This is why I got a cheap Aeropress and milk frother. I pay enough for my latte, and the barista makes as much as I do, stop judging me for not tipping. I tip servers, not counter workers.
I know that's the only way to change how the system works, but at the same time my conscience yells at me and tells me that if I don't tip them, they might not be able to buy a necessity because they don't make as much as counter staff.
I don’t mind tipping for any hospitality service, but what I really hate about fast food and cafe tipping is that they often collect payment and push for a tip before the order was made incorrectly.
That's a good point. I also hate that about food delivery services. I tip my drivers well, but I don't like that I'm often giving a good tip and not getting good service in return. If I'd have known I was going to get bad service, I would have tipped based on distance only and it would be significantly less.
Sometimes it’s just a no win scenario, even with a refund it’s still a bunch of hoops to jump through just to be hungry and annoyed, but at no cost to you!
Been there too! My place isn't even that hard to find, but it pisses me off when my kids are looking forward to some Edo and it never comes. The refund is fine, but we're still hungry and now it's 8 pm, now what am I supposed to do?
95% success rate sucks? It sounds like this person just lives somewhere where all delivery sucks.
Plenty of people move to the middle of nowhere to "get away from it all" and then complain about the lack of service and conveniences. No, a few dollars tip is not enough to pay someone to drive 30 minutes to wherever you decided to live.
In my experience they don't refund if the driver is 20 minutes late because they went the wrong way or because they decided to take multiple orders. I've even had them drop my food off at the wrong place when I was standing right outside my door waiting for them. The people at the other place tried to tell the driver it didn't belong to them but he just left it with them and left, my neighbour gave it to me. When I complained Door Dash said that because I got my order there was nothing they could do.
If you only have those options, it means you live in the middle of nowhere. How can you not have GrubHub or Uber Eats? Those are the only good ones. I would definitely use the in-house delivery before Doordash. Never even heard of the other one.
I can't remember the last time I paid anything in cash that wasn't my kids allowance. But on top of that Skip the Dishes ( I assume door dash too, but I used to drive for Skip so I can say them for sure) shows the driver how much they'll make on the delivery and if they don't like it they won't accept it. If I'm paying in cash then all they're being shown is the base distance rate and they'll all deny it.
DoorDash does this as well, and there is no way to adjust the tip if you received bad service. There used to be, but DoorDash found their model worked better if they don’t allow you to reduce your tip after you put in the order.
Then they hand you a receipt from a printer that’s out of toner and you can’t even entertain the customer feedback route. It’ll dry up like the KFC and the Arby’s that occupied that lot before it.
Don’t forget that the autotip screens usually calculate that percentage after tax, which is wrong, and make it a pain in the ass to tip a percentage on pre-tax like it’s supposed to be done, so they’re dishonestly wringing even more cents out of you!
I’ve had my aeropress for years and have a love/hate relationship with it. I go on streaks that make incredible cups, followed by the worst cups of my life when I inevitably forget the ratios or change grinds. I really do like it and wish I could be a snob but I just settle for my Nespresso (when it isn’t broken and needing warranty replacement, again).
I could but then I wouldn't be able to justify my irrational need for a new coffee machine.
To be fair though, I've written it down and tried that. Maybe it's my perception that changes or the little unaccounted nuances add up to big differences. Right now, I have a bold Cuban batch from Key West that tastes like burnt plastic no matter the amount of water or brew time.
They'll keep it up as long as business is good. If people will pay 12$ for a latte and lines are out the door, and there are no regulations to stop price gouging and predatory behavior, why wouldn't they?
It's not even a matter of "why wouldn't they," do much as a matter of they must.
Absent of regulations, any company that doesn't abandon every conceivable human moral in pursuit of more profit will find itself hopelessly out-competed by the ones that do. If your every competitor is charging $12 for a latte and paying their employees starvation wages, and you charge a reasonable amount and pay your employees a decent wage, then every hour you're in business your competitors will be making more money than you, and you will always fall behind, unless something comes along to close that gap.
Libertarians might try to say that eventually the free market will close the gap, but adults know otherwise. The free market doesn't give a shit about human decency, the environment, the value of mom and pop businesses, or any of that. The free market can only ever want to make more money, every year, at a faster rate of increase, every year. Forever.
Government is the only thing that can reasonably account for how things should be. Regulations are the only reason we don't have 80 hour work weeks and children in the mines.
Like, $12 for milk and eggs? $12 for a pound of veggies or a gallon of gas or a jug of water during a hurricane? Sure.
But I can buy a bag of beans for $12 and make ten cups easy. I just don't know if I'd call it price gouging because you're willing to pay out the nose for foamed milk.
to be fair a setup that can make espresso drinks in the same quality league as coffee shops will cost in the range of 1000-3000€ but if you drink one cup per day then you can save that amount in a year by making coffee at home
well if you got savings but low income you can afford one time costs such as that. i got a 1k espresso setup mainly so i dont have to spend 20-40% of my disposable income on coffee from cafes
It is if you learn how to set the temp settings and use the right bean, grind size and milk. A decent cup of coffee is the sum of parts. And if the customer who does all this is just as satisfied, that’s all that matters.
That's just not correct. Yes, a drink is the sum of the parts, but if all 4 parts are 9.9/10, and your Bambino can't get to 9.9/10 level, the drink will come out inferior.
Although I do agree with your last statement, the Bambino cannot pull a shot like a high-grade industrial machine can.
And so easy just grow your own beans on your acres of land, toil it, roast those beans and voila. Same with brewing your own beer, grow your hops…etc. or wine, grow your own grapes…
You could say that about any food really.
But if you say that oh, the frazzled parents and people who live in mere apartments without land to grow this stuff or people with two jobs and can’t pick their own farm land will come down on you so hard. So spoilt.
Lattes aren't essential. Charging $12 for one is neither predatory nor price gouging. It's arguably exploitatative but I don't feel it's our job to tell people they're not allowed to waste their own money.
Acting on “what the market will bear” instead of what at cost as well as labour is predatory in that it is opportunistic in the basic definition of what makes predatory behaviour predatory. It is also gouging as it is setting a price range that can be considered exclusionary. And then to also attack a customer who feels this and speaks it can be considered victim blaming as you’re enabling these behaviours by dismissing the feedback of the victim, which again is being exclusionary by enforcing their money to be taken but not allowing they can be part of the feedback or setting boundaries of what is happening to them.
You can get a latte at Dunkin donuts for $2.69 or McDonald's for $1. Or, and this is going to blow your mind, you can live without lattes. We're not talking about insulin ffs. How fucking entitled are you talking about a luxury item like it's a necessity lmao
It is like people who continue to feed ticketmaster and the resale markets with their predatory fees and prices. Why shouldn't they keep doing it if people will keep paying their insane prices for nonessentials?
Legit not arguing but other than going to the physical box office, what alternatives are there to Ticketmaster? I would love to know so I can stop giving them money.
Go to venues that you deal with them direct. Is it really important that you see the most popular musician at the best venue or is it more important that you heard some fun music with your friends? Make a decision and live with the decision
At my local independent coffee shop the practice is that the baristas pay no attention and start working on your order as soon as you get to the tip screen so there's no pressure to assign a gigantic tip. They also have much better beans than Starbucks, to the point that the founder of this shop spun off the coffee bean sourcing/roasting into a separate business that he continues to manage and now is the supplier of beans for every independent coffee shop for a 50 mile radius
There’s a new coffee shop in Seattle that’s literally 4 robot arms making coffee at 4 different machines. There’s one guy in the store to keep things tidy, but that’s it.
