Why are coffee cups getting smaller and more expensive?

I don't know if you have noticed that there are more and more coffee shops, but the number of coffee cups is getting smaller and smaller.

In the past, walking on the street, the coffee cups held by pedestrians were large cups like 500ml (16oz).

In the past two years, we can see that the coffee cups in the hands of pedestrians have shrunk by a circle, only 250-300ml (8-10oz). For coffee, which is halved in half, the price is getting more and more expensive instead of falling.

Is it true that coffee shops are becoming more and more "chicken thieves" nowadays? If you look at the volume and price of the cup alone, the current coffee shop simply treats its guests like leeks. But if you drink a cup with the mentality of leek, you will find that except for the American style and latte, there are two completely different cups of coffee in taste. Today's coffee cups are small, but they taste so much better.

If we look at it from the perspective of the production process, you will know that behind the small cup volume is not the "chicken thief" of the coffee shop, but a quality revolution. Here is an example of American and latte, the two most common coffees. Coffee shop practice is espresso mixed with water. If the extraction scheme of espresso is the same, the amount of 500ml cup is double espresso and then mixed with water of 500ml (reference ratio 1: 1, 7: 1, 1: 8), and the current 250 ml cup is also double espresso, then mixed with water to 250ml (reference ratio: 1: 1: 4: 1: 5).

In this case, in fact, the amount of small cups is just less water, making the coffee taste more rich. Of course, this is in the case of the same concentration extraction parameters, in reality, the gap between the two will be greater, because in the past, the amount of double concentrated powder was generally 14g, while now double concentrated will use more coffee powder, generally at 18g. The situation of latte is similar to that of American style, except that water is replaced with milk. Large cups will add more milk, while small cups will add much less milk. The fact that lattes are smaller is not that coffee shops are trying to save the cost of milk, but that they are now paying more attention to the ratio of coffee to milk. Adding more milk does not mean that the latte will taste better, but will mask the taste of the coffee. The reason why today's lattes use the small cup quantity of 300ml is that based on the double concentrated base, the milk mixed with 1-5-1-1-6 has the best taste.

At present, there is another very important reason why many coffee shops do not offer large cups of coffee, that is, large cups seem to be very cost-effective, but in fact, they cannot be finished at all, some because they are too large to finish, and some because they are slow to drink. As a result, the coffee becomes bad when it is cold. Therefore, the amount of coffee has changed from the era of "medium cup" between three cups to a fixed small cup in a coffee shop.

And now the reduction of coffee is more expensive than before, a big reason is the use of higher-quality coffee beans. For example, SOE coffee, which is now popular, can cost 20 or 30 yuan for a small cup. Among them, the higher price than ordinary coffee is the higher cost of higher quality coffee beans.