New measuring instrument to map inflation concretely: the cappuccino index
If the reports about inflation sometimes seem both alarming and just not quite concrete to you, this might be much easier to imagine. Read here how a national newspaper is helping make inflation visible by looking at the price increase of a cup of cappuccino; the cappuccino index…
When I happened to look through my daughter’s geography textbooks last year, it came up again: the Big Mac index. Probably in an attempt to make the bone-dry chapter a little more appealing to first-year secondary school students, it explained what you could learn from the price differences of this burger in different countries. In a comparable but local context, journalists from de Volkskrant have now measured the prices of a cappuccino in the Netherlands and how they differ from a few years ago. From then (three years ago) to now—and it’s quite a shock.
A blow for everyone
The world’s population has had to endure quite a few major blows, and still does—with the war in Ukraine in mind. The coronavirus lockdowns put many hospitality entrepreneurs in the Netherlands out of business, and many of those whose businesses survived now find themselves having to make up for the shortages. That is one of the reasons why price increases in the hospitality industry are so evident. Why did journalists Xander van Uffelen and Fleur de Weerd choose cappuccino as their measuring instrument?
The cappuccino index by de Volkskrant
Cappuccino was chosen because it is an affordable luxury (for many people). That is why it is not the Wagyu index, or the steak-with-gold-leaf index. They saw cappuccino as the quintessential product that still feels like a ‘luxury’ (something you could, in principle, do without), while also being widely established. Using almost a thousand receipts, they were able to analyse the figures, which they then compared with data from Tapp, a commercial data and analysis agency for the hospitality industry.
Shocking inflation figures
The figures do not lie. We strongly recommend reading the entire article in de Volkskrant, but a few hard conclusions that stand out are that in the Randstad in particular, customers are sometimes charged up to one euro extra for plant-based milk (because ‘you charge the price customers are willing to pay’, according to food analyst Sebastiaan Schreijen of Rabobank), while although the price of a coffee with frothed milk has increased by 6 percent per year over the past three years, this is not yet directly reflected in the current inflation rate. The 17 percent mark has already been reached.
Tourist hotspots
The article also offers an interesting look at price differences across the country. In places that attract many tourists, such as the Randstad and Zeeland, but also the Wadden Islands, prices are higher than elsewhere in the country. The dubious honour of the most expensive cappuccino in the country goes to a business on Ameland and a restaurant in Amsterdam. There, you can see your bank balance shrink by around five euros per cup.
Because these figures do not say everything without a specific frame of reference, the research will be conducted again in a year’s time.
Source: de Volkskrant
Read also:
- Coffee-free coffee exists and you’ll want to try it (and the cups fit in a Nespresso machine)
- 5 fun facts about cappuccino
- Eddie’s food annoyances: complicated coffee versus black coffee
