Coffee Talk

In the words of Linda Richmond, “Dial 555-4444, cawll me and we’ll tawlk.” Coffee Talk was a fake talk show done by Mike Myers on Saturday Night Live.^TM Every time I make a date to have coffee with someone, Linda’s raspy New York accent rings in my head, it makes me giggle every time. It’s the smallest and most intimate “event” one can schedule. Coffee at a local shop with a dear friend.

I wrote about the price of coffee (among other things) in my blog The New Liquid Gold. It’s still one of my favorite blogs. The $16.40 cup of coffee for the event I was working on at the time seemed preposterous. As I sat sipping my $7.14 caramel latte waiting for my friend to arrive, I wondered if the price of convention center coffee had shifted at all.

After a little bit of research and discussions with other planners, I discovered that the language in some contracts has changed. Instead of offering a per gallon price for coffee, they’re now offering a price for “3-gallons of coffee which generally yields 40 cups.” I was surprised how many times I encountered this verbiage verses the standard price per gallon. It’s a nifty way to say, “we’re still going to charge you as much or more but make it feel like you’re getting a bargain.” The going rate for 3-gallons is around $450. Add 8% sales tax and a 28% service fee (of course we have to account for the ++), divide by 40 and these days we’re looking at $15.55 per cup of coffee. Down $0.85 per cup from before. Hmmm. Also as Linda Richmond would say, “I’m verklempt, tawlk amongst yourselves.”

Personally, I still think it’s way too much for what’s required; water, beans, and heat. But I get that everyone needs to be paid. According to Macrotrends, the basic price of coffee beans per pound in January 2016 was $1.17. In January 2026, it was $3.60 per pound. That’s a 208% increase. By comparison, in the same years, the price of sugar has increased 3.5%, the price of corn is up 20%, and the price of chicken has increased by 41.3% (we feel this when talking with caterers, no?). The law of supply and demand is a very real thing. However, according to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics Data (and summarized by AI), the average cost of living from 2016 to 2026 has increased between 30.5% to 35%. With coffee up 208% how are we supposed to keep feeding our coffee habit at these ratios?

But I digress.

Since I work primarily with association and nonprofit organizations, watching the budget is paramount. Paying a zillion dollars to feed our attendees’ coffee habits is often just not feasible, however, when we don’t, our survey results suffer. The first year we tried to cut back and remove morning coffee, I thought our poor staff and volunteers were going to be carried off by an uncaffeinated mob thinking we’d betrayed them somehow. Since necessity is the mother of invention (or so the saying goes), we tried to come up with some creative ways to still offer to supply our attendees with their morning boost and not break the bank in the process.

Of course the first idea was to offer it as part of a sponsorship package. However, as our vendors are also almost entirely associations and nonprofits, their budgets cannot sustain the amount of money it costs to serve 2500 people coffee in the morning either. We also tried to break it up by offering different sponsorships for different coffee station locations, for cups, for sleeves, for napkins, and such. This was a bit overcomplicated.

Another idea was to offer a coffee tasting. We asked local coffee shops if they wanted to participate in this morning event, offering small sips of their locally sourced coffee, and perhaps providing coupons or samples for attendees to take home. We also allowed them to sell a limited menu of their signature drinks so attendees could get more of the ones they liked and keep the lines moving. This worked out pretty well but we needed to make room in the schedule to accommodate it. We had more time than money so the trade off was worth it.

One really outrageous idea we had was to find out where the largest coffee manufacturers were located in the US and either ask for donations or sponsorships, or consider moving the conference to their city and work out some type of partnership. Hawaii is the location with the largest number of coffee companies, however, getting there is a bit problematic. We would have just exchanged our cost of coffee for flights, hotels, ground transportation, and pretty much everything else as it’s all imported. Other location options included Burlington, Massachusetts, Frisco, Texas, and parts of California depending on which coffee company we chose. This one is still on the table but I’ll keep you posted.

In the meantime, I’m waiting for my friend to arrive, watching the patrons come and go; fascinated by the length of the lines, sizes of the drinks, and wondering what Linda Richmond would say about this.

Have you had to be creative in offering coffee at your event? Share your story here or
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