Coffee Costs For Italians Up 720 Million Euros Per Year

Inflation in Italy has also gotten to the traditional “cup of coffee” – one of the morning and afternoon rituals of Italians.

Thus, in “Bel Paese” (Beautiful Country), as the Italians call their homeland, the spending on coffee breaks in 2022 has gone up by 720 million euros per year compared to 2021. This was reported by the association of Italian consumers Assoutenti, which not only published statistical data, but also drew a detailed map of Italy, indicating the places with the most expensive coffee.

Of course, prices in absolute terms are still significantly below the average for other European countries, but the method of consumption also factors in, as Italians drink coffee standing at the bar, rather than sitting at a table. Assoutenti notes that the average price increase was 11.5%, and the price of the classic “cup” increased from 1.04 euros in 2021 to 1.16 euros in 2022.

The most expensive coffee is served in northern Italy, in Bolzano (1.34 euros), followed by northern Trento (1.3 euros), Belluno (1.28 euros), Padua (1.27 euros), Udine (1.26 euros), and Trieste (1.25 euros). It might seem that these are mere pennies, if you leave out the fact that 6 billion (!) cups of coffee are consumed annually in Italian bars, and the turnover for these “cups” in two years increased from 6.24 billion euros to almost 7 billion euros.

This actually is a serious psychological problem: for many years, the owners of catering establishments in Italy managed to keep the price of “a cup of coffee at the bar counter” at the symbolic mark of 1 euro, which has now become a rarity, at least in the northern regions. There are, of course, exceptions: in some southern cities, the one-euro threshold has not even been reached yet. For example, in the south of Italy, in Catanzaro and Reggio Calabria, a cup of coffee today will cost an average of 0.99 euros, and in Sicily, in the city of Messina, it is even cheaper, at 0.95 euros.