The cost of a cuppa: comparing coffee and tea prices at London’s top museums, galleries and attractions
You won’t be surprised to learn that I visit a lot of museums, galleries and attractions. Honestly, it’s real a perk of the job. Last week I visited five. Four for business and one for pleasure. Actually, I just checked my diary and it was six if you include a site tour of the future London Museum building in Smithfield.
I mostly visit attractions and venues for meetings so I don’t spend a lot of time in the cafes. Yet a few weeks ago I found myself feeling pretty short changed by the cost of a coffee at a major central London gallery. It got me wondering about the cost of a cuppa at London’s top attractions, and how that compares to the high street. Here’s what I discovered. The blog begins with some observations, then ends with methodology and the price of breakfast teas and lattes at each venue. Scroll to the bottom if you want to jump straight to this.
Cultural coffee premium
Cafes in museums, galleries, venues and attractions have a reputation for being pricey, and selling coffee and tea at a premium price. This is certainly true, but to a lesser degree than one might expect. Through my research I found that at £4.10 the average latte in a cultural venue is only 4% more expensive than a latte from a High Street chain (£3.95). The difference is slightly more stark when it comes to tea, but only slightly. Tea in a cultural venue will set you back an average of £3.33 compared to £3.00 on the High Street, an 11% difference.
Most expensive
Whereas High Street coffees range from £3.80 to £4.10, coffees in cultural venues range from £3.50 to £4.80. At £4.80, the British Museum’s coffee is the most expensive and 22% more than the High Street average. The cost of a latte at V&A (£4.50), National Gallery (£4.50), National Theatre (£4.40), Science Museum (£4.35), Royal Opera and Ballet (£4.25), Natural History Museum (£4.20), Barbican (£4.20) and IWM London (£4.15) are all above average for the sector and the High Street.
On the High Street breakfast tea ranges from £2.90 to £3.10, and in cultural venues the range is £2.60 to £4.25. National Gallery serves the most expensive tea costing £4.25 which is a whopping 42% more expensive than the average cost of a High Street brew. British Museum (£4.00), National Portrait Gallery (£3.80), V&A (£3.70), Royal Opera and Ballet (£3.50), British Library (£3.50), Barbican (£3.35) all sell tea at the sector average prices.
Best value
If you’re looking for the best value hot drinks visit the ICA for a £3.50 latte or Young V&A for a £2.60 tea.
Coffee at below sector average prices is also available at Tower of London (£4.05), Southbank Centre (£3.95), London Transport Museum (£3.95), the Design Museum (£3.95), National Portrait Gallery (£3.90), British Library (£3.90), Tate Modern (£3.80) and Wellcome Collection (£3.80). Of this group only the Tower of London will set you back more than the average cost of a latte on the High Street too.
For tea that costs less than the sector average visit Tate Modern (£3.30), IWM London (£3.30), London Transport Museum (£3.25), the Design Museum (£3.25), Natural History Museum (£3.10), Wellcome Collection (£3.10), Science Museum (£3.00), National Theatre (£3.00), ICA (£3.00), Southbank Centre (£2.95), Tower of London (£2.95), Young V&A (£2.60). Science Museum, National Theatre, ICA, Southbank Centre, Tower of London and Young V&A all sell at or under the High Street average price.
Coffee vs tea
Perhaps the most surprising finding is the difference in cost between tea and coffee. On the High Street coffee is about a third more expensive than tea whereas at some cultural venues coffee is almost 50% more expensive. Wholesale coffee prices have risen dramatically over recent years, mainly as a result of climate change and poor crop yields. This alone is unlikely to account for the difference in price between tea and coffee at some venues, because if it did we would see this phenomena more universally.
Only National Portrait Gallery and National Gallery serve lattes that are less than 10% more expensive than breakfast tea options (3% and 6% difference respectively.) At the other end of the spectrum, the National Theatre sells coffee that is 47% more expensive than tea. The Science Museum is not far off with a 45% difference neither is Young V&A with a 40% difference.
Final thoughts
Cafes in cultural venues is a complicated business. Like many cultural enterprises and commercial endeavours there’s a balance to be made between profit and purpose. Ever greater pressures on arts organisations to increase self-generated income only compounds this. I have great sympathy for the difficult, and often risky, commercial decisions that senior cultural leaders need to make in today's volatile and competitive trading environment. Just as there’s a common misconception that museums’ galleries and venues charge over the odds for refreshments, people perceive that arts organisations are making huge amounts of profit from cafes. This is simply not always true. Through this quick and dirty research exercise I hope to have shone a light on differing approaches to pricing at some of London, and the world’s, most loved cultural attractions.
One final thought is about quality. On my travels to undertake this research I didn’t sample drinks at each venues. If I had bought latte and tea at each of the venues and chains listed here, it would have set me back £168.50 and would have certainly given me the caffeine shakes. For now I’ll leave it for my more discerning readers to decide whether the more premium cultural brands are worthy of the price. And maybe in the future, I’ll repeat this exercise as a taste test. Watch this space.
Appendix 1: Methodology
To survey the price of coffee and tea, I visited almost twenty London museums, galleries and venues over the course of a few weeks, plus London branches of Caffè Nero, Costa, Pret and Starbucks. At each location I noted the headline advertised price of a regular latte and a regular breakfast tea as proxies for typical drinks that are served more or less everywhere. Only Caffè Nero advertises a distinction between drink in and takeaway prices, to account for VAT, so I used the takeaway price. My original intention was to include McDonald’s but the low prices skewed my data so I left this out of the final analysis used to write this blog. Some of the high street chains utilise variable pricing based on location, but that doesn’t form part of my analysis neither does different prices across different outlets within the same venue. Where a venue has multiple cafes and restaurants I simply picked one more or less by random (or in reality, convenience). I make no comment on taste and quality nor whether the cultural venues use in-house or outsourced cafe operators. The museums, galleries, venues and attractions included in my survey were: Barbican, British Library, British Museum, ICA, IWM London, London Transport Museum, National Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, National Theatre, Natural History Museum, Royal Ballet and Opera, Science Museum, Southbank Centre, Tate Modern, the Design Museum, Tower of London, V&A, Wellcome Collection and Young V&A
Appendix 1: Prices
Cultural venues
Barbican: coffee £4.20, tea £3.35
British Library: coffee £3.90, tea £3.50
British Museum: coffee £4.80, tea £4.00
ICA: coffee £3.50, tea £3.00
IWM London: coffee £4.15, tea £3.30
London Transport Museum: coffee £3.95, tea £3.25
National Gallery: coffee £4.50, tea £4.25
National Portrait Gallery: coffee £3.90, tea £3.80
National Theatre: coffee £4.40, tea £3.00
Natural History Museum: coffee £4.20, tea £3.10
Royal Ballet and Opera: coffee £4.25, tea £3.50
Science Museum: coffee £4.35, tea £3.00
Southbank Centre: coffee £3.95, tea £2.95
Tate Modern: coffee £3.80, tea £3.30
the Design Museum: coffee £3.95, tea £3.25
Tower of London: coffee £4.05, tea £2.95
V&A: coffee £4.50, tea £3.70
Wellcome Collection: coffee £3.80, tea £3.10
Young V&A: coffee £3.65, tea £2.60
High Street chains
Caffè Nero: coffee £3.95, tea £3.00
Costa: coffee £4.10, tea £2.95
Pret: coffee £3.80, tea £2.90
Starbucks: coffee £3.95, tea £3.15
And finally
If like me, you've now got Blur’s Coffee and TV in your head here’s a lovely music video for you to enjoy.
