New York City coffee chain Cafe Grumpy's newest flavor is not your average cup of joe.
What might make coffee drinkers grumpy is the price of their newest flavor -- $12 a cup.
Yesterday, the shops located in Chelsea, Greenpoint and Park Slope in Brooklyn introduced the costly cup made up of Nekisse beans handpicked and imported from Ethiopia, reported the New York Post.
Steve Holt, the vice president of the beans' distributing company, Ninety-Plus Coffee, said the price stems from the coffee's preparation.
"It is a higher-end coffee, and you have to take a lot of time developing and processing it," Holt told the Post. "Once the coffee is harvested, it is dried on a raised African drying bed -- the actual coffee cherries never sit on the ground."
According to their official Web site, Cafe Grumpy describes the taste as "very clean, sweet, complex cup with tropical fruit notes of pineapple, kiwi and key lime. Floral notes of jasmine, lemongrass and rosemary."
Informal customer taste tests revealed mixed results.
Greenpoint customer Whitney Reuling, 25, told the Post the coffee tasted "good, but I can't taste the difference. My palate is not at an advanced level for coffee -- a $2.50 cup is fine."
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While she would not regular throw down $12 for the cup, another customer Kate Weinberg, 24, could tell "a huge difference over a $2 cup -- a sweetness and a tartness to it," she told the Post.