The baristas at the cafe my daughter and I usually go to (which is so good that even though it is half an hour away and one town over, we still go) are great. And really friendly. It's not especially cheaper than anywhere else, but they have a decent selection of non-coffee drinks like smoothies and bubble tea for my daughter, a drink called a dirty chai which I really like for me (chai with a shot of espresso), and a lot of surprisingly good gluten-free pastries and cookies. We aren't gluten-free and gluten-free baked goods that I've tried generally haven't impressed me, but these aren't bad. They also have gelato. Plus, a chill atmosphere and a lot of comfortable places to sit.
If you're ever going down I-70 through Illinois and pass by Marshall near the Indiana border, the Gypsy Queen Cafe is worth a stop, if for no other reason than to see a surprisingly upscale cafe for a tiny town in the middle of nowhere.
Edit: The menu on the website is incomplete. So is the menu on their sign. It's sort of distributed throughout the store. That's the one thing I don't like about it, but I'm used to it now.
Sounds like a nice place! It's cool that you have that near you. The 3rd wave places near me seem to think that coffee is the lifeblood from which all things sprout, and their attitudes generally suck. Their coffee is good though.
I think because they're young and it's a small town and there isn't much there in terms of employment, they're pretty happy to have one of the relatively few jobs there that don't require an advanced education and also don't suck ass.
Just about anywhere that sells coffee in the states can make you a dirty chai, it’s my go-to coffee order. Even places where everything is just poured out of pre-prepared cartons, the chai is almost always killer.
I go out for coffee occasionally because it is my excuse for getting out of the house.
I agree on the tipping. If I'm serving myself I'm not tipping. I don't feel guilty and I don't care if they are looking. I sometimes tip if it is a holiday and I feel they should get a little extra for that.
We don't really have this whole tipping thing here.
I've had coffee in two places recently. One was in a hypermarket. I don't remember what the coffee costs there, because it came free with the meal. If the restaurant staff feel they don't get paid enough, I don't care if they get inspiration from France and torch every car in the parking lot. You see, I go to the hypermarket by foot. It's not that far away.
The other place I had coffee recently was in the train. 2.80€. I certainly hope the restaurant car staff gets paid well. They're technically railroad employees, after all. You don't fuck with railroad workers.
I've legit gone back to cash for petty transactions. If I feel like throwing the change in the tip jar, I will. But there are no stupid prompts for a tip to deal with. Unfortunately, a lot of places are going cash free. Professional sports games is one example. Hey beer man, thanks for handling me my $12 beer. No, I'm not tipping for that.
So I understand why so many places like stadiums and airplanes are going cash free, but then I wonder if that's even technically legal as cash literally says legal tender for all debts public and private.
The only place I ever use cash anymore is to fuel my sporadic video poker habit.
I damn near feel like a criminal using it anywhere else.
And the day you can go throw your debit card into a video poker machine is the day I stop gambling. As ferociously disciplined of a gambler as I am (and I am ferociously disciplined with my budgets) I cannot in any way see that eventuality as ending well for any customer.
Anywho, rambling tangents complete, I wonder if cash will remain viable over the forthcoming years.
That's correct. Legal tender can be used to settle all debts. In a retail transaction there's no debt until a purchase agreement is made, so they can refuse cash before the agrrement.
Yeah, u definitely can't budget gambling if they have a card with all your money on it. Maybe they'll have what arcades have now where you buy a card, and load it with money or something. I also wouldn't gamble in a cashless society. As it stands right now, you win a few bucks, you just get cash. If it's all traceable, uncle Sam is going to want a cut of your winnings every time.
The US government heavily subsidizes dairy. They also subsidize soy, but it's $20B for dairy and $4B for soybeans. The price of milk is below production costs.
I would imagine it might be due to a combination of low demand and having to continually restock due to FDA standards. Or it could just be taking advantage of people wanting an alternative.
Oh I'm sorry, I thought America was all about turning the bull loose and protecting our beloved economy in its current form at all costs.
Actions have consequences. An economy designed for infinite growth/metastasis on a very finite world has consequences. We've only just begun to feel the consequences of our not merely tolerance, but encouragement of insatiable, unaccountable greed.
Buckle up. The price of lattes will be the least of our worries. Another 10 years and Chocolate and Coffee will probably be priced out for us capital batteries. Don't worry though, they'll make some cancer causing substitute that's a third as satisfying for half the price. Be sure to CONSUME it.
Make sure you have your "I got cancer from sugar substitute" insurance paid up! That won't be covered any other way! Easy and convenient payment plans start at just $195 paid every alternate 9 days! At that price you can't afford not to get it!!!
I normally point myself in the general direction, close my eyes, and release, along with my hopes and prayers /s
But maybe it's because people can't tear their eyes away from their phones for even the time required to urinate, and so they really have no idea what happened, but the video they're watching was hilarious.
Americanos used to be quite a bit cheaper than lattes. Which makes sense considering there’s no milk in them, save for any small bit of cream you put in. But sometime in the last two years they raised the price on americanos to be in line with lattes. I don’t go often, but when I do it stings to pay $6 for my drink.
I couldn't tell you, I stopped going to coffee bars when the coffee became more than half my hourly wage, I'll make my own coffee thank you very much.
Can't even go to a McDonald's anymore without spending at least $16, I've stopped going to McDonald's and started ordering Applebee's because if I'm spending $20 on a meal anyway I might as well spent $4 more on there two for 24 deal and get like three times the amount of food
Most of our coffee is drip. Sometimes cold brew. Espesso, cappuccino, Turkish, press, etc…we don’t do that much. Fancy coffee, sure, but not our “it’s Monday and I can’t even” coffee. Or our “it’s Tuesday and I can’t even” coffee, or so on.
Fast service shops and such will have “cappuccino” or “espresso” but I think it’s either concentrate or it’s just not the same.
We do have a serious unspoken caffeine addiction though. It comes from our Protestant work ethic while having our wallets bled dry. We end up with hustle culture and a stimulant addiction. Hooray!
We do have different types of coffee, but you might have to go to a specialty shop to get it like you do at home. If you're talking about regular restaurants it's probably good advice.
I’ve seen your different types of coffee. I spent 6 months in the states, all over. I had ONE good coffee in all that time. Went to thank the Barista - and she was Australian.
Interestingly, both. Americans are hyper work oriented because, you know, we've been trained since birth that if you don't work, you're going to suffer and die (and that's partially true, yay barely affording apartments and food), but when we get off of work, we're not going to work out, invest time in anything but watching the latest Hupeaflix show, and maybe brush our teeth before bed. Food comes out of a bag or box in the freezer, or maybe delivered with the expectation of a tip or your food gets there late, bitch.
And that's definitely just for specialty drinks, usually an up charge for additions and substitutes.
Black coffee vs a triple shot frappe with protein powder, oat milk, lavender mint syrup, on a raft, four-by-four animal-style, extra shingles with a shimmy and a squeeze, light axle grease, make it cry, burn it, and let it swim.
