The Price of Tea

[jacey]

We've just returned for a weekend away - down in East Horsley at a family party with Number One Daughter and her outlaws (soon-to-be-inlaws). The exorbitant price of a cup of tea from the Costa Coffee shop on the motorway reminded me of an incident some ten years ago.

This was in our Artisan days so Hilary, Brian and I were on our way home from the Monday folk club gig in Boston and we did our usual half-way pit-stop at one in the morning at the services on the A1 at Grantham. On a Monday night there are not a lot of folks in those places, so there was one assistant and a woman on the till. In those days Hilary and I used to drink Earl Grey tea and the usual format when arriving at the tea counter was that the assistant would take one of the stainless steel teapots, tip the pre-insterted normal teabag out, put in an Earl Grey teabag from the box, fill it up with hot water and slide it over. No fuss. Same price as ordinary Tetleys.

So on this occasion we got to the tea counter and the assistant reached for a stainless steel coffeepot which is similar but a slightly different shape to the teapot and - more importantly - has a slightly smaller capacity. Not liking my tea strong, I immediately pointed to a normal teapot and asked if could please have it in one of those. You could not make up what followed

ME: Can I have it in one of those, please?
HER: No, sorry I can't do that.
ME: Why not?
HER: Well, Earl Grey is more expensive, but since we charge the same price as regular tea we give you less.
ME: Yes, but it's still only one teabag and one pot to wash up. The difference is only a splash or two of hot water so what difference does it make?
HER: (Duh? expression)
ME: It's not costing you any more to make the Earl Grey in the normal size pot. I'm not asking for an extra teabag or anything.
HER: But its more expensive tea so you get less for the price we charge. If we gave it to you in a bigger pot we'd have to charge you more.
ME: But... but...
HER: That's what my manager says.
ME: But I like my tea weak, so when you put a teabag into a tiddly little coffeepot like that it's too strong by the time I can get it to the table and fish the bag out.
HER: Why not have a pot of hot water with it, then?
ME: Yeah, OK, anything. How much is a pot of hot water?
HER: Nothing,

Riiight...

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

That makes no sense at all. As you say.
My bugbear is around coffee. I drink my coffee black -- so fancy coffee shops hold no interest for me anyway, as I don't want the eight-kinds-of-milk-twelve-flavours-of-syrup, but what really winds me up is when coffee is poured for you, you say 'black please' and end up with essentially half a cup -- the same amount that the milk-adders get. Either half the price is the cost of the milk (which I don't believe) or they just aren't thinking. Oh, and much hotel coffee is very nasty when drunk black!

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

I find coffee is often disappointing. It never tastes as good as it smells. Ususally that's because the coffee is pre-ground and all the oils have evaporated off. I grind my own beans and I'm dead finicky. I even have a little half-inch brush to clean the inside of the coffe grinder after eery grind because the grounds left clinging to the innards can go rancid.

:-)

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Now that is how coffee should be made... I strongly suspect many hotels of using the cheapest instant (the powdered kind -- always nasty) and then diluting it.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

I think even when they use ground coffee, they do lots of little things that destroy the flavour. Probably they buy coffee pre-ground and then having on a burner-plate after being filtered will scorch it to bitterness pretty quickly, for instance.

And then there's Starbucks whose coffee should be good but is rather meh. I met someone in the USA who worked for them and he reckoned they over-roasted their beans. He said if you could get some of the ones thay did as staff specials, they were much better than the ones sold in their shops.

So sometimes even the specialists can get it wrong.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

When they first appeared and offered different varieties, I would go into Starbucks. But a bland Americano is now all they offer me, so I just walk on by.