The world's most expensive coffee

I was once having a discussion with my mom in the kitchen table.

She was considering replacing our little espresso machine with one of those capsule machines that everyone uses. After all, it's more practical and convenient. No need to grind coffee beans, add the powder, and then dump it in the bin. The capsules make it easy - you just pop one in, press a button, et voilà. Of course George Clooney would endorse it.

But I stopped her.

"Mom, have you done the math on how much this costs?"

"Not really. But they're not that expensive."

Well, actually, they are.

We grabbed the weight scale and opened one of the capsules. We poured the powder on the scale.

We weighed it. At the modest price of 0,30 cents of the euro per capsule, a kilo of this capsule coffee comes out at roughly 60€.

Quite the price hike, compared to the normal coffee bag costing around 12€ per kilo. And we can't blame that one on inflation.

This little trick is actually genius. Of course, people use capsule coffee because it's more convenient, clean, and easy. But to be honest, it's not that much work compared to using a french press.

What these capsules have done is actually change the packaging to put a 6x multiplier on the price. Instead of selling it by the bag, they introduced a new concept and pushed it to the market. The same effect we see with drink sizes in Starbucks ("If I get the larger one it's just a few cents more! Might as well get more of this ridiculously overpriced coffee") can also be applied in the reverse: reduce the size, change the packaging, and increase the prices.

So, a question for you: how can you change the way your offer is presented to make it more appealing to the consumer and therefore increase the prices?