I tip every time I'm at a sit-down restaurant, and infrequently at other places (mostly local places, to keep them afloat - they have it harder than the food chains). That being said, if they want us to tip for just food prep and cooking, maybe make the food half-off, then we can tip them if the food is better than we thought? $5 burger...It was really good, I guess I will give them $9. $5 burger that is crap, well, it stays a $5 burger.
Wrong. You tip for counter service now. You tip the gas station attendant for ringing up your bubble gum. Soon you will tip your doctor for giving you a prescription. Thanks Obama!
People here who don't remember the thanks Obama meme is very sad.
Anytime anything bad happened people would say "thanks Obama" then it got turned into a meme of people saying it when it didn't even have anything to do with Obama.
Oh, some of his actions were certainly not likeable, like your point, authorizing missile strikes, continuation of the war, extension of the Patriot Act, etc.. But his personality was likeable and charming, which is more than I can say for most of the President's during my lifetime.
I cannot overcome the laws of reality. All I can do is place faith in my fellow humans to rise above the need for /s tags. I figured the line about tipping doctors for writing prescriptions, and the use of a common meme were clear indications that I was being sarcastic. But I get your point, and there is a lot of crazy on the internet these days (always has been, but it's even more common now).
True. I didn't know how much it would cost until I already got there and once I was there I didn't really want to go hunt down some other place, and I was in kind of a hurry. So I paid for it. Never going there again though.
I think they just used that as a descriptor as you can essentially cook water in a couple of ways. Microwave in a cup, use the hot water out of a boiler or hot water attachment on machine, boil in a pot on the stove. My preference is an electric glass kettle.
Or Nespresso! Their patents have expired, so now you can enjoy a world of great and easy coffee at home without sponsoring Nestlé! Both 3rd party machines and coffee pods are available.
Which local coffee shop? By now there's probably 8 of them, all selling what amounts to something a well built professional coffee vending machine could produce.
Imagine a coffee vending machine with all the same ingredients that they use, which isn't much really just different coffees and syrups and milks and stuff, and has the fancy coffee making gear inside to automate the whole process, even the fancy pour designs people like.
That really doesn't sound difficult at all compared to funding an entire shop, with rent, staff, electricity for everything, all those consumables, etc etc.
I'm not saying do away with coffee shops, I'm just saying that instead of having one around every street corner, maybe replace some of them with awesome vending machines, and leave those spaces free for a non-profit community space or something :-D
My dad once pulled the "there goes 5% of her tip" when a waitress at a slammed-lunch-rush-on-a-Sunday restaurant forgot his precious iced tea. I excused myself and went to the ATM at the gas station next door to get $40 cash. When the bill came, he paid for us, and as she came to pick up the receipt I stopped her and handed the money over. Dad asked me why I did that and I told him it was a lesson for him. Manners... who fucking raised these boomers?
I was there. I started slow clapping and slowly, but surely, everyone joined me as your father walked out in shame. The waitress came up to me and asked "who was that brave man that gave me that tip?" And I told her "your soul mate".
Its funny, because minimum wage laws are stagnant and tipped positions are even worse than the bottom rate. $2.35/hr to work in a position that's tipped.
I get it. Demanding 25% of the base price to pay your staff is a fucked way to do business. But if you're not going to pay them, their bosses don't seem interested in doing it either. Somebody's got to do it.
Maybe the problem with tipping is that corporations are able to play chicken with the consumer.
How many restaurant owners do you know that would increase wages simply because the daily tip rate was falling?
Who’s willing to let the worker starve? The consumers are definitely more empathetic
Empathizing with one's working peers is central to emergent class consciousness. Tip your waiters today. Don't cross that picket line tomorrow. General strike the day after.
To be very clear, I sympathize with people who are stuck working a shitty job. That being said, the consumer does not have to give handouts to companies in order to pay employees. If people cannot survive off of wages being paid, they will most likely find a different job. Capitalism and the free market and all that jazz. Hit corpos in the only place they care about, their bottom line.
the consumer does not have to give handouts to companies in order to pay employees
I'll tip regardless.
If people cannot survive off of wages being paid, they will most likely find a different job.
There are a lot of reasons why this doesn't hold up. The first and foremost is that transitioning jobs requires savings. The way I see it, my tips are going to help them cross the hurdle to a better job when they get sick of this one. If I withhold my financial support from my working peers, I'm only aiding the employer as their staff remains precariously positioned.
A barista isn't a tipped wage position. Virtually only restaurant servers are paid the tipped wage. Just because they put a tip jar out doesn't mean their hourly wage drops to pennies, you only get that wage if a significant amount of your income is from tips.
Legally speaking, baristas can be treated as tipped wage positions so long as the tips they accumulate earn them in excess of the minimum wage. Putting out a tip jar absolutely does mean their hourly wage can be cut. And thanks to common wage-theft practices by employers and negligence by local prosecutors, an employee who falls under the minimum wage has an uphill battle to recover the difference.
I agree with you, but what coffee are you buying that costs pennies to make at home? I don't buy the cheapest stuff myself, but I do get bags of whole beans and grind it myself. They are way cheaper than going someplace, but definitely not pennies.
Dozens of pennies, anyway. IIRC, my back of the envelope math on the french press for two mugs every morning is something like $0.30 per mug, and that's including an estimate of the electricity to heat the water. Tend to use a pour over these days, and the bean usage is slightly more (50g vs 42g).
I'm not buying the most elite coffee in the world, nor am I buying bullshit. Kinda like the middle of the road brand? I'm Canadian, so like 3 weeks of coffee costs around $10. I make enough for me and my partner to have a cup or 2 every single morning. Let's say conservatively that we have 1 cup each every day for 3 weeks. That's 42 cups of coffee for around $10. 10/42 = 24 cents per cup of coffee. Under a quarter = pennies.
Truth my espresso machine was $300 on sale + $100 grinder and beans are typically $20.
And this is without the fancy accessories most people buy. Also that being said lattes nowadays running $7.50 so I'm pretty sure it would only take ~2 months to break even
I said coffee, not espresso. I'm talkin drip coffee my guy. I'm talking about the people who would go to Starbucks every morning and throw down $3-5 for drip coffee.
I suspect the vast majority of people sitting in the line that wraps around the building at Starbucks are getting fancy ass coffee flavored milkshakes.
I don't know anyone that actually likes the coffee at Starbucks.
Say you're buying the really good stuff for $15/12oz. Thats roughly 340g of coffee, with each shot of espresso being 10g at most.
So $15/34 shots works put to just shy of $0.50/shot, and that for stunningly pricey coffee. You can get that to $0.25/shot with bulk premium coffee or cheaper stuff. Add boiling water, and that espresso shot is a cup of Americano.
Still pennies a cup, even if it's 25 or 50 of them.
A standard espresso double shot, which is what you would get in anything but the smallest espresso drinks, is around 18g. I do find 10g to be enough for my morning 150ml cup (assuming some absorption by the coffee), but drip or immersion brewing extracts a bit more than espresso just due to the huge volume difference
Whoa, where are you getting these prices from? An espresso made from a $2000 machine will taste exactly like an espresso made from a $30,000 machine XD
This topic kind of reminds me of the people who believe that they can taste and distinguish each one of dozens of notes within a bottle of wine. When that's put to the test, people fail it practically every time.
I could maybe see it happening with this, depending on the materials that the grinder was made out of. Some super cheap appliances might be made out of a toxic material that also spreads a bad odour/taste. The intensity of the grind itself could definitely play a role in flavour too.
