The coffee price hikes have stemmed from lower production in important coffee growing regions, particularly in top grower Brazil, reducing the availability of beans.
That’s the closest I could find in the article as to a reason. It’d be nice to know if it was just a bad year or if this is going to be a permanent challenge going forward due to climate change or some other factors.
Coffee is quite sensitive to environmental factors and only grows in certain specific regions as a result. Those factors are being upended by climate change. Coffee is going to very rapidly become a luxury product.
Billionaires don’t care. Twenty dollars or two dollars for a cup is effectively the same price to them; insignificant. It’s the rest of us that get fucked.
Except we are nowhere near a situation like that. Articles like this don’t tell the actual prices because they are so small people might start questioning why they pay so much for coffee.
The poll had a median forecast for arabica prices at the end of 2025 of $2.95 per pound, a drop of 30% from Wednesday’s close and a loss of 6% from end-2024.
$3 per pound - $6 per kilo. Or to put it in another way, 4.8 cents per shot of espresso, two of which go in a 16 oz Starbucks latte that costs you $5.75, which would be enough money to buy 120 shots worth of bulk arabica.
If that goes up by 7% or 70% or 700%, the cost of that latte should hardly change.
Exactly. And all of those stay the exact same price even if raw coffee price increases, meaning the price of a ready made cup of coffee hardly changes as the actual raw bulk coffee is only 1/60th of the total price of a starbucks latte.
There is a reduced supply of coffee beans. Let’s say 30%. This requires that 30% of customers have to be priced out of the market.
If the coffee shop owners only increase the price by several cents then the demand stays the same. They have to fight for coffee beans which drives up their costs step by step.
However, if they increase the price in advance, and far more than necessary right from the start, then the reduced demand matches the available supply and the value of the coffee beans roughly remains the same which allows them to profit from most of the price hike.
What do you mean? There are globally less coffee beans available. Or do you mean the 30%? That’s just an arbitrary number, as I tried to make clear by writing “Let’s say …”.
From what I’ve heard this is largely due to bad weather due to climate change, as I understand it, we should not expect coffee prices to ever go back to where they were.
For the past 4-5 years it seems prices have only gone up here. It’s more than triple now of what it used to be before Covid, and that’s only 5 years!
But I’m not an expert, this is just what I’ve been seeing as a heavy coffee drinker in the supermarket, and what I’ve gathered from short news tid-bits.
My ground coffee has gone up about 20-30% over the past 2 years. This is just based on memory and not an exact calculation. It’s possible, I’ve misremembered the old price slightly, but either way it has gone up.
That’s the closest I could find in the article as to a reason. It’d be nice to know if it was just a bad year or if this is going to be a permanent challenge going forward due to climate change or some other factors.
Coffee is quite sensitive to environmental factors and only grows in certain specific regions as a result. Those factors are being upended by climate change. Coffee is going to very rapidly become a luxury product.
Billionaires don’t care. Twenty dollars or two dollars for a cup is effectively the same price to them; insignificant. It’s the rest of us that get fucked.
Except we are nowhere near a situation like that. Articles like this don’t tell the actual prices because they are so small people might start questioning why they pay so much for coffee.
$3 per pound - $6 per kilo. Or to put it in another way, 4.8 cents per shot of espresso, two of which go in a 16 oz Starbucks latte that costs you $5.75, which would be enough money to buy 120 shots worth of bulk arabica.
If that goes up by 7% or 70% or 700%, the cost of that latte should hardly change.
Logistics cost money
Shucking and processing the beans costs money
Roasting the beans costs money
Exactly. And all of those stay the exact same price even if raw coffee price increases, meaning the price of a ready made cup of coffee hardly changes as the actual raw bulk coffee is only 1/60th of the total price of a starbucks latte.
How about this explanation:
There is a reduced supply of coffee beans. Let’s say 30%. This requires that 30% of customers have to be priced out of the market.
If the coffee shop owners only increase the price by several cents then the demand stays the same. They have to fight for coffee beans which drives up their costs step by step.
However, if they increase the price in advance, and far more than necessary right from the start, then the reduced demand matches the available supply and the value of the coffee beans roughly remains the same which allows them to profit from most of the price hike.
this is fiction writing. you are literally making that up
What do you mean? There are globally less coffee beans available. Or do you mean the 30%? That’s just an arbitrary number, as I tried to make clear by writing “Let’s say …”.
the price doesn’t need to change at all. if it does, it is a decision someone makes.
From what I’ve heard this is largely due to bad weather due to climate change, as I understand it, we should not expect coffee prices to ever go back to where they were.
For the past 4-5 years it seems prices have only gone up here. It’s more than triple now of what it used to be before Covid, and that’s only 5 years!
But I’m not an expert, this is just what I’ve been seeing as a heavy coffee drinker in the supermarket, and what I’ve gathered from short news tid-bits.
My ground coffee has gone up about 20-30% over the past 2 years. This is just based on memory and not an exact calculation. It’s possible, I’ve misremembered the old price slightly, but either way it has gone up.
The cost of pretty much everything has gone up that much in that time.
As it turns out, more money in the hands of consumers tends to translate to higher prices.
It’s almost like, and hear me out, it’s almost like businesses charge what people are willing to pay, not what goods cost to produce.