Coffee at $7 a cup? One of many price rises coming
21 March 2022
Crop shortages in Brazil, the rising price of oil, and surging freight costs, could see a cup of coffee setting you back as much as seven-dollars by the end the year, says David Parnham, of the Cafe Owners and Baristas Association of Australia. Speaking to the ABC, Parnham said the price of a cup of coffee was long overdue for an adjustment, having remained relatively stable for some years:
The pain will be felt from the cities to the outback, but Mr Parnham said the increase was well overdue, with the average $4 price for a standard latte, cappuccino and flat white remaining stable for years. “The reality is it should be $6-7. It’s just that cafes are holding back on passing that pricing on per cup to the consumer,” he said.
How things have changed. About four years ago a well-run cafe’s cost to produce a cup of coffee was less than a third of the price they charged. To maintain a profit of at least two-dollars per cup, based on a selling price of say six-dollars (can you imagine it?), means the cost of making that cuppa will have risen to four-dollars.
The markup on coffee is higher than most food items. In fact, it’s only rivalled by the markup on craft beer. An average cup of coffee costs less than a dollar to produce, yet it usually sells for around $3.50. Other items on the menu have a much smaller profit margin. Coffee sales alone should constitute 25-35% of your gross.
The average price of a coffee in the areas I’m in and out of is about $4.50. They might have been about $3 ten years ago, and price rises to date — at the cafes I frequent — have usually been in twenty to fifty cent increments, maybe every few years. To think we might be seeing possibly two one-dollar increases in the next nine months is incredible.
We’re a nation of coffee devotees, but I wonder at what point cafe customers might decide a cup of coffee costs too much, and decide to look at alternatives, or simply cut back their consumption. I’m all for small businesses making a go of it, I’m one myself, but I think cafes will need to tread carefully — somehow — when it comes to passing on costs.
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Virtual Literary Speed Dating 2022
21 March 2022
The Australian Society of Authors (ASA) is hosting several virtual literary speed dating events this year for its members. Prospective authors will be given three minutes to pitch their completed manuscript to local literary agents and publishers, at online events in May, and then again a few months later.
Canberra based Australian author Shelley Burr is a literary speed dating success story, having found a publisher for her debut novel Wake, at an event in December 2020. Here’s speed dating that’s worth participating in.
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Cats & Books, the book
21 March 2022
If you’ve spent any time on Bookstagram you’ll know cats and books are pretty much synonymous. Enter Cats & Books, filled with images sourced from the #CatsandBooks hastag, is then the logical confluence of such an association.
This charming photo book of precious kitties with books from the popular Instagram hashtag, #CatsandBooks, is a crowd-sourced effort from various owners of both discerning cats and book taste.
Dogs & Books must be next.
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The Stella Prize and the difference it has made
21 March 2022
The winners of Australian literary award, the Stella Prize, which recognises the work of Australian women and non-binary writers, talk about how the now decade old prize transformed their writing careers, and Australian literature.
Clare Wright is an academic at La Trobe University, and she says winning the Stella was invaluable to her burgeoning career as an author. “Stella really gave me a platform, and it gave me a microphone, and people wanted to hear the things that I had to say – about not only the subject of that book, but also about women in history, about history writing, about gender relations more broadly,” she says.
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A trailer for The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent
19 March 2022
The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, trailer, directed by Tom Gormican, seems like it is a movie for movie people, about movie people, by movie people:
A cash-strapped Nicolas Cage agrees to make a paid appearance at a billionaire super fan’s birthday party, but is really an informant for the CIA since the billionaire fan is a drug kingpin and gets cast in a Tarantino movie.
But it is a little more than that. As of the time of writing The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent was enjoying a one-hundred percent rating on film and television review-aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes. It is a rare distinction, and in doing so rubs shoulders with the likes of Three Colors: Red directed by Krzysztof Kieslowski, Singin’ in the Rain from 1952, Slalom, directed by Charlène Favier, and Before Sunrise starring Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke.
The title’s Metacritic score meanwhile is a slightly more circumspect seventy-eight out of one hundred. A release to look out for nonetheless.
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2022 Australian Book Design Awards longlist
18 March 2022
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Fiction titles are essentially separated into four groups, children’s, young adult, commercial, and literary. The Other Side of Beautiful, by South Australian author Kim Lock, The Younger Wife, by Melbourne novelist Sally Hepworth, are among candidates in the commercial fiction category, while In Moonland, by Miles Allinson, is one of the nominations in the literary fiction segment.
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18 March 2022
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“I was brought on, to quote The Godfather, as a wartime consigliere, to see the festival through the COVID period, and it was only ever a kind of interim posting. It was going to be the one year. Then, quite apart from anything else, last year’s was so much fun, it was such a wonderful job and wonderful organisation that I couldn’t resist doing a matched pair.”
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17 March 2022
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17 March 2022
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OK. Should not have logged on to your email but suggest if going on marriedaffair.com don’t use our children’s names as password.
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The 2022 Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize
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