With coffee it’s mainly the consistency of the grind. You want all particles to be the same size. Larger particles take longer to extract than smaller articles, and if it’s uneven you over/under extract parts of the coffee depending on grain size. This affects the flavor of the coffee. E.g. under-extracted is sour, and over-extracted too bitter.
An even grind requires a machine that’s been built with precision components and that’s expensive to make.
Don't tell me how fucking good my coffee is, ok? I know how fucking good it is. Because I fucking bought it ok? My wifes coffee tastes like shit. Because she buys shit coffee. But I'm not worried about the fucking coffre in my kitchen.
I don’t own the $10000 marzocco espresso machine that produces consistent heat and pressure to brew espresso correctly and steam milk so it froths without scorching, nor do I have years of experience to do that correctly, and I’d rather meet friends out than keeping my home perfectly clean so guests can come over any time.
Always enjoy yourself, but check out the bambino plus. It pulls beutiful shots with lovely crema and has a simple and excellent auto frother, all for $4-500.
You really don't need all that shit. An Aeropress, a french press, and/or chemex-style pour over all goes for <$50 each and isn't particularly difficult to learn how to use. Need a kettle and a good grinder. Grinder is the only thing worth spending money on, but for this setup, even a $200 grinder is probably overkill. You just don't want the bottom of the barrel blade grinders.
I have a friend who went the aeropress route and he confirms there is a difference between that and the professionally made coffee we get at the coffee shop we both go to. Which is where we met, not incidentally—cheap at-home “espresso” still doesn’t answer the part about going to a public place where you can meet other people at random.
The one thing I'll pay for is espresso. Good espresso is incredible, and it's nearly impossible to do well without spending over $1000. Cheap espresso makers have channeling problems, or can't produce proper pressure, or both. You also need a very fine grind, so you're spending even more on the higher end grinders.
Sometimes I like paying for the experience of going and getting a cappuccino from a bougie coffee place instead of filter coffee from my crappy machine xD
This is why I got a cheap Aeropress and milk frother. I pay enough for my latte, and the barista makes as much as I do, stop judging me for not tipping. I tip servers, not counter workers.
Do not tip the servers. It scares the sysadmins.
Linux can run diagonally now
Not if you're on wayland. It really does break everything.Vaxry implemented it in Hyprland a few days ago, which is not at all surprising from him.
Google en passant
Holy fuck.
- me with six accelerometers glued to my monitor -
"How do you get it to register as diagonal?"
Unfortunately it blinks black when it reorients, your continuous accelerometer feed may take some work.
I laughed. Never as bad as spaghetti cabling though.
The spaghetti cabling forms a safety net to cushion the overloaded rack as it pulls away from the cinder block wall
I know that's the only way to change how the system works, but at the same time my conscience yells at me and tells me that if I don't tip them, they might not be able to buy a necessity because they don't make as much as counter staff.
I feel like it's a catch 22
It's a joke about server computers
I don't know computers lol
I don’t mind tipping for any hospitality service, but what I really hate about fast food and cafe tipping is that they often collect payment and push for a tip before the order was made incorrectly.
That's a good point. I also hate that about food delivery services. I tip my drivers well, but I don't like that I'm often giving a good tip and not getting good service in return. If I'd have known I was going to get bad service, I would have tipped based on distance only and it would be significantly less.
Sometimes it’s just a no win scenario, even with a refund it’s still a bunch of hoops to jump through just to be hungry and annoyed, but at no cost to you!
Been there too! My place isn't even that hard to find, but it pisses me off when my kids are looking forward to some Edo and it never comes. The refund is fine, but we're still hungry and now it's 8 pm, now what am I supposed to do?
Or worse, a credit. Do you really expect me to keep your app on my phone?
If you don't get good service on GrubHub or wherever, you just complain to their helpline. They give you refunds.
Honestly I have no issues with 95% of delivery orders. And usually the issue is the restaurant's fault.
But that blows for the consumer
95% success rate sucks? It sounds like this person just lives somewhere where all delivery sucks.
Plenty of people move to the middle of nowhere to "get away from it all" and then complain about the lack of service and conveniences. No, a few dollars tip is not enough to pay someone to drive 30 minutes to wherever you decided to live.
The pattern of tip before consumption and call support to resolve is worse than nearly any alternative.
No comment on your second paragraph, not applicable
In my experience they don't refund if the driver is 20 minutes late because they went the wrong way or because they decided to take multiple orders. I've even had them drop my food off at the wrong place when I was standing right outside my door waiting for them. The people at the other place tried to tell the driver it didn't belong to them but he just left it with them and left, my neighbour gave it to me. When I complained Door Dash said that because I got my order there was nothing they could do.
That's the problem. Doordash sucks.
I have the option of Door Dash or Skip. I try to only order from places that have in house delivery now.
If you only have those options, it means you live in the middle of nowhere. How can you not have GrubHub or Uber Eats? Those are the only good ones. I would definitely use the in-house delivery before Doordash. Never even heard of the other one.
Tipping in cash upon delivery is still the best thing to do.
I can't remember the last time I paid anything in cash that wasn't my kids allowance. But on top of that Skip the Dishes ( I assume door dash too, but I used to drive for Skip so I can say them for sure) shows the driver how much they'll make on the delivery and if they don't like it they won't accept it. If I'm paying in cash then all they're being shown is the base distance rate and they'll all deny it.
DoorDash does this as well, and there is no way to adjust the tip if you received bad service. There used to be, but DoorDash found their model worked better if they don’t allow you to reduce your tip after you put in the order.
This.
So counter-intuitive and self-defeating...
Then they hand you a receipt from a printer that’s out of toner and you can’t even entertain the customer feedback route. It’ll dry up like the KFC and the Arby’s that occupied that lot before it.
It's started to feel like a shake-down, honestly.
Don’t forget that the autotip screens usually calculate that percentage after tax, which is wrong, and make it a pain in the ass to tip a percentage on pre-tax like it’s supposed to be done, so they’re dishonestly wringing even more cents out of you!
I’ve had my aeropress for years and have a love/hate relationship with it. I go on streaks that make incredible cups, followed by the worst cups of my life when I inevitably forget the ratios or change grinds. I really do like it and wish I could be a snob but I just settle for my Nespresso (when it isn’t broken and needing warranty replacement, again).
You could like, write down the ratio and coffee brand and such
I could but then I wouldn't be able to justify my irrational need for a new coffee machine.
To be fair though, I've written it down and tried that. Maybe it's my perception that changes or the little unaccounted nuances add up to big differences. Right now, I have a bold Cuban batch from Key West that tastes like burnt plastic no matter the amount of water or brew time.
Sounds like robusta...
If it is, there's nothing you can do about the burnt rubber flavour. That's a feature of the type of coffee
They make apps for that now: https://f-droid.org/packages/com.omelan.cofi/
1 scoop grounds, heat water to 190f, fill water between 1 and 2 mark, steep 1 minute, press. Brilliance every time.
They'll keep it up as long as business is good. If people will pay 12$ for a latte and lines are out the door, and there are no regulations to stop price gouging and predatory behavior, why wouldn't they?
Oh there are definitely laws to stop price gauging but that's for small businesses and individuals who aren't rich.
Isn't a café the very definition of a small business?
Yeah Starbucks sure is tiny.
I wouldn’t really call them a café, just a chain where you can buy drinks made from burnt-to-shit coffee beans.
