The results of the current home page poll "Does recent economic news affect your coffee purchases?" are consistent with this article's claim. In fact, I bet more people are choosing to make coffee at home rather than stop by national coffee chains, resulting in greater demand for fresh coffee. Good for online coffee roasters, not good for Starbucks.

Economic slowdown may force coffee lovers to switch brand loyalty wrote:The economic crisis may have dented the budgets of households but consumers across the globe are unlikely to cut back on their coffee intake, rather may shift to cheaper brands, according to International Coffee Organisation (ICO). The current situation should not have a significant impact on coffee consumption. However, instead of reducing the intake, consumers may buy less expensive products, it said.

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Hopefully. I'm seeing an uptick in sales of bulk coffee and a downtick in the ticket price. Same volume of customers, but they aren't buying the extra muffin or they are having a cup of brewed coffee instead of a latte. For a while yesterday morning I had no seats left in the store. We were packed. But the till was still down.
Bernie

I wonder if having my own machine is more economical than going to coffeeshops even if it is not Starbucks. Of course preparing coffee on my own is cheaper (not mentioning the quality) than going out, yet ROI is not that obvious. Let's see: a decent machine is say 500 - 1 000 USD... It has more to do with quality than prices.

thaxton wrote:I wonder if having my own machine is more economical than going to coffeeshops even if it is not Starbucks. Of course preparing coffee on my own is cheaper (not mentioning the quality) than going out, yet ROI is not that obvious. Let's see: a decent machine is say 500 - 1 000 USD... It has more to do with quality than prices.

Preparing excellent coffee is far less expensive than that. A $200 grinder coupled with a $50 brewing device can produce fabulous results (and that's generous pricing).

You're probably thinking about espresso gear in particular, which is significantly more expensive. On the other hand, good equipment retains its value well, often selling used for as much as two thirds of the original price. And $1000 goes quickly if you've got a daily *$ monkey on your back. Even for espresso, it's easy to rationalize spending ludricrous amounts of money on home coffee brewing gear. Believe me, I know...

RapidCoffee wrote:$1000 goes quickly if you've got a daily *$ monkey on your back

Well, yeah, but now that they have INSTANT . . .