It takes ONE tablespoon of ground coffee to make 6 - 8 ounces of brewed coffee.
Two if you like it stronger.
There are around 90 tablespoons of coffee in a one pound bag of grounds.
The average cost of one pound of ground coffee is, lets say, $15.00.
That makes one cup of coffee about .16 cents. One cup of strong coffee .32 cents.
Poured into a cup which costs around .20 cents. Now equals .52 cents.
Served by someone who makes $15.00 an hour, and it only takes them 3 minutes to prepare for you........come out to .75 cents. Now equals $1.27.
If you take cream and/or sugar/sweetener, add .03 cents.
Now you have a total of $1.30 for a cup of coffee.
BUT...........
If you are in the coffee business, you get better deals and pay almost HALF the price for a pound of coffee as you would buying it retail. This goes for cups and add-ons as well.......now making that cup of coffee about .65 cents a cup (with cream and sugar).
Even just charging $1.00 for a cup of coffee, the company would be making profit hand over fist. Charging $5.00 for a cup of coffee.......well now, isn't that abuse of position and power? Isn't that is what Communism is all about? Any honest business would never charge more than double the production price of any item, because thats the standard business ethic of how to charge for a product or service.
But you've got Apple charging THOUSANDS of dollars for phones that only cost $20.00 to produce. You've got Starbucks charging $5 plus dollars for .05 - .25 cents worth of coffee. You've got drug companies charging $500.00 and up, for drugs that only cost pennies to produce. You've got the auto industry charging THOUSANDS of dollars for a vehicle that only costs around $5,000 or less to produce. You've got sport shoes like Nikes, that cost less than $2 per shoe to produce, yet they charge $100 - $5,000 for them! If not more.
America is full of suckers. Some of us don't fall for this stuff as much as others though. It's also difficult to find an honest company anymore. Those of us who actually use our brains, try to keep with the lesser of the evils when buying products. It takes a bit of work, but you CAN buy products you use regularly that aren't made in China, and not produced by heinously greed-mongering companies. But like I said, it takes a bit of work. Work is something that most people in this country are severely allergic to.