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Courtesy Starbucks
A view of the Starbucks store at Brewery Blocks in Portland, Oregon, one of the 46 locations where you can sip the $7 Costa Rica Finca Palmilera coffee.
Fancy a $7 cup of Starbucks?
In this day of skyrocketing gas, grain and food prices, only a select few do.
But that's the price for a special rare brew Starbucks is serving up in just a few locations.
If you want to sip this black elixir, you'll have to ask for "Costa Rica Finca Palmilera," and fork over $40 for a half-pound. Also, you'll need to live in Seattle or Portland.
Only 48 stores in the country have the beans, and 46 of them are in one of these two cities.
It's not just any Starbucks there that have them, either. Only locations boasting the $11,000 "Clover" coffee machine are worthy to brew the beans. The coffee doesn't have to be made in the Clover, though. It's also available as a pour-over.
Jimmy Kimmel mocks the new $7-a-cup premium coffee at Starbucks with a blind taste test where he provides two identical cups of regular coffee and records tasters' "impressed" reactions.
Starbucks said Wednesday there's a very good reason for the premium price on this "exotic" blend from a rare "Geisha varietal" line, which comes from an ancient line of plants that traces its lineage back to Ethiopia.
They didn't make very much of it.
It's simple supply and demand, created for demanding coffee fans in two of the nation's most coffee-centric cities.
The coffee "only grows at extremely high altitudes, and because of the tree’s low yield allows for more of the soil's nutrients to reach each cherry, intensifying the coffee's vibrant flavors," said the Starbucks spokesperson. "A trained nose and palate might pick up delicate floral aromas, flavors of white peach and pineapple, and a juicy herbal complexity in this coffee."
In addition, all the beans came from just 3 hectares out of a single 90 hectare estate, yielding a tiny amount, a mere 3,800 pounds.
Starbucks basic tall Blonde coffee, produced in bulk, sells for $1.50 a cup.
"Costa Rica Finca Palmilera" is part of the Starbucks "Reserve" line of coffees, previously known as their "Black Apron" line, where the company hunts down rare and flavorful beans in origin countries and makes them available at just a few stores for a brief period of time.
"The Starbucks Reserve line of coffees allows us to offer our customers the opportunity to try rare, unique, exquisite coffees that they might not otherwise have the opportunity to experience," said Starbucks. That is, as long as they are ready to pay a higher price.
For instance, the Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee, when available, goes for $4.50 for a tall brewed cup. Other brews in the Reserve line go for $2.95-$6.00 for a tall cup.
That said, even for a Reserve cup, "It is the highest price we've ever had," a Starbucks spokesperson told TODAY. "It raises the bar."
Leave a Comment:
we buy 8 O'clock brand coffee and generic splenda and generic creamer and drink 1 cup a day in the morning to wake up. I don't know exactly what it costs but it ain't $7 a cup. Maybe a quarter a cup.Sometimes I like my caffeine cold and I drink a coke instead and it ain't $7 a bottle. If the economy is so bad how are places like Starbucks getting away with this and consumers accommodating them? There is a serious underground economy going on and always will be.
How is Starbucks getting away with this? Hmm!?, how is Apple getting away with "this". Every 2~3 months a new I-phone. And people keep shelling out their money but can't seem to pay off the college tuition loans. Priorities! Priorities!
Please stop exagerrating. Apple releases a new iPhone once a year. And if you haven't noticed, most companies release new models of their products every year. Most companies however, don't have the marketing power that Apple does.
At $7/cup it's cheaper then a glass of wine at most restaurants, lounges, and bars. If you love coffee then trying it once is not such a bad thing. Plus, the Clover machines make a really good cup of coffee. For an everyday coffee, forget it; but then again SB is making this coffee available only in select locations and for a very limited time. So I say, if you enjoy coffee, then go for it. As someone that detests the taste of wine (I've even tried $1000 bottle wine which was a total waste of a teaspoon of great wine, so I'm told), I'll take a $7 mug full of Costa Rica Finca Palmilera (in a heated ceramic mug of course!) over a glass of wine, at any cost, any day.
Why, I think I will just quit my job and get on a plane and fly off to Seattle or Portland just to try this new fabulous fantastic overpriced coffee from Starbucks!
Last time I checked, I didn't s*** money.
To each his own, everyone has different tastes. I'd try it once just out of curiosity. I personally like Starbucks when I grind it and brew it at home, when I buy it at the shop I have to use a lot more cream because it's too strong for me.
Bet it tastes like $7.00 crap.
Here in Alaska we don't like Starbucks anyways. We prefer the small coffee roasters where we brew our coffee with beans that were roasted just a few hours prior. The best coffee we have had to date is from the Alaska Coffee Roastery. Its website is at akcoffeeroastery.com.
over roasted, over hyped, over priced!
over roasted, over hyped, over priced...
$600 /pound for coffee from civet dung
http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/fooddrink/a/kopi_luak.htm
search "coffee beans from weasel (civet) dung"
best coffee is
Guatemala Antigua great coffee taste
reasonable price
not too hard to find
Never liked there coffee.
I wonder how many cool kids sit in Starbucks, sipping this coffee, iPhone earbuds firmly in place, tweeting about the horrors of capitalism.
*in skinny jeans and "i don't care what they look like, they're functional" black rimmed glasses*
Fair warning: Anti-hipsterism is now hip.
nooooo!!!!!!
i'll never win!
:)
on a side note, i actually DID drive through starbucks a few days ago and bought a gingerbread latte....had myself a nice little orgasm.
i usually just brew my own and drink it black, but damn was that GOOD!
..and then they burn it in the roaster.
Priorities in America...in fine form. What-fcuking-ever.
My vice is diet soda, but less so than it used to be. I never acquired the taste for coffee. Almost all my colleagues go to Starbucks in the mid-afternoon and most go there on their way in from work. They already spend about $9-10/day ($45-50 week) for that stuff. If they get hooked on this and it's available, they'd spend $14/day or $70/week...on coffee??
There's a sucker born every minute.. and plenty of people willing to take their money.
Starbucks' coffee tastes like they throw in a handful of peanut shells with the grounds. It is by far the worst coffee I have ever tasted. Dunkin Donuts' coffee is good.
Nothing like taking a rare bean and burning it like only Starbucks knows how to do. Worst coffee roasters on the planet. They should take the money and go back to coffee roasting school.
It wouldn't be every day or even once a week. If you appreciate good things in life and like to indulge occasionally, why not. Then, I also look at it like paying $10 for a cocktail at a restaraunt.