Cost of a cup is going up.

Coffee drinkers who grab a cup of coffee at the local Wawa will have to shell out 6 cents more starting Monday.

"We posted signs in stores this week as a courtesy. So many customers are in a hurry and have exact change ready," said Wawa spokeswoman Lori Bruce.

So a cup of coffee at Wawa's 568 convenience stores in five states will cost $1.15 for 12 ounces, $1.25 for 16 ounces, $1.35 for 20 ounces and $1.45 for 24 ounces.

Wawa, based in Delaware County, says it sells 195 million cups of coffee annually. Six cents a cup adds up to an $11.7 million revenue boost. The increase is driven by the cost of operating stores and transporting merchandise to them, Bruce said.

Wawa's main rival, the 34,000-store 7-Eleven Inc. said yesterday that it had no immediate plans to boost coffee prices in the Philadelphia area. Seattle-based Starbucks would say only that it had not announced plans for a price increase.

Despite rising prices and a difficult economy, coffee drinking remains popular - 47 percent of adults age 25-39 drink coffee daily, according to National Coffee Association research. As people get older, the research report said, coffee consumption increases - 71 percent of people over age 60 drink coffee daily.

The popularity of premium coffee continues to grow - 17 percent of the adult population drinks gourmet coffee daily, up from 14 percent last year. "Gourmet coffee offers intriguing adventures into new tastes," said Robert F. Nelson, the coffee association's president and chief executive.

Sparked by the growth of Starbucks - from 5,886 stores in 2002 to 11,434 in the United States today - Dunkin Donuts, McDonald's and others now sell premium coffee.

Meanwhile, shops and cafés that roast beans in small batches as they sell it, so the coffee is truly fresh, are cropping up in both urban and rural settings. They blend various varieties to suit local tastes and tout that they pay a higher price for beans to assure that small coffee growers earn a fair profit.

Two years ago, Rick and Iris Lewis started roasting eight varieties of beans in a corner of their Homestead General Store in Upper Black Eddy, Bucks County, alongside the Delaware River Canal. With critiques from customers, they create new blends from time to time.

They got the idea on a vacation to Europe, where they found the coffee tastier than what was available at home. "People love the taste of our coffee. They are willing to pay more and go out of their way to come here and get it," Iris Lewis said.

The price of the beans they buy goes up and down. "We're a small business," Iris Lewis said, "We've been able to buy when the price was down. So we're not raising our prices," which range from $1.25 for a 12-ounce cup to $1.75 for 20 ounces.