Last week I wrote about confusing coffee pricing: Wawa, a Philadelphia-area convenience store chain, charges $1.25 for 32 ounces of coffee and $2.99 for 64 ounces. $2.99 is more than twice $1.25. Various commenters pointed out other counterintuitive pricing (train or airline fares that don't obey the triangle inequality, for example). Paul Soldera pointed out in a comment that the reason for this may just be that there aren't that many mathematicians out there, and $3 for 64 ounces of coffee sounds like a bargain to most people.
Paul Soldera may be right -- but I discovered another candidate explanation for this pricing today. Namely, I took a closer look at a sign (at a different Wawa from the one I normally go to), and it said that the 64-ounce "includes supplies". In other words, they're not selling this as a giant cup of coffee for one person to drink, but as something from which you can pour multiple cups for multiple people. Thus, they provide the cups, and perhaps other coffee paraphernalia as well.
Showing posts with label coffee. Show all posts
Showing posts with label coffee. Show all posts
30 April 2008
22 April 2008
Confusing coffee pricing
Here in the Philadelphia area, we have an oddly-named chain of convenience stores named Wawa.
At Wawa, you can buy coffee for the following prices: $1.09, $1.19, $1.29, $1.39 for 12, 16, 20, 24 ounces respectively. This makes sense -- basically you pay $.79 for wandering around in their store taking up space and such, and then 10 cents for each four ounces of coffee.
However, things get weird if you bring your own cup (I'm talking about the "travel mug" sort here, not a paper cup). Then 12, 16, 20, 24 ounces cost $0.85, $0.95, $1.05, or $1.15 -- so far, so good. You save twenty-four cents by bringing your own cup.
32 ounces, in your own cup, is $1.25. So now they're really starting to reward you for buying in bulk -- another ten cents gets you eight more ounces.
But then guess what happens? 64 ounces costs $2.99. That,s right -- I can fill two 32-ounce cups for $2.50, but filling one 64-ounce cup will cost $2.99. If you extrapolate the linear trend from 12, 16, 20, and 24 ounces, 64 ounces should cost $2.15. If I had a sixty-four-ounce travel mug, I'd go in there, fill it up, and try to get it filled for $2.50 just to see how the cashiers explained it.
Perhaps they're trying to say that you really just shouldn't be drinking that much coffee. I'd have to agree -- and I'm a mathematician.
Another argument is that perhaps they are attempting to discourage people from taking that much coffee because then there's less coffee for the people after them, and people won't be happy if the store runs out of coffee. This may be true -- it seems a bit doubtful, though, since a typical Wawa store might have a dozen or so pots of coffee at once, each holding 64 ounces or so.
At Wawa, you can buy coffee for the following prices: $1.09, $1.19, $1.29, $1.39 for 12, 16, 20, 24 ounces respectively. This makes sense -- basically you pay $.79 for wandering around in their store taking up space and such, and then 10 cents for each four ounces of coffee.
However, things get weird if you bring your own cup (I'm talking about the "travel mug" sort here, not a paper cup). Then 12, 16, 20, 24 ounces cost $0.85, $0.95, $1.05, or $1.15 -- so far, so good. You save twenty-four cents by bringing your own cup.
32 ounces, in your own cup, is $1.25. So now they're really starting to reward you for buying in bulk -- another ten cents gets you eight more ounces.
But then guess what happens? 64 ounces costs $2.99. That,s right -- I can fill two 32-ounce cups for $2.50, but filling one 64-ounce cup will cost $2.99. If you extrapolate the linear trend from 12, 16, 20, and 24 ounces, 64 ounces should cost $2.15. If I had a sixty-four-ounce travel mug, I'd go in there, fill it up, and try to get it filled for $2.50 just to see how the cashiers explained it.
Perhaps they're trying to say that you really just shouldn't be drinking that much coffee. I'd have to agree -- and I'm a mathematician.
Another argument is that perhaps they are attempting to discourage people from taking that much coffee because then there's less coffee for the people after them, and people won't be happy if the store runs out of coffee. This may be true -- it seems a bit doubtful, though, since a typical Wawa store might have a dozen or so pots of coffee at once, each holding 64 ounces or so.
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