Italian coffee bar fined for charging $2 for espresso

A coffee bar in Florence has been fined €1,000 846 after a customer was steamed up over the price of a humble cup of espresso.

The customer called police after being charged $2 1.7 for his coffee, a decaffeinated one, at Ditta Artigianale in the centre of the Tuscan city.

The price was not displayed on the menu behind the counter. It was this error that landed the bar, which is celebrated for its coffee-making and has won several competitions, in trouble.

Francesco Sanapo, owner of Ditta Artigianale, defended his coffee, which comes from a small plantation in Mexico, and is prepared with great care by his baristas. He argued that the price of coffee was displayed on a digital menu.

They fined me because someone had been fined for paying €2 for a decaffeinated coffee that involves a water extraction process Can you believe it? Sanapo was holding up a letter from the police in a video. Even today, someone can get so annoyed that they mobilise the police, who find us to be in the wrong due to an outdated law. This law must be changed because 99.9% of bars and restaurants would fall foul of it. In Italy, the average cost of espresso is €1, although more than 70% of bars increased prices earlier in the year due to supply chain issues and poor harvests. Consumer groups have warned that the price of espresso could go up to an average of €1.50 this year.

Sanapo said that Ditta Artigianale described on Facebook as the first Italian coffee bar dedicated to quality coffee was somewhat revolutionary when it charged €1.50 for an espresso when the bar opened in 2013. He said there was a negative and positive reaction, but until now I had never been fined. He said that nobody should be scandalised about paying €2 for an espresso anymore because of the rise in cost of raw materials.

The Florence branch of Confartigianato, an association for small businesses, defended the bar. Its president, Alessandro Vittorio Sorani, said that this is something that deeply embitters me. A great deal of work goes into producing a quality product. Some of the bar's customers leapt to its defence too. If a customer went to London he would get the FBI involved, he wrote on Facebook.