(via Instapundit)  I found this article on the Fed Reserve/Boston site pretty illuminating w.r.t. the "true economics" of coffee consumption.

First -- how much coffee are Americans consuming?

...In fact, the number of pounds of coffee consumed per person each year has been in a steady decline from its historic peak in 1946, according to Pendergrast. In 1962, for instance, Americans age ten or over were consuming an average of 3.1 cups a day. During the 1990s, per-capita consumption stayed between 1.6 and 1.9 cups.

So those Starbucks Lattes are displacing Maxwell House instant...   And what does the COGS look like for a Latte?

...In part, they are paying for a lot more than coffee beans. When Americans buy a prepared coffee drink—be it a cappuccino or one of its humbler relations—coffee is one of the smallest components in the product. One pound of beans makes about 40 cups, according to Don Schoenholt, a well-known coffee enthusiast and owner of Gillies Coffee Company, based in Brooklyn, New York. Even if the beverage is made from great coffee beans—the type that roasters buy for $4 to $5 a pound— the value of the coffee is about a dime per cup. Just “the cup and the lid are about 20 cents… the Equal packet often costs the restaurant as much as the coffee,” says Schoenholt. More important, the price of each beverage also has to cover the cost of prime real estate rents, U.S. salaries and benefits for the café employees, research and development, taxes, and marketing expenses, among others.

So, as a result of plummetting world wide prices for commodity coffee, the evil coffee producers aren't really cleaning up...    And, I've got an interesting piece of bar trivia ("ya know, this package of sugar costs as much as the coffee in this cup!")