Ice: 1. Water in its solid state. 2. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement 3: Part of O’Shea Jackson and Tracy Lauren Marrow’s stage names.
Ice is refreshing on a sticky summer day in Atlanta, life threatening in the winter icicle form and obviously a legitimate identity for a rapper. However, Starbucks and other coffee companies have unjustly mistreated these frozen molecules in an attempt to scam coffee addicts out of their daily or hourly amount of caffeine.
If you think about it, when you purchase an iced coffee from one of these establishments the majority of your money is indeed going to ice, a commodity that by itself or as an ice water is free.
So why are we wasting our cherished BuzzCard cash (that our parents most likely loaded up for us) on what quickly becomes diluted coffee water due to the piping hot coffee to ice ratio?
Why are we ordering “Grande” and “Venti” iced coffees in order to become sufficiently caffeinated?
The coffee cart in the College of Computing, run by Java World, produced a solution so genius that it is crazy no other coffee business is following suit.
The answer: ice cubes made out of coffee. A 12 oz. iced coffee with these frozen coffee cubes from the CoC coffee cart is only $1.70 after tax.
Comparatively, at the new Highland Bakery, a small 12 oz. iced coffee with regular ice cubes is $2 after tax and a “Tall” 12 oz. Starbucks iced coffee is $2.11 after tax.
Dunkin Doughnuts also uses regular ice cubes, but they adjust the ice flaw by having a small at 16 oz. rather than a 12 oz. coffee at $1.93 after tax.
However, the iced coffee at the CoC is still the cheapest and best option for undiluted iced coffee on campus. It would be worthwhile, both for students and businesses, for Starbucks, Dunkin Doughnuts and Highland Bakery to also use coffee ice cubes in their beverages.
It is obviously more expensive and time consuming to make the ice cubes out of coffee, but these companies can use Folgers or a cheaper coffee option as the ice cube in order to keep costs down and still offer undiluted iced coffee.
Using coffee ice cubes is clearly more appreciated by the consumer, but this gives the company no real incentive. Consumers will have more coffee and be less likely to order more iced coffees throughout the day. But should customer service not be the top priority of companies?
I know from personal experience, after discovering the coffee ice cube iced coffee at the CoC coffee cart, I have severed my ties completely with the companies that use regular ice in their iced coffees, so really there would be more business at these coffee locations with coffee ice cubes.
Sometimes I want cold coffee, not ice with a splash of coffee on top.