You Try - The Coffee Shoppe

Before you go any further, try your hand at a few real LR questions. That way, you’ll get a better sense of the challenges LR presents and see how the concepts you’ll learn about in the Foundations unit show up in actual questions.

Go ahead and try the question below on your own first, then review this lesson.

The Coffee Shoppe is a great example of a question that can boggle the minds of LSAT beginners. But, trust me, by the time you take the real test, you’ll be happy to see a question like this. That’s because this question involves a formulaic application of the most commonly tested concept on the LSAT – conditional reasoning.

You’ll get a deep dive into conditional reasoning as part of the Foundations unit. But for now, we’ll just work with the most basic understanding required to get this question right.

Let’s start by reading what the question asks us for.

Which one of the following statements follows logically from the statements above?

This asks us for what Must Be True. The correct answer will follow logically from the statements in the paragraph – that means if we accept the statement in the paragraph as true, the correct answer will also be something that must be true. The wrong answers don’t have to be true based on those statements.

If the price it pays for coffee beans continues to increase, the Coffee Shoppe will have to increase its prices.

This seems pretty straightforward – if the Coffee Shoppe has to pay more for the coffee beans it uses, it will increase the prices it charges to customers.

In LSAT terms, this tells us that the bean price going up is sufficient for an increase in the Coffee Shoppe’s prices. In other words, the bean price going up is enough, by itself, to guarantee that there will be an increase in the Coffee Shoppe’s prices.

In that case, either the Coffee Shoppe will begin selling noncoffee products or its coffee sales will decrease.

In the case that the Coffee Shoppe increases the prices it charges to customers, it will sell noncoffee products (perhaps stuff like pastries, tea, or overpriced t-shirts) or its coffee sales will decrease. In other words, an increase in the Coffee Shoppe’s prices is sufficient for the Coffee Shoppe to start selling noncoffee products or experience a decrease in coffee sales.

Here, I’m noticing that we can create a chain between the first statement and the second statement. Remember, we know that if bean prices increase, the Coffee Shoppe will increase its own prices. But if that in turn leads to selling noncoffee products or a decrease in coffee sales, then we know if bean prices increase, the Coffee Shoppe will sell noncoffee products or have a decrease in coffee sales.

But selling noncoffee products will decrease the Coffee Shoppe's overall profitability.

This tells us about one of the two parts of the “or” in the previous statement. Selling noncoffee products will decrease overall profitability.

Moreover, the Coffee Shoppe can avoid a decrease in overall profitability only if its coffee sales do not decrease.

The phrase “only if” introduces what the LSAT calls a necessary condition. In other words, it introduces what’s required in order for the other part of the statement to be true. So, in order for the Coffee Shoppe to avoid a decrease in overall profitability, the coffee sales must not decrease.

What happens, then, if coffee sales do decrease? In that case, the Coffee Shoppe cannot avoid a decrease in profitability – in other words, its profitability will decrease. (We just used what’s called the contrapositive inference.)

Anticipate

Instead of rushing to the answer choices, let’s stop to collect our thoughts and understand connections between the given statements.

From the first two statements, we see that if bean prices increase, the Coffee Shoppe will begin selling noncoffee products or its coffee sales will decrease.

The third statement tells us that selling noncoffee products will lead to a decrease in overall profitability.

And the fourth statement tells us that if coffee sales decrease, there will be a decrease in overall profitability.

So, no matter which option happens – whether the Coffee Shoppe sells noncoffee products or has a decrease in coffee sales – the overall profitability will decrease.

Putting it all together, we know that if bean prices increase, ultimately the Coffee Shoppe’s overall profitability will decrease.

Let’s look for the answer that must be true based on these statements.

Answer Choices

Answer Choice (A) If the Coffee Shoppe's overall profitability decreases, the price it pays for coffee beans will have continued to increase.

(A) exhibits the most commonly tested logical mistake on the LSAT – confusing a sufficient condition for a necessary condition. We know that if the bean price increases, that ultimately will lead to a decrease in the Coffee Shoppe’s overall profitability. In other words, an increase in bean price is sufficient for a decrease in overall profitability.

But that doesn’t mean an increase in bean price is necessary for the overall profitability to decrease. The overall profitability could decrease for all sorts of other reasons – maybe a trendy cafe opens on the same block and fewer people end up going to the Coffee Shoppe.

