I know Starbucks dodge their taxes, but I didn't realised that they get free electricity to steam the milk, grind the beans and boil the water. Also I was not aware that all of their staff worked on a voluntary basis and they got their stores rent and rates free.

Or would you like to revise your estimated cost?

I'd love to.
Grind the beans - 0.5p
Boil the water (it takes about 4 minutes to boil 1 litre of water with a 1 kw element. at 14p per kwh that makes it less than 1p.
300ml of milk is a bit of an over estimate, more like 200ml. At Tesco 2.27 L costs £1 so 200ml would be 8p.
I wasn't going to include the cost of a barista as the price I quoted was for making it yourself but even so I will include it a barista earns say £10 per hour it takes them about 1 minute to make a coffee. That would add an extra 17p to a cup.
Coffee £1.70 for 250g means 10g for a cup costs 7p
As for the cost of the shop, I get mine to-go so don't use their facilities.
Even so that still only comes to:

Boil Water 1p
Grind Beans 0.5p
Milk 8p
Coffee 7p
Barista Wages 17p
Total 33.5p

A large coffee only costs about 30p to make (300ml milk, 10g of ground coffee) so even if you get a free one you will still be ripped off when use the voucher to buy them at full price.

A large coffee only costs about 30p to make (300ml milk, 10g of ground coffee) so even if you get a free one you will still be ripped off when use the voucher to buy them at full price.

You could add the voucher to your "App" and buy another voucher.... Continual "Free" coffees until the offer expires!

so buy gift card..get free coffee..sell gift card to mate for 9 quid at least..basically 1 quid coffee

I'd love to.
Grind the beans - 0.5p
Boil the water (it takes about 4 minutes to boil 1 litre of water with a 1 kw element. at 14p per kwh that makes it less than 1p.
300ml of milk is a bit of an over estimate, more like 200ml. At Tesco 2.27 L costs £1 so 200ml would be 8p.
I wasn't going to include the cost of a barista as the price I quoted was for making it yourself but even so I will include it a barista earns say £10 per hour it takes them about 1 minute to make a coffee. That would add an extra 17p to a cup.
Coffee £1.70 for 250g means 10g for a cup costs 7p
As for the cost of the shop, I get mine to-go so don't use their facilities.
Even so that still only comes to:

Boil Water 1p
Grind Beans 0.5p
Milk 8p
Coffee 7p
Barista Wages 17p
Total 33.5p

You forgot the cost of the red paper mass produced cup :wink:

So instead of topping your card up, buy a new one get the free drink and add it to your account and then transfer the £10 onto your existing card

you missed quite a lot, cost of cups, cost of the capital spent on a store, VAT, the rent and rates can be £100k PA plus and I do mean plus, smallest costa in one of our local shopping centres pays over £150k a year, salaries will be higher, NI, pension, the staffs free bag of coffee a month, water rates, electricity, gas oh the lists go on :smiley: Costa has a lot of franchises, they charge a percentage of the sales to use the name, you needed something like £250k for the fitting of the store had to be self funded, £250k liquid cash and the ability to raise more cash if needed, many of the starbucks are also francises. All for a cup of coffee my grandparents would never have thought we would be going into a shop to buy :smiley:

if you think the coffee is bad have a look at this from a US car wash firm

http://www.mrcleancarwash.com/franchising

could I use the card to buy another card etc etc etc?