As if living in NYC wasn’t difficult and expensive enough, now we can no longer afford to have iced coffee. No, seriously.
That morning cup now costs as much as $4.50, with the cost of plastic cups, ice and coffee beans going up.
Iced coffee costs come from all sides, with the most obvious also being the easiest to overlook: the ice. “People think ice is free,” Michael Pollack of Brooklyn Roasting Company, where a 24 oz iced coffee is currently $4.50, tells Gothamist. “Ice is a fortune. If you think we go through coffee fast, double that for ice. We actually store ten gallon refrigerator boxes of ice, because our needs are so tremendous.”
The cup itself is another factor in calculating the cost of an iced coffee. “Unfortunately, the cups that are used for ice service are plastic, which means it is a petroleum product,” explains Kenneth Nye of Ninth Street Espresso, where a 16 oz iced coffee runs $3.50. “So as gas prices change, prices for plastic cups change as well.”
Bottom line: the cost of iced coffee is too damn high.
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