That's okay. The coffee beans to chocolate, whip cream , soy milk, and extra caffeine ratio is like 1:99.
You forgot the ten tablespoons of sugar that eats your insides to hide the taste of shit beans.
It's not even a matter of "why wouldn't they," do much as a matter of they must.
Absent of regulations, any company that doesn't abandon every conceivable human moral in pursuit of more profit will find itself hopelessly out-competed by the ones that do. If your every competitor is charging $12 for a latte and paying their employees starvation wages, and you charge a reasonable amount and pay your employees a decent wage, then every hour you're in business your competitors will be making more money than you, and you will always fall behind, unless something comes along to close that gap.
Libertarians might try to say that eventually the free market will close the gap, but adults know otherwise. The free market doesn't give a shit about human decency, the environment, the value of mom and pop businesses, or any of that. The free market can only ever want to make more money, every year, at a faster rate of increase, every year. Forever.
Government is the only thing that can reasonably account for how things should be. Regulations are the only reason we don't have 80 hour work weeks and children in the mines.
Is $12 for a latte even price gouging?
Like, $12 for milk and eggs? $12 for a pound of veggies or a gallon of gas or a jug of water during a hurricane? Sure.
But I can buy a bag of beans for $12 and make ten cups easy. I just don't know if I'd call it price gouging because you're willing to pay out the nose for foamed milk.
to be fair a setup that can make espresso drinks in the same quality league as coffee shops will cost in the range of 1000-3000€ but if you drink one cup per day then you can save that amount in a year by making coffee at home
If you can afford a 1-3K espresso setup you probably don't think about saving money on coffee
well if you got savings but low income you can afford one time costs such as that. i got a 1k espresso setup mainly so i dont have to spend 20-40% of my disposable income on coffee from cafes
Bambino is 600, if you do the math it pays itself off in like two or three months of owning one vs going to a coffee shop.
Bambino won't pull the same shots that a great independent coffee shop's equipment will.
It is if you learn how to set the temp settings and use the right bean, grind size and milk. A decent cup of coffee is the sum of parts. And if the customer who does all this is just as satisfied, that’s all that matters.
That's just not correct. Yes, a drink is the sum of the parts, but if all 4 parts are 9.9/10, and your Bambino can't get to 9.9/10 level, the drink will come out inferior.
Although I do agree with your last statement, the Bambino cannot pull a shot like a high-grade industrial machine can.
I'm going out on a limb and argue that a great cup of coffee can probably be made with some rather simple and cheap lab equipment.
And so easy just grow your own beans on your acres of land, toil it, roast those beans and voila. Same with brewing your own beer, grow your hops…etc. or wine, grow your own grapes…
You could say that about any food really.
But if you say that oh, the frazzled parents and people who live in mere apartments without land to grow this stuff or people with two jobs and can’t pick their own farm land will come down on you so hard. So spoilt.
I think you know that your analogy is false
Lattes aren't essential. Charging $12 for one is neither predatory nor price gouging. It's arguably exploitatative but I don't feel it's our job to tell people they're not allowed to waste their own money.
Acting on “what the market will bear” instead of what at cost as well as labour is predatory in that it is opportunistic in the basic definition of what makes predatory behaviour predatory. It is also gouging as it is setting a price range that can be considered exclusionary. And then to also attack a customer who feels this and speaks it can be considered victim blaming as you’re enabling these behaviours by dismissing the feedback of the victim, which again is being exclusionary by enforcing their money to be taken but not allowing they can be part of the feedback or setting boundaries of what is happening to them.
When you call someone choosing to buy a $12 latte a victim it makes everything else you say impossible to take seriously.
If these people have been raised by exploitative pricing all their life, I honestly am not sure who to blame anymore.
you use ‘choice’ like $3 latte is an option. You’re bent on manipulating people so it’s hard to take you seriously.
You can get a latte at Dunkin donuts for $2.69 or McDonald's for $1. Or, and this is going to blow your mind, you can live without lattes. We're not talking about insulin ffs. How fucking entitled are you talking about a luxury item like it's a necessity lmao
I have a hard time arguing for price controls for lattes. We aren't talking water or housing or basic staples of food here.
It is like people who continue to feed ticketmaster and the resale markets with their predatory fees and prices. Why shouldn't they keep doing it if people will keep paying their insane prices for nonessentials?
Legit not arguing but other than going to the physical box office, what alternatives are there to Ticketmaster? I would love to know so I can stop giving them money.
Absolutely. There is no real alternative for most people but at least it isn't a necessity. They have a nice monopoly going.
Just go to venues where you buy direct.
I try when possible but time and distance, and some lack box offices, don't always make this an option. I can't afford the overpriced shows anyway.
Go to venues that you deal with them direct. Is it really important that you see the most popular musician at the best venue or is it more important that you heard some fun music with your friends? Make a decision and live with the decision
The barista is a tablet
At my local independent coffee shop the practice is that the baristas pay no attention and start working on your order as soon as you get to the tip screen so there's no pressure to assign a gigantic tip. They also have much better beans than Starbucks, to the point that the founder of this shop spun off the coffee bean sourcing/roasting into a separate business that he continues to manage and now is the supplier of beans for every independent coffee shop for a 50 mile radius
There’s a new coffee shop in Seattle that’s literally 4 robot arms making coffee at 4 different machines. There’s one guy in the store to keep things tidy, but that’s it.
Pay screen still asked for a tip.
so you actually tip the owner and just pay him extra while he's doing coke and jerking off at home
Mother fuckers
The barista is an AI- generated composite of the employees that it replaced displayed on a tablet.
Baristas and coffee connoisseurs exist in a perpetual state of disapproval, so you might as well save some money.
The baristas at the cafe my daughter and I usually go to (which is so good that even though it is half an hour away and one town over, we still go) are great. And really friendly. It's not especially cheaper than anywhere else, but they have a decent selection of non-coffee drinks like smoothies and bubble tea for my daughter, a drink called a dirty chai which I really like for me (chai with a shot of espresso), and a lot of surprisingly good gluten-free pastries and cookies. We aren't gluten-free and gluten-free baked goods that I've tried generally haven't impressed me, but these aren't bad. They also have gelato. Plus, a chill atmosphere and a lot of comfortable places to sit.
If you're ever going down I-70 through Illinois and pass by Marshall near the Indiana border, the Gypsy Queen Cafe is worth a stop, if for no other reason than to see a surprisingly upscale cafe for a tiny town in the middle of nowhere.
Edit: The menu on the website is incomplete. So is the menu on their sign. It's sort of distributed throughout the store. That's the one thing I don't like about it, but I'm used to it now.
Sounds like a nice place! It's cool that you have that near you. The 3rd wave places near me seem to think that coffee is the lifeblood from which all things sprout, and their attitudes generally suck. Their coffee is good though.
I think because they're young and it's a small town and there isn't much there in terms of employment, they're pretty happy to have one of the relatively few jobs there that don't require an advanced education and also don't suck ass.
Just about anywhere that sells coffee in the states can make you a dirty chai, it’s my go-to coffee order. Even places where everything is just poured out of pre-prepared cartons, the chai is almost always killer.
And the company probably made a net profit of 5 billion — a 25% rise from the previous year.
The barista is making 13$ per hour
And people complain that they are broke yet they continue to spend $$$ on things like cafe coffee
I go out for coffee occasionally because it is my excuse for getting out of the house.
