End KeepCup Prejudice Now, Snobaristas! or, Keep On Keeping Up, KeepCup!

Lisa Dempster has written an excellent article on I eat I drink I work exploring the intricacies of the coffee surcharge, from decaf to mocha to - the main interest of this writer - soy milk. I have always hated but accepted with grumpy surliness the soy surcharge imposed by almost every coffee shop, but Lisa's interviews with various coffee vendors has shown that soy really does cost extra, and despite the call that the extra cost should be averaged out over all beverages, the imperative of the business owner to, you know, make a proft from their business makes an end to the soycharge (ha!) unlikely.

But what really grabbed me was a comment on Lisa's blog that some Melbourne coffee shops have taken to placing a surcharge on, or even refusing to use, KeepCups.

I love KeepCups. They're well designed, they're environmentally loving, they're cute, they'r easy to clean, and they have really caught on with consumers. And what's more, they save the vendor money in not using a disposable cup and not costing them washing up resources. Big shout out here to my regular coffee vendors, Espresso Depot at 1 Collins Street, who after noticing my KeepCup got really excited and started selling the cups themselves. 

I was outraged to hear that some businesses aren't behind the BYO cup surge sweeping the city. But I was even more shocked to experience not hours later my own instance of KeepCup Prejudice!

I went to a team meeting at - name and shame! - City Wine Bar on Spring Street. I asked for my coffee to be put in my KeepCup so I could take it away in case I didn't finish it. I can only surmise that the City Wine Bar's cultivated European atmosphere would be offended by the interloping plastic of my KeepCup, as I was told that store policy was to not allow KeepCups on the table - but they would do takeaways. Quelle bloody horreur!

I kept my KeepCup on the table throughout the meeting - empty, but who was to know? - for over an hour. No staff member asked me to put it away. No uber-too-cool-for-school trendoids fainted. No coiffeured besuited ladies sniffed. No one spat. And then I left, having bought nothing, to go and get my coffee on my way back to the office from the place I like best.

In Grade 4 my teacher banned the phrase "I don't get it" from his classroom. But I don't. There's nothing particularly nice about 100-washes old glass tumblers (and if you Snobaristas think that my coffee will just taste better in one, then leave that to me to decide). There's certainly nothing nice about single use cardboard cups. If you want to impose an aesthetic standard, then start with banning skinny jeans that reveal circumcision status and faux-Rihanna mohawks.

So get on board. Bringing your own cup is sensible, less costly to the vendor, promoting environmentally sustainable choices, and just doing your bit. 

*Disclaimer: I have two KeepCups (Small: white with chocolate trim, light mushroom lid and matt chocolate plug. Medium: white with light green trim, dark mushroom lid and chocolate plug). My sister has two (One medium like mine. One medium: white with fuschia trim, chocolate lid and aqua plug). Buzz has one (Medium: black with chocolate trim, black lid, chocolate plug). Toby has Darth Vader (Black. Just black). Lots of people have them. Speed up.

The Commune coffee - Oh Soy Drinkers, How We Suffer! The Commune, East Melbourne.

Ah, such is the lot of a soy drinker. Used to being slugged a surcharge for our soy drinking at every turn, this earns grizzles and grumbles but we usually succumb to our caffeine cravings and ask for an extra-large cup anyway.

It is my understanding that a coffee loyalty card entitles the bearer to one free coffee after a certain number are purchased. Some restrictions may apply, if published on said card, but in general the coffee purveyor accepts that in exchange for the repeat business of their customers, a small loss may be incurred when the unscrupulous suddenly upgrade their freebie.

Not so the owners of The Commune – Basement 2-6 Parliament Place East Melbourne, www.thecommune.com.au – which services the captive audience of bureaucrats around St Andrews Place, Macarthur Street and Treasury Place. Their freebie comes with (unpublished) caveats – soy drinkers must pay for their soy as an ‘add-on’ even when a free coffee is reached, and even when they have purchased the requisite number of soy-filled coffees. Apparently this is because some customers would ‘suddenly’ upgrade to soy on their freebie (at the wallet-busting cost of up to 80 whole cents a pop)!

As a soy drinker I find this highly suspect. Non-soy drinkers hate soy. You do, you tell us all the time. I find it a stretch to think that hordes of devious caffeine addicts would consider the opportunity to sneakily add soy to their free coffee an irresistible temptation to commit fraud. Some might do it for an extra shot, maybe; or some vanilla syrup, likely. But I can’t for the life of me imagine a dairy-drinker gleefully whispering “Today I will get soy! For free! Oh mwahahaha!”.

So what other reason could there be? Arrogance, perhaps. This writer has already been on the receiving end of unsolicited public soy-bashing from staff at The Commune (written about in a blog piece when she was too discreet to name and shame), or perhaps it is simply the opportunity to express disdain of ‘not real coffee’. In that case, please add a $10 charge to every small weak skinny decaff and refuse to serve anything but a short black after 10am.

A step too far, Commune. Sort yourselves out.