Food & Drink

Why does this coffee cost $10?

On a recent afternoon at Budin, a new Scandinavian coffee shop in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, a barista spends 15 minutes steaming, stirring and fussing over a single latte before placing it on a silver platter with church-like reverence. The drink’s foam is artfully swirled into a tree-like design and sprinkled with raw licorice powder imported from Denmark. Beside it sits a “complimentary” marble-sized ball of chocolate-covered Danish licorice.

All this for just $10 — tip not included.

As the price of a cup of joe in NYC continues to climb, Budin’s latte represents an outrageous new high.

The $10 latte at Greenpoint’s Budin features “high class” licorice powder.Tamara Beckwith

And one that’s leaving a bitter taste in some New Yorkers’ mouths.

“It’s crazy,” says Ghafar Sayed, who has operated a coffee cart in Midtown for 35 years and was astonished when he heard of Budin’s 10-buck latte. He charges $1 for a small coffee, $1.50 for a large.

“Any place that would charge $10 for a latte, I wouldn’t go to,” adds Sayed. “I wouldn’t charge that much because I don’t want to rob the people.”

Helen Medina, a 40-year-old senior director at the US Council for International Business, agrees with Sayed.

She refuses to spend more than two bucks on a coffee and can’t imagine what could drive the cost up to five times that amount. “Does it have food in it?” she asks.

Rut Hermannsdóttir, one of Budin’s three owners, justifies the exorbitant price because, she says, “the ingredients are expensive.”

The lavish latte is made with imported beans ($24 per 12-ounce bag) roasted by Norwegian coffee master Tim Wendelboe, a 2004 World Barista Champion and 2005 World Tasting Champion. The licorice powder is “high class,” according to Hermannsdóttir, and the brew is also mixed with steamed local organic milk and a special anise syrup imported from Denmark.

But even Budin regular Shana Tabor isn’t sold.

“As much as I love the owners of this place, I think it’s kind of silly and nothing that I would ever order,” says Tabor, who owns a clothing boutique down the street from the coffee shop.

While 10 bucks for a latte may strike many as crazy, Hermannsdóttir says they’re selling fairly well. Since Budin opened in February, the shop’s sold between 60 and 80 of the drinks, an average of five to seven a day.

La Colombe’s Hacienda Esmeralda costs $24.30 for a 12-ounce bag of beans.Brian Zak

Some java junkies, it seems, are willing to spend big for a special fix.

“What’s normal in New York?” asks Saki Manavazian, a 44-year-old jeweler in Midtown who spends $5 a day on his cappuccino habit. “I’d try a $10 latte. Nothing really shocks me in New York anymore.”

Michael Norton, a Harvard Business School professor and co-author of “Happy Money: The Science of Smarter Spending,” barely raises an eyebrow at the hefty price tag.

He sees it as par for the course ever since Starbucks managed to make $4 coffee the norm when it stormed New York City in the mid-’90s.

“What Starbucks did was change coffee from a commodity into a luxury product,” says Norton, who explains that drinking coffee became an “experience” that showed someone was smart and cultured.

Now, $5 is the new high-priced standard: A mocha latte at Williamsburg’s Marlow & Sons costs $5.25, a large latte at Manhattan’s Stumptown is five bucks and lattes at Fort Greene’s Smooch will also cost you a Lincoln.

And Budin isn’t alone in commanding even more for a cup. At its fancy-schmancy Chelsea flagship store, Blue Bottle hawks a “siphon flight” that costs $16 for two cups of ultra-premium coffee, while Intelligentsia Coffee at the High Line Hotel is selling the high life with their $7 cups of Bolivia Takesia brew.

“Once coffee gets in that realm,” says Norton, “the price can keep going up and up,” he says, adding, “A $10 latte is the logical next step.”

Others in the business world aren’t so sure.

“This thing is nuts,” says NYU Stern professor and psychologist Jacob Jacoby, who likens the lakkris latte to an ostentatious Gucci or Hermès belt.

At the Blue Bottle Siphon bar in Chelsea, a tasting flight of two ultra premium coffees, brewed with science-lab precision, costs $16.Zandy Mangold

“It’s about conspicuous consumption — displaying wealth. It says something about themselves: ‘Look, I can do this,’ ” he explains.

Jacoby also says it’s easier to justify paying $10 for a coffee, or waiting three hours for a Cronut, if you assure yourself that it was delicious.

“If you take the $10 cup of latte and you convince yourself, ‘Oh, my God, this is the best cup of coffee I’ve ever had,’ you’ve done a psych job on yourself and you now can talk about it with others.”

Coffee expert Oliver Strand paid $10 to try Budin’s luxe latte, but he’s honest about the fact that he didn’t really like it.

“To be frank, I’m not too into the licorice flavor,” he says.

But he still thinks the cost is justifiable.

“The idea that a latte can’t inch above $6, that it can only live in the price range of $4 to $6, is really limiting,” says Strand, who is working on a book about coffee.

“I would love a latte that is $10 that tastes like an amazing $10 latte.”

Brew York City: A Selective History

1696: The first coffee house in America opens in New York City. It’s named the King’s Arms and is located on Broadway, between Trinity churchyard and what is now Cedar Street.

1793: New York’s first coffee roaster opens on Pearl Street.

An NYC coffee stand from 1933 shows a bargain price.Getty Images

1886: Coffee stands and carts start dotting the city streets. Often run by charities in the Bowery and the Lower East Side, they sell cups of joe for just a penny.

1942: Chock Full o’ Nuts converts 18 nut stores into coffee shops serving post-Depression New Yorkers a sandwich and a cup o’ joe for a nickel.

1955: Chock Full o’ Nuts coffee now costs 35 cents a cup.

1963: Marketer Leslie Buck designs the Anthora coffee cup. The blue-and-white to-go cup quickly becomes an icon of the city. Coffee sells for 60 cents at Hotel Astor around this time.

1994: The first Starbucks opens in the Big Apple, at 87th and Broadway. New Yorkers bristle at the high prices of the Seattle mega coffee chain. “I’ll pay 75 cents, and even a dollar for good coffee. But $1.50 is too much,” Sidney Martell of Crotona tells The Post a few years later, when Starbucks opens a location in the Bronx.

“Friends” spent a lot of their time at a neighborhood coffee shop.

1994: “Friends” debuts on NBC. Ross, Rachel & Co. work and hang out at a fictional West Village coffee shop called Central Perk. Fans are inspired to loaf around their own local cafes, preferably on velvet couches.

2009: A $4 latte no longer buys you office space. Coffee shops around the city — including S’Nice and Cafe Grumpy — start cracking down on laptop lingerers and removing outlets.

2010: The pour-over craze comes to New York, with the arrival of San Francisco chain Blue Bottle. Their drip coffee, brewed individually to order, costs $2.90 and entails a five-minute wait.

2012: Regular iced coffee is out. Trendy cold brew coffee is hot, despite costing nearly $5 at spots like Sweetleaf in Long Island City.

2013: After an aggressive expansion, Dunkin’ Donuts, where a small cappuccino costs just $2.29, overtakes Starbucks, where a small cappuccino runs $3.25, to become the largest chain in the city.