Starbucks Coffee Packages Getting Pricey

Even if you pick a relatively spendy brand, brewing coffee at home has always garnered a huge savings over buying it already brewed and milked and sugared. It's the frugal choice, and still will be, but if your favorite brand is one sold by Starbucks, it just got a little less frugal.

The coffee company announced this week that it would raise prices by 17% on all packaged coffees sold in its U.S. stores as of July 12. (Canadian store prices will go up, too, but by just 6%.) This, on the heels of a 12% price increase in March, will have prices up almost a third since early 2011. Does this portend a possible, subsequent increase in brewed coffee drinks, which went up last September (the "complicated" ones, that is)?

Of course, Starbucks isn't the only company to raise its coffee prices this year -- every company from Folgers to Portland/New York indie darling Stumptown has been dialing up the price of beans from 10% to 15% at a time. Folgers has upped its prices three times in the past year alone, with the total increases adding up to about 25%.