June 2007 PrepTest, Section 3, Question 22
If the price it pays for coffee beans continues to increase, the Coffee Shoppe will have to increase its prices. In that case, either the Coffee Shoppe will begin selling noncoffee products or its coffee sales will decrease. But selling noncoffee products will decrease the Coffee Shoppe's overall profitability. Moreover, the Coffee Shoppe can avoid a decrease in overall profitability only if its coffee sales do not decrease.
If the price it pays for coffee beans continues to increase, the Coffee Shoppe will have to increase its prices. In that case, either the Coffee Shoppe will begin selling noncoffee products or its coffee sales will decrease. But selling noncoffee products will decrease the Coffee Shoppe's overall profitability. Moreover, the Coffee Shoppe can avoid a decrease in overall profitability only if its coffee sales do not decrease.
If the price it pays for coffee beans continues to increase, the Coffee Shoppe will have to increase its prices. In that case, either the Coffee Shoppe will begin selling noncoffee products or its coffee sales will decrease. But selling noncoffee products will decrease the Coffee Shoppe's overall profitability. Moreover, the Coffee Shoppe can avoid a decrease in overall profitability only if its coffee sales do not decrease.
If the price it pays for coffee beans continues to increase, the Coffee Shoppe will have to increase its prices. In that case, either the Coffee Shoppe will begin selling noncoffee products or its coffee sales will decrease. But selling noncoffee products will decrease the Coffee Shoppe's overall profitability. Moreover, the Coffee Shoppe can avoid a decrease in overall profitability only if its coffee sales do not decrease.
Which one of the following statements follows logically from the statements above?
If the Coffee Shoppe's overall profitability decreases, the price it pays for coffee beans will have continued to increase.
If the Coffee Shoppe's overall profitability decreases, either it will have begun selling noncoffee products or its coffee sales will have decreased.
The Coffee Shoppe's overall profitability will decrease if the price it pays for coffee beans continues to increase.
The price it pays for coffee beans cannot decrease without the Coffee Shoppe's overall profitability also decreasing.
Either the price it pays for coffee beans will continue to increase or the Coffee Shoppe's coffee sales will increase.
Explanations
First thing's first—this isn't an argument. No one's trying to convince us to see their side of things or have us take a certain action.
Based on the fun facts we're learning about this coffee shop, I'm expecting a Must Be True.
Why? Because there's a clear inference that follows from the facts provided. Follow me here:
If the price the shop pays for beans increases, then the shop will increase prices. Beans go up? Prices go up.
Then we're told that if prices go up (in that case), either the shop will sell non-coffee products (perhaps cups / mugs?) or its coffee sales will drop. So, if prices go up, then we either start selling non-coffee stuff or we lose coffee sales. Got it.
Last, we're told what happens in each of these previous two cases. If the shop sells non-coffee products, the shop's profitability will drop. And the only way for the shop not to lose profitability is to avoid a decrease in coffee sales—in other words, if coffee sales decrease, so does profitability.
This all ties back to our first conditional: If bean prices go up, the shop will inevitably decrease in profitability. Because satisfying that very first condition is enough to set up a sequence of events that—no matter which path we take—leads to decreased profitability.
Turns out to be a Must Be True question, just as predicted, so I'm virtually certain our answer will be "If bean prices increase, the shop will decrease in profitability." Let's go find it.
No way. This answer choice confuses sufficient and necessary. The bean price increase is just one of many ways the shop could end up less profitable. For example, if anything else causes the shop to lose coffee sales, we know it will be less profitable. So the shop being less profitable does not necessarily mean bean prices went up.
Nope. Again, this confuses sufficient and necessary. There are tons of ways this shop could end up less profitable, we just know of three very specific and interconnected ways we know it would happen. But what if the shop arbitrarily hires 30 new baristas they don't need? We could avoid all other conditions presented in the passage and still end up way less profitable.
Boom. Perfect. It's worded awkwardly, but this is precisely my prediction. Rephrased, this means if bean prices keep going up, then the shop's overall profitability will go down.
Nah, we have no evidence for any of this in the passage. This is a total mischaracterization.
Nope. Similar to D, we have absolutely no evidence for this.
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