$38.00 per gallon

for coffee makes gasoline look cheap.

This is from Blogger Boy at HIStalk, a blog about health care information technology. In this guest article, the writer is talking about the expenses of a vendor at a health information convention, in this case, the HIMSS Annual Conference, Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society. Even though not going first class, this vendor’s booth cost almost $190,000, and he gives a fairly close break-out of the expenses, like $2500 for coffee and cookies and $565 for a keg of beer plus the cost of people to serve these items. He goes on to explain about the cookies and coffee:.

“In order to give the Otis Spunkmeyer cookies away in your booth, you have to rent the machine from the convention center. There is a $500 charge for the machine and a $100 delivery fee. In addition you must have a certified cookie attendant at $80 an hour for a 4 hour minimum. No, making your own cookies for years and years does NOT qualify you to be a certified cookie attendant. For that price you receive 275 cookies. I’ll do the math for you: that comes out to be $3.35 per cookie. You can get additional cases of cookies (160 in each case) for $200 ($1.25 each). Now I like cookies as much as the next person but that seems a bit high. The coffee that just seems to go hand-in-hand with the cookies is $38 a gallon with a 3 gallon minimum. I don’t know what that would work out to be a cup but I can guarantee you it is a touch more than Starbucks.”

I suppose after you’ve paid over $100,000 to get the booth and rent the space, you don’t sweat the cookies. During my years as a medical librarian, I munched my way through a lot of freebies in Boston, Chicago, Seattle, San Antonio and Kansas City while looking at software, books, new journals and bibliographies. We Vet librarians would compare notes with each other on where to get the best book bags and t-shirts and who offered the yummiest breakfasts. I knew these giant hotel exhibit areas cost the vendors, and that the chocolate party we had at the top of the John Hancock Building in Chicago must have cost somebody a pretty penny, but I was still thinking “free,” instead of “add this to the cost” I’ll pay for any health related product and service I buy--to say nothing of never learning about the small companies that couldn't pay that.

Government benefits are like that too, aren’t they? Free, until you do the math.
Full article here.