Twenty years ago when I was commuting to mid-town Manhattan, I stopped on my way to the office at a Greek coffee shop on 7th Avenue In my ambitious, rising young executive days, I needed my daily two cups of coffee and cinnamon raison bagel -- a bargain even then at $2.50. The coffee itself was $1 each. This was before coffee was fashionable and social as it is today (pre-Starbucks).

I recently re-discovered the $1 cup of coffee. Before doing my morning yoga practice, I now stop at a Korean grocer in trendy SOHO for a cup of coffee to get me going. The price is still $1. The coffee is hot, fresh and naturally sweet. A few steps away, there is a Starbucks selling coffee for twice that amount, coffee that in my view isn't as good. It's true that I probably can't get steamed soy at the Korean grocer but the coffee is good enough to drink black.

I am thrilled that there are still places in NYC selling coffee for a dollar. Coffee like oil is a commodity subject to fluctuating supply and demand cycles. Unlike coffee though, the price of oil at the pump has more than tripled in the last 20-30 years. I worked in the coffee business at P&G and know first hand the havoc that coffee prices can inflict on margins. The typical NY coffee shop is most likely absorbing these fluctuations, using reasonably priced coffee as a loss leader. Not that the Korean green grocers are hurting -- the cost of the $1 cup of coffee is probably less than 10 cents.

True, I don’t know that the coffee is organic or fair trade. And the green grocer might be making up his loss by charging customers a lot more for other items. But I am happy that the $1 coffee still exists.