The nation’s convenience stores and coffee houses have announced increases in the prices of their freshly brewed coffee, but the Consumers’ Foundation is investigating whether the hikes are justified or just an excuse to increase revenues.
Local media reported that the wave of price increases, led by Starbucks and followed by convenience chains 7-Eleven, Hi-Life and Family Mart, would, beginning yesterday, add at least NT$5 to each cup of coffee that previously cost as little as NT$40.
The companies have complained of rising costs, focusing in particular on the higher cost of milk, which Family Mart said has risen 13.7 percent in the past two years, according to the media reports.
A Hi-Life spokesperson was cited as saying that the price of coffee beans has also shot up; as much as 40 percent over the same period.
However, a skeptical Consumers’ Foundation yesterday said it was already looking into the issue.
Foundation chairwoman Joann Su (蘇錦霞) said she has heard companies complain that their overall costs had risen 13 percent, but that they had yet to explain to consumers how the calculations were made.
The foundation questions whether costs have risen as much as companies have said, and will ask the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) to conduct an investigation, said Su, who also said she wondered on what basis coffee chains and convenience stores could all increase prices by similar amounts when they have different cost structures.
Su warned that if the commission failed to take action, the foundation would ask the Control Yuan to investigate whether the commission had neglected its duties.
The Council of Agriculture said yesterday it suspected the coffee industry was taking advantage of milk farmers.
Some media reports have indicated that coffee prices have risen because of a spike in coffee bean prices last year, and if that is the case, the FTC should be looking into coffee bean prices instead of milk prices, chief of the council’s husbandry division Hsu Kuai-sheng (許桂森) said.
“The coffee industry really shouldn’t be using milk prices as an excuse to raise prices,” Hsu said.
According to Hsu, milk prices have risen 6 percent to 12 percent over the past year, or about NT$1.9 per liter, because of increases in the cost of cow feed.
The FTC launched an investigation on Sept. 9 to determine whether milk producers were engaged in price-fixing and said it would severely punish offenders according to the law, said Wu Cheng-wuh (吳成物), the commission’s chief secretary, at a separate press conference yesterday.
Some consumers said they were upset by the idea that companies were using rising milk prices, amounting to less than NT$2 per liter, to justify increases in their coffee prices.
“This is absurd. Does a cup of coffee need one liter of milk?” a consumer surnamed Huang (黃) said.
“We should not be kidnapped by businessmen and will protest by abstaining from coffee,” said another consumer, surnamed Peng (彭).
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