Pricele #77: Cappuccino in France 🇫🇷

A cappuccino is priced almost entirely by what surrounds it. Coffee beans are a global commodity that costs roughly the same everywhere, so nearly all of the difference between a $1.50 cup and a $6.50 cup is local rent, wages and what the market will bear. That makes it one of the sharpest signals of local cost of living in the game.

Of the 32 countries priced for cappuccino, France ranks #12 from the top at $3.95, 1.1× the median of $3.67.

France sits in the middle of the eurozone range. Its grocery sector is shaped by decades of price-control law governing what supermarkets may charge relative to what they pay suppliers, which compresses the spread between chains. Food carries 5.5% TVA against a 20% standard rate, one of the wider gaps in Europe between what a country charges on groceries and what it charges on everything else. The café items are the ones to watch here: prepared food and drink consumed on the premises are taxed differently from the same items taken away, which is part of why a French cappuccino and a French litre of milk sit in such different places relative to their neighbours.

See the full table for cappuccino in every country or everything priced in France.