Twice the price by the sea

A cup of coffee on the North Coast costs about twice what the same cup costs in Cairo. Same brand, same beans, same machine. Nobody complains.

The season has just opened, and the same families who will query a bill in Zamalek pay the coastal price without turning the receipt over. They can see the number. It is just that the number is attached to something other than the coffee.

They are paying for the right to sit in that spot, in that light, at that table facing the water, for as long as the cup lasts. The coffee is the ticket. The place is the product.

Read it that way and the coast sorts into two kinds of operator.

The ones who know what they are selling price the place. The cup is expensive because the chairs are good, the shade is real, the toilets are looked after, the music is one thing at four in the afternoon and another at nine. Every Egyptian pound above the Cairo price is being spent on the reason the customer came. Their standards rise by the sea because the price is paying for standards.

The ones who think they are selling coffee do one of two things. Some carry the city price to the sea out of a sense of fairness, find they cannot afford the staff or the cleaning or the shade, and watch the place decay over the season. Others double the price because the neighbours have, and book the extra as margin rather than as a promise. Same cup, worse chairs, and the customer knows within a week.

The number on the menu can be identical in both cases. What differs is what the operator believes it is for.

By the sea the price is not the price of a coffee. It is the price of the spot, and the operators who know that keep their standards, while the ones pricing the cup cut them.