I agree on the tipping. If I'm serving myself I'm not tipping. I don't feel guilty and I don't care if they are looking. I sometimes tip if it is a holiday and I feel they should get a little extra for that.
We don't really have this whole tipping thing here.
I've had coffee in two places recently. One was in a hypermarket. I don't remember what the coffee costs there, because it came free with the meal. If the restaurant staff feel they don't get paid enough, I don't care if they get inspiration from France and torch every car in the parking lot. You see, I go to the hypermarket by foot. It's not that far away.
The other place I had coffee recently was in the train. 2.80€. I certainly hope the restaurant car staff gets paid well. They're technically railroad employees, after all. You don't fuck with railroad workers.
I've never heard the term "hypermarket" before today, but according to Google that's what these type of stores have been called since 1968 lol!
I've legit gone back to cash for petty transactions. If I feel like throwing the change in the tip jar, I will. But there are no stupid prompts for a tip to deal with. Unfortunately, a lot of places are going cash free. Professional sports games is one example. Hey beer man, thanks for handling me my $12 beer. No, I'm not tipping for that.
So I understand why so many places like stadiums and airplanes are going cash free, but then I wonder if that's even technically legal as cash literally says legal tender for all debts public and private.
The only place I ever use cash anymore is to fuel my sporadic video poker habit.
I damn near feel like a criminal using it anywhere else.
And the day you can go throw your debit card into a video poker machine is the day I stop gambling. As ferociously disciplined of a gambler as I am (and I am ferociously disciplined with my budgets) I cannot in any way see that eventuality as ending well for any customer.
Anywho, rambling tangents complete, I wonder if cash will remain viable over the forthcoming years.
I'm guessing one could argue the right to refuse service to those not using their preferred kind of payment.
That's correct. Legal tender can be used to settle all debts. In a retail transaction there's no debt until a purchase agreement is made, so they can refuse cash before the agrrement.
Yeah, u definitely can't budget gambling if they have a card with all your money on it. Maybe they'll have what arcades have now where you buy a card, and load it with money or something. I also wouldn't gamble in a cashless society. As it stands right now, you win a few bucks, you just get cash. If it's all traceable, uncle Sam is going to want a cut of your winnings every time.
I haven't seen a $12 late where I'm from, they're usually about $4-5
Lately where I'm from, things that go on display for $4-5 tend to come with a $12 receipt
Remember to tip the machine that spits out your coffee.
The US government heavily subsidizes dairy. They also subsidize soy, but it's $20B for dairy and $4B for soybeans. The price of milk is below production costs.
I tried to figure that out, but the answer proved elusive. Soybeans grown in the US are mostly used as feedstock though (about 70%).
I would imagine it might be due to a combination of low demand and having to continually restock due to FDA standards. Or it could just be taking advantage of people wanting an alternative.
Yeah and I'll tip a dollar when they clearly know what they're doing.
The prediction was a bust, because I haven't walked into any local coffee shops in 2024. I didn't in 2023 either.
I don't know what the lattes cost because I don't buy them. My coffee at home is great every day.
Oh I'm sorry, I thought America was all about turning the bull loose and protecting our beloved economy in its current form at all costs.
Actions have consequences. An economy designed for infinite growth/metastasis on a very finite world has consequences. We've only just begun to feel the consequences of our not merely tolerance, but encouragement of insatiable, unaccountable greed.
Buckle up. The price of lattes will be the least of our worries. Another 10 years and Chocolate and Coffee will probably be priced out for us capital batteries. Don't worry though, they'll make some cancer causing substitute that's a third as satisfying for half the price. Be sure to CONSUME it.
Make sure you have your "I got cancer from sugar substitute" insurance paid up! That won't be covered any other way! Easy and convenient payment plans start at just $195 paid every alternate 9 days! At that price you can't afford not to get it!!!
I treated myself to a latte today and it was a bit over 5 dollars. There was no tip option on the pad. This was at Dunkin
Don't visit their bathroom's tho. You might get covered with human feces.
you can do that in any bathroom
Except in this case, its WAAAAAAY worse. https://www.businessinsider.com/man-sues-dunkin-toilet-explosion-trauma-florida-2024
https://www.businessinsider.com/man-sues-dunkin-toilet-explosion-trauma-florida-2024
I normally point myself in the general direction, close my eyes, and release, along with my hopes and prayers /s
But maybe it's because people can't tear their eyes away from their phones for even the time required to urinate, and so they really have no idea what happened, but the video they're watching was hilarious.
It was a video of some jackwagon pissing on the seat.
Today a 16oz caffè latte from Starbucks was $4.95 with no modifications.
You didn't even get avocado toast? What don't you care about the economy at all?
I don't think they had that. I did see avacado cups, but no gluten involved.
Illegal immigrants should put avocados in every pocket they have before they cross. Then when they get here, they can buy a house.
Christians should tithe in avocados so the Lord will always have a house when he has his followers eat him.
Americanos used to be quite a bit cheaper than lattes. Which makes sense considering there’s no milk in them, save for any small bit of cream you put in. But sometime in the last two years they raised the price on americanos to be in line with lattes. I don’t go often, but when I do it stings to pay $6 for my drink.
I couldn't tell you, I stopped going to coffee bars when the coffee became more than half my hourly wage, I'll make my own coffee thank you very much.
Can't even go to a McDonald's anymore without spending at least $16, I've stopped going to McDonald's and started ordering Applebee's because if I'm spending $20 on a meal anyway I might as well spent $4 more on there two for 24 deal and get like three times the amount of food
I bought 4 double cheese burgers last night for less than 5 pounds. I'm in the UK though.
And have socialized healthcare (although poorly implemented).
Most of the shops got it got $8 but I van imagine some of the "fancy" shop could sell it for $12
Let me guess, that's 8 dollaridoos witbout taxes.
A latte here in NL is still € 4 with no tip required
Yes but US lattes can be close to a liter.
What the fuck
Most of our coffee is drip. Sometimes cold brew. Espesso, cappuccino, Turkish, press, etc…we don’t do that much. Fancy coffee, sure, but not our “it’s Monday and I can’t even” coffee. Or our “it’s Tuesday and I can’t even” coffee, or so on.
Fast service shops and such will have “cappuccino” or “espresso” but I think it’s either concentrate or it’s just not the same.
We do have a serious unspoken caffeine addiction though. It comes from our Protestant work ethic while having our wallets bled dry. We end up with hustle culture and a stimulant addiction. Hooray!
Never buy coffee in the states if you’re from nz/aus or Europe. You WILL be disappointed.
We do have different types of coffee, but you might have to go to a specialty shop to get it like you do at home. If you're talking about regular restaurants it's probably good advice.
I’ve seen your different types of coffee. I spent 6 months in the states, all over. I had ONE good coffee in all that time. Went to thank the Barista - and she was Australian.
Wouldn't you know it, I've been all over Europe and they don't make it quite like I do at home either.
So what's this Australian secret coffee? If you don't tell me I know another Australian I can press.
So are americans fat and lazy, or always busy and hyper work oriented? I’m losing track of the stereotypes here.
Interestingly, both. Americans are hyper work oriented because, you know, we've been trained since birth that if you don't work, you're going to suffer and die (and that's partially true, yay barely affording apartments and food), but when we get off of work, we're not going to work out, invest time in anything but watching the latest Hupeaflix show, and maybe brush our teeth before bed. Food comes out of a bag or box in the freezer, or maybe delivered with the expectation of a tip or your food gets there late, bitch.
