Ya-Marie Sasay | Contributing Writer
Starbucks restaurant is the number one go to coffee shop for college students to stay awake for that 8am class, pulling an all-nighter or just to keep warm especially during the winter season. It’s reasonable prices also increase its attraction for a college student budget.
As of November 10th a spokeswoman for Starbucks announced that the company will be increasing its prices on certain cold drinks and baked goods between 10 to 30 cents more.
This will be the second time the company is increasing its prices this year. In July, they increased their prices in 10 to 20 cents more for certain sizes in brewed coffee and 10 to 30 cents more for espresso and tea lattes. The company has yet to state why they are increasing their prices once again but in July the increase was for “business needs” such as rising expenses, such as increase compensation rent, distribution, marketing, labor and commodities.
Meanwhile, raw coffee is becoming more expensive. Arabica coffee futures have risen 11.5% since July and traded at $1.478 a pound on the ICE Futures U.S. exchange.
Many customers have taken their anger out to twitter in expressing their opinions of the company’s decision.
“IS @Starbucks SERIOUS WITH THIS PRICE HIKE?! My Trenta Iced Coffee, with NOTHING, in it, now costs over $4…” said one customer.
2016’s large price increase is the latest in a long line of confident moves by the coffee company. Wall Street predicts that the 2017 financial year for the company will be much better. In its defense, Starbucks is forecasting that the average customer receipt will only go up by about 0.5% as a result of the change.
“We continually evaluate pricing on a product-by-product and market-by-market basis in our stores in order to balance our business needs while continuing to provide value to our loyal customers and to attract new customers,” a representative for Starbucks told Consumerist.
College students at Hampton University were not satisfied with the increase in prices. Telisha Everett, a junior CIS major at Hampton University from Waldorf, Maryland stated “I feel as though for customers that drink coffee you’re paying for quality, and if the price of coffee has increased you feel cheated out your money if you received less coffee for a higher price. It’s also getting colder outside, therefore they will not make a profit if they increase the price on cold drinks because people do not drink cold drinks in the winter.”
Customers are not satisfied with Starbucks decision to increase prices for the second time this year, but is it significant enough to stop students from purchasing their daily drinks?
The Hampton Script 