Coffee or coffees in this context? [closed]

Solution 1:

Here I think coffees would be best. Coffee, as an uncountable, refers to the liquid. Coffee in your case isn't that. In your case you are referring to a specific sales item—a cup containing the liquid. Your focus is on selling these individual units.

You could also say "he sells a lot of coffee." But this is really more a figurative usage—a metonymy. Here you are using the contents to represent the items sold—coffee in a cup. You could equally say "he sells a lot of pastry" by the same figure of speech where the pastry component is used to represent the individual items it is used to produce. Or perhaps it is easier to hear in "he sells a lot of cake" and "he sells a lot of cakes." They both really mean the same thing, but by different routes.

So probably coffees, because cups of coffee, which is what you really mean, are discernible, individual units, not the bulk liquid.

Solution 2:

I think coffee is better than coffees although either is possible. But pastries cannot be pastry because the latter usually means the dough used to make pastries.

In Google News, "sell coffee" is much more productive than "sell coffees".

There's zero hits for "sales are coffees", but there are two hits for "sales are coffee".

Day said most people don't realize that about half the business's sales are coffee. (source)

Jon said: “The coffee market is huge. On the doorstep side 10% of sales are coffee, but in wholesale they account for 80%. (source)

All in all, the best choice is 'coffee':

In the morning, most sales are coffee and pastries.

Solution 3:

I think both forms are acceptable. Using the plural form "coffees" suggests to me that this refers to a variety of types of coffee: traditional "black" coffee, cappuccino, latte, caffè macchiato, etc. This parallels the use of "pastries" to mean a variety of forms of pastry (muffins, crullers, etc.).

It's similar to the distinction between "people" (humans as a general category) and "peoples" (referring to all the different communities).

It would help to see the context of the statement. Is it talking about a specific store, or something more general?