Coffee at home & value

Why pay $4 for a cup of coffee when something comparable could be made at home for less than a dollar?

Coffee at home 

At home, you must keep coffee-making ingredients in stock. Furthermore, you have to make that coffee. For a rather plain person like me who drinks coffee black or with a bit of half-and-half, this isn't much to ask. However, for more complex flavors, more preparation may be necessary. Also, you have to do your dishes. In short, you probably have to do more work to have a coffee at home than elsewhere.

However, you may have your home situation set up so that you are able to enjoy many things with a home brewed coffee that you cannot at a typical coffee-sipping establishment. There may be "free" refills ☕ You may have your personal library nearby, a superior playlist (or lack thereof if you prefer silence), and a seat with a power outlet. You may have art on the walls that you selected yourself.

Conversely, you may have a messy desk/dining table, trash smells leaking from the corner of the room, yesterday's assignment you haven't yet finished staring you in the face, and dysfunctional people next door causing a ruckus. Ugh... take me to Starbucks, buy me a hazelnut latte, and call me basic, I'm ready! 😀

Paying for value

A decent coffee shop will minimally provide a clean space, with some places to sit, some anonymity or privacy to sip a drink alone or meet with up to a few friends, and possibly some air conditioning or other fixtures (e.g. blinds, outdoor seating) to make things comfortable.

Is your home a competitor for the market of your coffee purchasing? How can you upgrade the value of your home coffee drinking establishment to rise to the level of nearby competition if it is not there already?

Creating value

Thinking about the whys and why nots of the choices we make can be helpful for figuring out what we consider valuable and worth paying for. Why would I rather drink coffee out than in?

If the answer to this question begins with, for example, "a clean table/desk", then the way to upgrade the home establishment coffee company is not to go and buy a new coffee maker from the interwebs. The taste of the coffee is likely not the main problem; there may be other sources of bitterness.

A meditation about why you would even want to go out to a coffee shop at all may reveal opportunities for you to create more value where you live today.