Wednesday, June 02, 2010

The Economics of Iced Tea...

Location: Select City Walk, New Delhi

I had gone to Select City Walk (Saket) to do some shopping.
Since I love iced tea I thought I would treat myself to one from Barista. I went in and ordered the drink at the till. The guy replied '105 rupees sir'. My mouth dried up when I heard the cost!

Since I was on vacation I decided to shell out the money. But I went and stood near their counter as I wanted to observe what magical process they use to make a Rs. 105iced tea.

Well the process was dead easy:
- Take a cheap plastic 'glass'.
- Squeeze a bit of lemon juice from a plastic bottle.
- Squeeze a bit of sugar syrup from a plastic bottle.
- Fill the glass ALL the way up with ice (yeah! ice is cheap and takes up a lot of room!).
- Add some black tea.

I can bet the whole thing didn't cost Barista more than 10 rupees.

What I did end up paying for was the staff which didn't serve me all that much, the cool furniture which I didn't sit on, the air-conditioning which I did not take any advantage off and some board games which I had no one to play with! Oh and let us not forget: the Barista logo on that cheap plastic glass.

1 comment:

Ms Tilit's Cyberspace said...

I have spent months in South India and they don't really got that steff called Iced Tea because all tea is hot in Madras, Madurai and Conchin.. The tea of Munnar is the best and to have tried Iced tea in India is somewhat spectacular...$2 dollars for a cup is really awesome because in the Philippines you can have Iced tea at P20 per cup ( about 30 cents)