A local coffee shop has opened its second location in Providence. It is known for its lattes, which cost eight dollars, or five, depending on the latte, and for its line, which costs nothing and goes out the door.

You know this already. It is a whole thing on Instagram. Everybody knows what is going on.

Two doors down, the coffee is $3.50 or $4, and the line is short. You walk past it to get in the long one. On a wet morning the long one stands outside without umbrellas, because an umbrella would be in the picture.

A reader asked about it online, not in a heated way: what are the input costs here? Somebody answered. Input prices are going up. Things are imported. Tariffs. All of that is real, and none of it is the whole story, the reader said, because the business is expanding. A second location is also an input cost. It is just one that the customer pays for in advance.

Here is the arithmetic, roughly. Four dollars is the coffee. Four dollars is the photograph of the coffee. The photograph is the second cup, and you are buying it whether you take it or not.

What you have, in other words, is leverage over the customer. It is called input costs. It is spelled expansion.

The line does not mind. The line is, in its way, the product. Nobody in it would say they are waiting to pay eight dollars for a latte. They would say they are waiting to try it, which is a thing you do once, and they will be back Thursday.