They may have loved frolicking in that fountain, but it’s no secret that a lot of Friends took place in Central Perk—a coffee shop conveniently located near Ross, Rachel, Monica, Chandler, Joey, and Phoebe’s apartments. What’s less talked-about is how everyone’s java habit impacted their finances.
Twitter user Kit Lovelace combed through “all 236 episodes of Friends” and tallied how many coffees each character drinks over the course of the series. Phoebe tops the list with 227 cups total, an average of .96 coffees an episode. Meanwhile, Rachel drank only 138, an average of .58 coffees an episode:
Digging through old stuff, just found my results from the time I went through all 236 episodes of Friends to see how much coffee they drank. pic.twitter.com/4Kg7QO0mA6
— Kit / Chris (@kitlochery) June 27, 2017
Lovelace took it a step further and tracked the coffee trends season to season. A handy graph illustrates that Chandler started out a big java-head and then dropped steeply for season 2, while Rachel was largely indifferent to coffee until season 6, where she sees a huge spike.
Moreover, I then went ahead and broke it down season by season to see how their habits developed and changed over time… pic.twitter.com/IoJ1lDNnpv
— Kit / Chris (@kitlochery) June 27, 2017
Lovelace also noticed that in a season 2 episode, Monica gets a receipt for a coffee and a scone that comes out to $4.12:
Because Monica gets a bill in the episode The One With Five Steaks And An Eggplant, we know that one coffee and one scone comes to $4.12.
— Kit / Chris (@kitlochery) June 27, 2017
Going off that figure, Lovelace estimated that the coffee probably attributed to about $1.50 of the total, and used that number to estimate approximately how much money each character spent on coffee—with some wiggle room for tip. Again, Phoebe leads the charge with $408 spent total, while Rachel shelled out a modest $248.
It's not unreasonable to assume therefore that a coffee is ~$1.50. That being so, including tips, I also worked out how much they spent… pic.twitter.com/2G9xSbqv7c
— Kit / Chris (@kitlochery) June 27, 2017
Maybe that’s why everyone needed roommates…
H/T BuzzFeed