And that's definitely just for specialty drinks, usually an up charge for additions and substitutes.
Black coffee vs a triple shot frappe with protein powder, oat milk, lavender mint syrup, on a raft, four-by-four animal-style, extra shingles with a shimmy and a squeeze, light axle grease, make it cry, burn it, and let it swim.
.. you forgot the PICKLES!
Now we just need a living wage for the customers
At least we've been always be allowed to strike by boycotting bad shops. What is the actual cost price of a latte over there?
The barista can ask their manager. If I have to come to you, that tip option doesn’t mean shit. Then I leave a 1 star review
The only exception is bartenders.
I tip every time I'm at a sit-down restaurant, and infrequently at other places (mostly local places, to keep them afloat - they have it harder than the food chains). That being said, if they want us to tip for just food prep and cooking, maybe make the food half-off, then we can tip them if the food is better than we thought? $5 burger...It was really good, I guess I will give them $9. $5 burger that is crap, well, it stays a $5 burger.
Or, hear me out, $9 burger no tip and I'll come back if it was good.
I mean, that works too I guess. But, if they insist on asking for tips, that's the only way I'm tipping at a no-service restaurant.
That's weird. My coffee is way cheaper at Dunkin Donuts and it's counter service so I don't fucking tip them.
Wrong. You tip for counter service now. You tip the gas station attendant for ringing up your bubble gum. Soon you will tip your doctor for giving you a prescription. Thanks Obama!
Maybe you do, if you're a chump!
How did Obama do this the fuck
People here who don't remember the thanks Obama meme is very sad.
Anytime anything bad happened people would say "thanks Obama" then it got turned into a meme of people saying it when it didn't even have anything to do with Obama.
It got so popular that Obama himself made a meme.
https://youtu.be/4IdzM1kmP_A?si=BjtCB_rfvoDr45I9
People don't remember the Thanks Obama meme... Thanks Obama!
Haha. Somehow I haven't seen that before. Obama was a very likeable person.
Edit: idk why I said "was". He's not dead. He is a likeable person.
Eh, Obama oversaw the expansion of our national surveillance state apparatus, so...not everybody felt he was very likable.
Oh, some of his actions were certainly not likeable, like your point, authorizing missile strikes, continuation of the war, extension of the Patriot Act, etc.. But his personality was likeable and charming, which is more than I can say for most of the President's during my lifetime.
It's not that people don't remember the meme; it's that this guy seems like he's saying it unironically.
False! Maybe your sarcasm meter is broken.
Maybe you failed to account for Poe's law.
I cannot overcome the laws of reality. All I can do is place faith in my fellow humans to rise above the need for /s tags. I figured the line about tipping doctors for writing prescriptions, and the use of a common meme were clear indications that I was being sarcastic. But I get your point, and there is a lot of crazy on the internet these days (always has been, but it's even more common now).
I got a chai tea latte from a chain called Scooter's yesterday. Six bucks. For some milk and tea. Fucking highway robbery.
Yet you bought it. If nobody bought it then he wouldn't sell.
Scooter would have to go back to living in a van, solving mysteries with 3 other strangers and a dog.
That's Shaggy. Scooter was an alien cyborg that transformed into a motorcycle.
True. I didn't know how much it would cost until I already got there and once I was there I didn't really want to go hunt down some other place, and I was in kind of a hurry. So I paid for it. Never going there again though.
A venti 591ml caffe latte from Starbucks is about 8.08$cdn before tax or tip. I don't go to Starbuck much anymore.
Easy. Just make your own coffee. It's cheap. Start with an Aero Press, a cheap grinder and a decent water cooker. Nice beans. Done.
Is a water cooker different than a kettle? Serious question from someone who just started non-drip coffee.
I think they just used that as a descriptor as you can essentially cook water in a couple of ways. Microwave in a cup, use the hot water out of a boiler or hot water attachment on machine, boil in a pot on the stove. My preference is an electric glass kettle.
Or Nespresso! Their patents have expired, so now you can enjoy a world of great and easy coffee at home without sponsoring Nestlé! Both 3rd party machines and coffee pods are available.
Aren;t those pods usually horrible for the enviroment though?
Also, it seems so incredibly expensive to drink that daily.
Usually, yes. There are reusable pods you fill with coffee grounds now, though.
First time hearing of Aero Press, interesting concept. I can also recommend the French press or going Turkish.
Aero press is the bomb when travelling. Awesome invention.
I'm leaving that tip option blank and putting a dollar in the tip jar lol
10% or 50 cents a drink and $1 for each hot meal at a counter. Servers get 20%.
Surprisingly my shitty Starbucks lattes are still around 5-6 dollars.
A bargain.
Negative tipping
2022 is not that long ago lol.
Which local coffee shop? By now there's probably 8 of them, all selling what amounts to something a well built professional coffee vending machine could produce.
Imagine a coffee vending machine with all the same ingredients that they use, which isn't much really just different coffees and syrups and milks and stuff, and has the fancy coffee making gear inside to automate the whole process, even the fancy pour designs people like.
That really doesn't sound difficult at all compared to funding an entire shop, with rent, staff, electricity for everything, all those consumables, etc etc.
I'm not saying do away with coffee shops, I'm just saying that instead of having one around every street corner, maybe replace some of them with awesome vending machines, and leave those spaces free for a non-profit community space or something :-D
We have them in the UK. They are equivalent quality coffees to the coffee shop they are branded with.
Not quite as nice as a decent non chain coffee shop and they only use cow milk, but they aren't bad.
Kinda like this? https://www.cafexapp.com/locations
Of course it's in the Texas gigafactory. Otherwise Elon might have to pay someone.
Robots don’t go union.
Yet
Latte is about €3-5 here and no tip expected, so no.
Image Transcription: Twitter Post
Chris Bakke, @ChrisJBakke
The year is 2024.
You walk into your local coffee shop. A latte costs $12.
You have the choice of tipping 75%, 95%, or 125%.
You sheepishly tap "75%" and feel bad about yourself.
The barista shakes his head in disgust.
A large smoothie at Jamba Juice was $12.61 today. (15% tip)
I remember when Jamba was good (in 2001)
Just buy fruit and make your own at this point.
I stopped tipping. I dont feel ashamed about it at all.
My dad once pulled the "there goes 5% of her tip" when a waitress at a slammed-lunch-rush-on-a-Sunday restaurant forgot his precious iced tea. I excused myself and went to the ATM at the gas station next door to get $40 cash. When the bill came, he paid for us, and as she came to pick up the receipt I stopped her and handed the money over. Dad asked me why I did that and I told him it was a lesson for him. Manners... who fucking raised these boomers?
I was there. I started slow clapping and slowly, but surely, everyone joined me as your father walked out in shame. The waitress came up to me and asked "who was that brave man that gave me that tip?" And I told her "your soul mate".
I kinda liked this ending, am I becoming a Facebook boomer? Send help
Its funny, because minimum wage laws are stagnant and tipped positions are even worse than the bottom rate. $2.35/hr to work in a position that's tipped.
I get it. Demanding 25% of the base price to pay your staff is a fucked way to do business. But if you're not going to pay them, their bosses don't seem interested in doing it either. Somebody's got to do it.
