Mojo has raised the prices of its coffee by ten cents in response to the rise of the minimum wage on April 1. The minimum wage rose from $15.75 to $16.50, the biggest rise in over a decade.
"Wage costs are the largest single cost to the business,” said Tay-Lynn Mark, Mojo’s head of marketing. “The impact is not so much the increase from 15.75 to 16.50 as this affects only a small number of our team, but more so the chain effect of the increase on the next pay brackets. We will continue to keep our prices under review as and when the government makes the next changes to minimum wage."
Despite claiming “positive feedback” from in-store customers, the social media response was far from glowing.
“What a PR nightmare for your shabby operation,” said one user. “You could have done your price gouging quietly and not had all this backlash. But no. You had to make your bad-tempered point publicly. You deserve every bit of the flak you are getting today.”
Another user calculated that the pay rise would cost each Mojo branch approximately $18 per day, meaning that Mojo would recoup the costs after selling 200 coffees.
So far Mojo seems to be alone among coffee companies in terms of raising prices. Peoples Coffee marketing manager Jesse Finn said the wage rise was unlikely to have the same impact.
"For us, we want that point between what the minimum wage is and what our starting wage is to be a decent amount, so we're definitely looking at it but we don't have any sort of firm plans to sit down and see what that means."
