It wasn’t until I received a notification from the Monzo app that I realised I’d spent nearly £10 on two coffees. This wasn’t in the Wolseley or even within the M25, but in Two Magpies, a café in Holt, our local market town in Norfolk – for two regular lattes (admittedly with an extra shot, since it was Monday morning) for myself and a friend.
Just last year, I was taken aback when my caffeine fix crossed the £4 threshold, with the barista casually mentioning that coffee prices were rising. But £4.70 feels like it’s firmly in the ‘taking the mickey’ territory. I haven’t been back since (I’m currently writing this in a different café) because I know I’d be unable to resist exclaiming ‘HOW MUCH?’ in the same indignant tone older generations use when confronted by a menu full of cortados, flat whites and Americanos, when all they want is the simple white coffee they’re familiar with.
According to the Office for National Statistics, the price of coffee at restaurants and cafés increased by 5 per cent last year – double the rate of inflation. £3-something is the norm, and £4-plus is becoming increasingly common. But the £5 coffee era is fast approaching – and in some places, it’s already here. At the Black Sheep Coffee chain, a large flat white will cost you £5.10. An extra large takeaway coffee from Starbucks is close to a fiver – much more if bought at a motorway service station.
Here’s the thing: I don’t want one of these massive, Americanised milkshakes. I just want a regular, reasonably priced takeaway, the kind that, as a child of the 1990s, I consider my birthright.
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