And a second mortgage too, if you have one.”
