PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) – It only took one day for a Portland café to sell out of a limited number of cups of coffee that each cost more than some people’s daily salary.
On Monday, Feb. 6, Proud Mary Coffee Roasters, an Australian-based company with locations in Portland and Austin, Texas, sold cups of coffee that cost $150 per cup.
The Portland location only had 11 cups to sell. The Austin café had another 11.
So, who purchased the 11 cups of coffee that each cost more than an annual Amazon Prime membership?
Matt Lounsbury, senior vice president of Proud Mary Coffee Roasters, said it was a variety of customers.
“It was a few regulars. It was people that came in that were seeking this coffee, maybe coffee lovers, maybe coffee nerds? But also some people that were just here having brunch and decided why the hell not,” he said.
Lounsbury didn’t get a taste of the coffee for himself but said customers told him they were surprised about how good it was. He said everyone who purchased the coffee seemed happy.
Which is a good thing, considering the company paid $2,000 for one pound of the beans. It’s Proud Mary Coffee Roasters’ most expensive coffee purchase to date.
The Black Jaguar Geisha coffee comes from Hartmann Estate in Panama and it recently won first place in the 2022 Best of Panama competition, one of the most prestigious coffee competitions in the world.
Lounsbury said Geisha coffee doesn’t taste like traditional coffee. He said it has the potential to taste like bubble gum or Fruit Loops.
“I think [the people who bought it] were like ‘Wow, this doesn’t taste like coffee. This is an experience,’” Lounsbury said.
He wasn’t shocked the high-end brew sold out so quickly. He credits his team for getting the word out about the coffee to regular customers and said the press attention helped as well.
Proud Mary Coffee Roasters might try to do something like this again in the future, Lounsbury said, but he’s not sure the coffee will cost quite as much as the 2022 Best of Panama winner.