Starbucks’ Howard Schultz can posture and blow smoke about how evil speculators are spiking the price of coffee, but that’s just theater. Starbucks’ biggest expense in the coffee delivery chain is labor costs.

And people overwhelmingly love the convenience of paying others to do their labor for them. It’s ignorant to pretend this economic force doesn’t exist.

I agree on the point “…I make espresso at home, it’s either because I want something specific that I can’t find in shops,… or that it’s convenient. It’s never to save any money.”
Even my colleague only counts the Rp (not $) he spent on coffee (per serving) only when he’s trying to count how much money does he actually spend when he’s using a handheld, manual, espresso device, with N20 cartridges.

Aside from that… Only the machine’s price does matter. The only thing matters after that is how much you can lobby your spouse on your coffee beans and milk shopping each month (as what happened to my other colleague)…

1) I do not, nor have I ever, owned a coffee shop. But I do own a relatively decent home espresso setup that cost me over $1,000 in grinder and machine.

2) I even roast my own coffee at home. This should apparently be saving me scads more money than those foolish saps who get raped buying only roasted beans in the stores at a 2x mark-up over buying unroasted green beans.

3) The point still stands: people do not operate by rational thought alone, particularly when it involves their own effort. This is why diets fail so miserably for so many billions of people.

With my home setup in use for the past 9 years, factoring in my time and the quality of supplies I get to make it worth my while, it’s a toss up as to whether my home setup net saves me any real money or not. When I make espresso at home, it’s either because I want something specific that I can’t find in shops, that I want something better (though there’s a lot of excellent retail options out there now), or that it’s convenient. It’s never to save any money.

News Flash: Save yourself $2k/year+ and make your own.

As an extreme example to illustrate this point (is this really so hard to understand??), imagine that I am a Wall Street trader dealing in the bulk sales of questionable mortgage derivatives who pulls in $10 million annually. That comes out to around $5,000 an hour for a 40-hour work week.

Are you telling me that the time and effort I spend making coffee at home will actually save me money compared to my spending that time on the phone fleecing some bank or wannabe homeowner?

You cannot be serious (or fiscally sane).

It may take a pro a mere minute to make one of these milkshakes in a cafe, but much of the set-up, warm-up, take-down, clean-up, etc., that happens every day at a café must now happen for one customer: you. Just last week, I had a barista spend 10 minutes tuning his machine and getting his shots right for my single espresso, as I was the first customer of his business day.

As for time, we’re always forced to make choices to do x or y as an opportunity cost. Because what wouldn’t be cheaper if we did it ourselves? Heck, we could be building our own cars from kits if that’s the ultimate criteria here — and most of us own cars. So simply saying “it’s cheaper to do it yourself” offers zero additional useful information. That’s a moot point without the additional context.