Swimming in coffee

Here's a question for you: If you had the opportunity to pay a single fee to get an unlimited service, would you go for it?  Every year, Bruegger's does an unlimited or bottomless coffee cup.  You pay a single fee ranging from $109 to $149 depending on what market you're in and you get unlimited coffee, tea, and soda with it.  The cool thing about it is that they have free wifi in most of their locations.  That's a pretty big chunk of money right up at the front but think about it for a second.  If you drink a single cup of coffee each day, that works out to about 50 cents for each of those cups.  And if you spend a couple of hours on line on one of their locations like I do and wind up pdrinking three cups of coffee or tea, the average comes down to about 20 cents.  Paying the $129 in my case fee up front was rather hard.

I have to admit though that I feel guilty when I go in there.  I usually don't get anything else to eat like a bagel or muffin or cookies.  They've got to be losing money on my transactions.  Since my food budget is so limited, this really is the only way I can drink coffee during the day.  I also feel guilty about all the cups I go through although I usually stay with a single cup for the entire time I'm there.

Carley Thornell of the Boston Herald does an interesting article on unlimited or one-fee-for-unlimited-service programs.

edit: If for some reason you're interested, you can read the press release.