A friend and I needed a mid-afternoon coffee break the other day. I got a large
 coffee. He got a large ICED coffee. Mine came in a 20-ounce paper cup. His came in
 a 20-ounce plastic cup. My cup contained 20 ounces of hot coffee. His cup contained
 12 ounces of cold coffee and lots of ice.

My coffee cost $1.48. His cost $2.25. Yes, he got less coffee and paid 77 cents MORE
 for it. But my friend's experience was hardly unique; all around the city, iced
 coffee has become a bigger scam than ImClone stock. While coffee shop owners
 gleefully charge you more for their chilled java, an exclusive MetroGnome
 investigation ("investigation" because I walked around, "exclusive" because no one
 else cares) revealed that iced coffee should actually be CHEAPER than regular
 coffee!

In interviews, coffee shop owners offered a litany of reasons for the iced-coffee
 tax, including the high cost of ice-making, the high cost of those fancy
 clear-plastic cups and even the high cost of making the coffee stronger to
 compensate for the melting ice.

My investigation found that this is utter hogwash (not unlike the iced coffee, I
 might add). If you "do the math," you'll find that iced coffee should actually be
 less expensive, not MORE expensive, than regular coffee. Let's break it down, one
 lame explanation at a time:

1. Those Fancy Plastic Iced-Coffee Cups Cost More Than Paper Hot-Coffee Cups: While
 it is true that clear plastic cups -- which are made from a costly raw material
 called "K-resin" -- are more expensive than standard cups, the cost differential is
 minimal, explained Dennis Mehiel, CEO of Sweetheart Cups, which supplies thousands
 of coffee shops in the city.

"A standard CD20 [clear plastic cup] and lid will cost a retailer $100 per thousand
 while a P520 [standard paper] will cost $83 per thousand," Mehiel said.

Per cup, that means an iced-coffee cup costs 10 cents, while a hot-coffee cup of the
 same size costs 8.3 cents. The difference is 1.7 cents.

"Clearly, you can't blame iced coffee prices on the cups," Mehiel concluded.

2. Ice Costs A Lot to Make: If you believe this tired canard, I've got an igloo  to
 sell you. A standard Manitowoc Q133W, a dandy little baby that you'll find in delis
 all over town, makes 5 ½ pounds, or 88 ounces, of ice per hour. To do so, it will
 burn .54 kilowatts of electricity and use 2.1 gallons of standard tap water,
 according to the manufacturer.

So do the math: Electricity in New York City costs 16 cents per kilowatt-hour, so it
 costs roughly one-hundredth of a cent to make the four ounces of ice found in the
 typical cup of iced coffee. And with 748 gallons of water going for $1.35 nowadays,
 the water costs all of .018 cents.

Total cost of making four ounces of ice: Less than two-tenths of a cent. It ain't
 the ice, either.

3. Iced Coffee is Stronger: It's certainly true that stronger coffee costs more to
 make, but a mathematical analysis again supports the premise that iced coffee is a
 big rip-off. According to Mike Maisel, owner of City Food Bar in Manhattan, it
 takes seven ounces of ground coffee to make a gallon of regular coffee, while it
 takes 8.4 ounces to make a gallon of iced-coffee coffee. 

If a pound of coffee costs $5.00 wholesale, a 20-ounce cup of regular coffee costs
 its maker 68 cents, while iced-coffee coffee costs 82 cents.

But wait a second: Thanks to all that ice taking up precious space, a 20-ounce iced
 coffee contains four to nine fewer ounces of coffee. That means that the coffee in
 a 20-ounce container of iced coffee -- which coffee vendors say costs MORE because
 it's stronger -- actually costs 2 to 23 cents LESS.

And not every coffee shop even makes a stronger iced-coffee coffee. At Applejack
 Diner on Broadway in Manhattan, the counterman just poured regular coffee over ice.
 When the ice melted, he added even more ice. In the end, I received a mere 11
 ounces of coffee -- and paid 85 cents more for it.

Which leads me to theory number 4: Iced coffee is the biggest beverage scam since
 New Coke.

If you add up all the numbers above, a 20-ounce cup of iced coffee should cost up to
 21 cents LESS than a 20-ounce cup of regular coffee, depending on how much cheap
 ice is occupying space that should rightly be filled with rich, expensive coffee.

"Clearly, it's a scam," said Mehiel, the Sweetheart Cup guy. "They market 'iced
 coffee' as a different product. But the only difference is the additional dollar
 they're charging."

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gersh.kuntzman@verizon.net