Maybe the problem with tipping is that corporations are able to play chicken with the consumer.
Who's willing to let the worker starve? The consumers are definitely more empathetic
Corpos and their willingness to weaponize empathy is pretty fucking evil.
How many restaurant owners do you know that would increase wages simply because the daily tip rate was falling?
Empathizing with one's working peers is central to emergent class consciousness. Tip your waiters today. Don't cross that picket line tomorrow. General strike the day after.
To be very clear, I sympathize with people who are stuck working a shitty job. That being said, the consumer does not have to give handouts to companies in order to pay employees. If people cannot survive off of wages being paid, they will most likely find a different job. Capitalism and the free market and all that jazz. Hit corpos in the only place they care about, their bottom line.
I'll tip regardless.
There are a lot of reasons why this doesn't hold up. The first and foremost is that transitioning jobs requires savings. The way I see it, my tips are going to help them cross the hurdle to a better job when they get sick of this one. If I withhold my financial support from my working peers, I'm only aiding the employer as their staff remains precariously positioned.
They do not appear to be any obligation to do so.
A barista isn't a tipped wage position. Virtually only restaurant servers are paid the tipped wage. Just because they put a tip jar out doesn't mean their hourly wage drops to pennies, you only get that wage if a significant amount of your income is from tips.
https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/wages/wagestips
Legally speaking, baristas can be treated as tipped wage positions so long as the tips they accumulate earn them in excess of the minimum wage. Putting out a tip jar absolutely does mean their hourly wage can be cut. And thanks to common wage-theft practices by employers and negligence by local prosecutors, an employee who falls under the minimum wage has an uphill battle to recover the difference.
It's crazy to me that people spend money on coffee from restaurants. It's literally the easiest thing to make at home for pennies.
I agree with you, but what coffee are you buying that costs pennies to make at home? I don't buy the cheapest stuff myself, but I do get bags of whole beans and grind it myself. They are way cheaper than going someplace, but definitely not pennies.
Dozens of pennies, anyway. IIRC, my back of the envelope math on the french press for two mugs every morning is something like $0.30 per mug, and that's including an estimate of the electricity to heat the water. Tend to use a pour over these days, and the bean usage is slightly more (50g vs 42g).
I'm not buying the most elite coffee in the world, nor am I buying bullshit. Kinda like the middle of the road brand? I'm Canadian, so like 3 weeks of coffee costs around $10. I make enough for me and my partner to have a cup or 2 every single morning. Let's say conservatively that we have 1 cup each every day for 3 weeks. That's 42 cups of coffee for around $10. 10/42 = 24 cents per cup of coffee. Under a quarter = pennies.
Truth my espresso machine was $300 on sale + $100 grinder and beans are typically $20.
And this is without the fancy accessories most people buy. Also that being said lattes nowadays running $7.50 so I'm pretty sure it would only take ~2 months to break even
I said coffee, not espresso. I'm talkin drip coffee my guy. I'm talking about the people who would go to Starbucks every morning and throw down $3-5 for drip coffee.
I suspect the vast majority of people sitting in the line that wraps around the building at Starbucks are getting fancy ass coffee flavored milkshakes.
I don't know anyone that actually likes the coffee at Starbucks.
When they had the clover pour over machines it was nice. Their normal drip is over roasted garbage. It also REALLY gives me caffeine jitters.
Say you're buying the really good stuff for $15/12oz. Thats roughly 340g of coffee, with each shot of espresso being 10g at most.
So $15/34 shots works put to just shy of $0.50/shot, and that for stunningly pricey coffee. You can get that to $0.25/shot with bulk premium coffee or cheaper stuff. Add boiling water, and that espresso shot is a cup of Americano.
Still pennies a cup, even if it's 25 or 50 of them.
$12 is also pennies just 1,200 of them
A standard espresso double shot, which is what you would get in anything but the smallest espresso drinks, is around 18g. I do find 10g to be enough for my morning 150ml cup (assuming some absorption by the coffee), but drip or immersion brewing extracts a bit more than espresso just due to the huge volume difference
You forget to add in the price of the equipment. A coffee grinder alone can set you back $4000. An espresso machine can go up to $30,000
Sure, you can get cheaper equipment but does that give you the same quality as you get in a coffee shop that does use that kind of kit?
And there is the space requirement as well.
Whoa, where are you getting these prices from? An espresso made from a $2000 machine will taste exactly like an espresso made from a $30,000 machine XD
AFAIK the quality of the grinder makes a huge difference at least, especially for espresso.
As for the prices, example of a high-end coffee machine: https://www.simonelliusa.com/Black-Eagle
High-end grinder: https://weberworkshops.com/products/eg-1
I honestly wouldn't know either way.
This topic kind of reminds me of the people who believe that they can taste and distinguish each one of dozens of notes within a bottle of wine. When that's put to the test, people fail it practically every time.
I could maybe see it happening with this, depending on the materials that the grinder was made out of. Some super cheap appliances might be made out of a toxic material that also spreads a bad odour/taste. The intensity of the grind itself could definitely play a role in flavour too.
I might test this one day, now I'm curious lol
With coffee it’s mainly the consistency of the grind. You want all particles to be the same size. Larger particles take longer to extract than smaller articles, and if it’s uneven you over/under extract parts of the coffee depending on grain size. This affects the flavor of the coffee. E.g. under-extracted is sour, and over-extracted too bitter.
An even grind requires a machine that’s been built with precision components and that’s expensive to make.
Cheaper equipment does give better coffee, yes.
Don't tell me how fucking good my coffee is, ok? I know how fucking good it is. Because I fucking bought it ok? My wifes coffee tastes like shit. Because she buys shit coffee. But I'm not worried about the fucking coffre in my kitchen.
I don’t own the $10000 marzocco espresso machine that produces consistent heat and pressure to brew espresso correctly and steam milk so it froths without scorching, nor do I have years of experience to do that correctly, and I’d rather meet friends out than keeping my home perfectly clean so guests can come over any time.
Always enjoy yourself, but check out the bambino plus. It pulls beutiful shots with lovely crema and has a simple and excellent auto frother, all for $4-500.
I appreciate the recommendation but I don’t have $400 to spend on an espresso machine either 😅
I'm over here with my 25€ cast iron teapot and 60€ kettle wondering if coffee drinkers are alright
When I make it at home I use a US$25 pour-over pot and a US$30 electric kettle.
You really don't need all that shit. An Aeropress, a french press, and/or chemex-style pour over all goes for <$50 each and isn't particularly difficult to learn how to use. Need a kettle and a good grinder. Grinder is the only thing worth spending money on, but for this setup, even a $200 grinder is probably overkill. You just don't want the bottom of the barrel blade grinders.
I have a friend who went the aeropress route and he confirms there is a difference between that and the professionally made coffee we get at the coffee shop we both go to. Which is where we met, not incidentally—cheap at-home “espresso” still doesn’t answer the part about going to a public place where you can meet other people at random.
The one thing I'll pay for is espresso. Good espresso is incredible, and it's nearly impossible to do well without spending over $1000. Cheap espresso makers have channeling problems, or can't produce proper pressure, or both. You also need a very fine grind, so you're spending even more on the higher end grinders.
Sometimes I like paying for the experience of going and getting a cappuccino from a bougie coffee place instead of filter coffee from my crappy machine xD