Answer Choice (B) If the Coffee Shoppe's overall profitability decreases, either it will have begun selling noncoffee products or its coffee sales will have decreased.

(B) is wrong for the exact same reason we eliminated (A).

Although we know that both selling noncoffee products and a decrease in coffee sales each would independently guarantee that the Coffee Shoppe’s overall profitability decreases, that doesn’t mean those are the only things that could lead to a decrease in overall profitability.

Perhaps, for example, the Coffee Shoppe’s landlord has jacked up the monthly rent, which means the Coffee Shoppe has to pay a lot more just to stay open. This could be something that decreases overall profitability.

To put the issue in more abstract terms (so that you’ll understand the underlying structural problem with this answer) – although we know that X leads to Z and that Y also leads to Z, that does not rule out the possibility that many other things could also lead to Z.

So, it’s not true to say that if the Coffee Shoppe’s overall profitability decreases, it must have begun selling noncoffee products or its coffee sales have decreased.

Answer Choice (C) The Coffee Shoppe's overall profitability will decrease if the price it pays for coffee beans continues to increase.

Correct! This is exactly what we had in mind before going to the answers. If bean prices increase, ultimately the Coffee Shoppe’s overall profitability will decrease. (That’s because an increase in the price of beans leads to an increase in the Coffee Shoppe’s own prices, which in turn means the Coffee Shoppe will sell noncoffee products or have a decrease in sales, and both of those will lead to a decrease in overall profitability.)

The LSAT tries to throw us off the trail by putting the “if” part in the second half of the sentence. But “B, if A” means the same thing as “If A, B.” So, (C) must be true.

Answer Choice (D) The price it pays for coffee beans cannot decrease without the Coffee Shoppe's overall profitability also decreasing.

(D) asserts that if the price of coffee beans decreases, the Coffee Shoppe’s overall profitability also decreases. (If you’re having trouble understanding (D) in that way, don’t worry; we get into the meaning of “without” in the module that covers conditional logic.)

Although we know that if the price of coffee beans increases, overall profitability will decrease, we don’t know what happens if the price of coffee beans decreases. If bean prices decrease, it’s still possible for overall profits to decrease for other reasons. This would have been correct if it had said, “The price it pays for coffee beans cannot increase without the Coffee Shoppe’s overall profitability decreasing.”

Answer Choice (E) Either the price it pays for coffee beans will continue to increase or the Coffee Shoppe's coffee sales will increase.

A statement that says “Either A or B” asserts that at least one of A or B will happen. In other words, if one of those options doesn’t happen, then the other one must happen.

So when I’m evaluating (E), I’m interpreting it as the following:

“If bean price does not increase, the Coffee Shoppe’s coffee sales will increase.”

This doesn’t have to be true, because we don’t know what happens if bean price does not increase. We know what happens if bean price increases. But this doesn’t prove anything about what happens if bean prices don’t increase.

Takeaway

How did you do on this question? Did you get it right confidently? And within the target time? If not, don’t worry! That’s why you’re studying. As you continue through the course, you’ll learn that one handy tool for solving questions like these is diagramming. We could have represented the relationships in the stimulus like this:

A diagram like this isn’t necessary to get this question right.

However, if you had any trouble at all with solving this problem confidently and quickly, you’ll find that visualizing conditional relationships is incredibly helpful. This diagram lets us see clearly why an increase in bean price ultimately leads to a decrease in overall profitability. And, once we understand that we can never go “backwards” against the direction an arrow is pointing, the diagram also shows clearly that if we start with a decrease in overall profitability, that doesn’t allow us to conclude anything else. That understanding lets us eliminate answers like (A) and (B) in split seconds, just from the first few words of each answer.

Diagramming can also help us understand conditional statements that use words such as “only if,” “without” and “or,” all of which came up in this question. In many cases, our own “intuitive” sense of these words is enough to get a question correct.

But, can you understand conditional statements accurately every time they appear? And quickly? If so, then awesome – you should feel free to breeze past the conditional logic module when you reach it.

On the other hand, if you’re like many new to the LSAT, your own intuition isn’t enough…yet. The good news? By embracing new analytical tools and frameworks, with dedicated practice, it will be.