Ever wonder how much coffee the characters from Friends consumed while sitting in Central Perk for hours on end? Twitter user Kit Lovelace was curious—so she decided to do some research.
Watching each one of the 236 episodes (to be precise: "I scrubbed through the non-Central Perk scenes, keeping a keen eye on any mug/potential cup activity. Central Perk scenes all got watched," she wrote on Twitter), she established that Rachel, Monica, Phoebe, Joey, Ross and Chandler consumed 1,154 cups of coffee in total throughout the show's ten seasons. Check out the character-by-character graph she created:
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 Lovelace (@kitlovelace) June 27, 2017
And because she clearly appreciates details, she then broke it all down season-by-season to "see how their habits developed and changed over time." Here is that second graph:
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 Lovelace (@kitlovelace) June 27, 2017
But how much did their caffeine addiction actually cost the six friends? Based on a bill that Monica gets in "The One With Five Steaks and an Eggplant," "we know that one coffee and one scone comes [out] to $4.12," explains our TV show scientist. We'll then assume that each cup of coffee cost $1.50, which brings the total coffee charges to $1,731.
Let's not forget about tips! Adding a 20% tip to all total charges, turns out that the money spent by all six characters on the 1,154 cups of coffee totals $2,077.20. Is your head spinning? Kit Lovelace makes matters easier with a clean chart:
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 Lovelace (@kitlovelace) June 27, 2017
Wondering why we're assuming they'd be kind enough to leave a 20% tip on each drink? Kit Lovelace doesn't just come up with random numbers, after all! On Twitter, she explains that "in the episode 'The One With Unagi' Joey questions the amount left and Chandler confirms it as 20%."
Before you take the week off to stay home and double check Kit Lovelace's numbers, you should know that, as part of her research parameters, she decided to assume that "anything in a mug was coffee unless otherwise stipulated."