Coffee YouTuber James Hoffman makes a pretty convincing argument that we are living in the golden age of coffee. Lots of excellent coffee and it’s pretty affordable. But he thinks it could end soon.
Everybody knows that climate change could be a problem, but he says an even bigger problem is urbanization. The average coffee farmer’s age is 50-something and their kids don’t want to take over the farm, they want to move to the city. The people who are willing to work the farms, want to be paid a lot more, so there’s upward pressure on prices.
Right now cafes can charge $4-$6 for a coffee drink and people seem to be willing to pay it. As coffee gets more expensive, how many people are willing to pay $6-$8? For a lot of cafes, it won’t take much of a drop in business to kill them.
I've been able to buy a pound of high-quality whole bean coffee for $15-$20 for about 20 years now. I assumed the cost at cafes had more to do with labor and rent.
The cost of coffee beans in a standard espresso drink is ~25 cents, and that's if you are brewing ultra high-end $15-20/lbs beans. Raising the price of the beans by 15% or 30% or even 50% isn't going to make all that much difference to margins when the end product retails for $4-6 or more.
The coffee shop business is only tangentially related to coffee. Whether you will be successful or not depends more on location, labor, branding, interior decor, music, bakery, food, upsells..
Might want to check your math there. At $20/lb, zero waste (!!), 18g of coffee is $0.80/shot. Add in 10-15% waste (accurately predicting exact supply of beans is almost impossible, plus dialing in, mistakes, and training) and a more standard 22g basket, you get $1.12 per drink.
Aiming for 25% COGS, that pushes up the price of a cup to $4.50 before milk, syrups, cups, etc. If the cost of coffee doubled, you'd be looking at the cost of coffee only being 38% COGS for a $6 drink. That kind of increase is not only going to completely remove all margins, but likely put you in the red per drink served.
There is no "standard 22g basket". Regular 8-12 oz drinks at most coffee shops have a single 7-10g shot. Double shots and larger sizes always cost more.
All espresso based drinks you will find will be double-based.
And especially any place which is doing specialty coffee is going to be using larger doses to make extraction more consistent with lighter roasted coffee (in the realm from 18g to 28g).
It's pretty normal nowadays to see 20g or 22g baskets used in specialty coffee shops.
You can obviously order a single but the price difference is just a trick, the other shot gets dumped unless two people order singles at the same time.
I have no idea what you are talking about. The world's largest coffee chain (Starbucks) uses a single 1 oz/7 g espresso shot in their short (8oz) And tall (12oz) drink sizes. To get two shots you have to upgrade to "grande" (16oz), or specifically ask for (and pay for) an extra shot. Most coffee shops do the same for their smaller drinks.
Starbucks does use singles in some Tall drinks (your point stands - Latte & Cappuccino), but not all (Americano & Flat Whites have 2 shots in a tall).
Meta: I've never seen anyone order a short, the only thing I've ever seen in those cups are espresso pulls or water (but it turns out a Short Flat White still has two shots - worth a look)
Starbucks makes coffee flavoured desert drinks. We are talking about specialty coffee shops. I've also never seen starbucks use a single shot basket to pour a single shot. They always just split, this is broadly the standard. Nobody outside of Italy is making single shots with a single shot basket.
Ask any coffee professional (someone who actually knows what they're doing).
Or just go walk around. Try to find a cafe which is using different portafilters with single spouts (an indication of a single shot basket). Or ask them. Buy a single espresso and watch what they do. You will never see them use a single shot basket or a single spouted portafilter. You will always see them split a double.
For #2:
Since nobody is using single shot baskets, and no reputable coffee shop is setting aside split shots to use in someone else's drink, the only time it would make sense to make a coffee from a single shot is if it would be too intense with a double (hard to imagine). The alternative is just wasting coffee in most cases except when you're lucky and your customers order drinks where you can use the other split shot. But I don't really see anyone splitting shots for milk drinks, maybe I've not paid enough attention as I don't drink them that often. Either way, you're still brewing a double shot.
You can again, just watch what they're doing. I've never seen a coffee shop where you can't see the bar and the machine. Just watch what happens.
Lastly, you can't dial in a single shot basket and a double shot basket at the same time, you need to have dedicated grinders dialled in for both. Nobody outside of Italy bothers with that. For specialty cafes you'd be doubling the number of dialled in grinders which would be especially impractical.
> you need to have dedicated grinders dialled in for both. Nobody outside of Italy bothers with that.
Huh? Most cafe's I see (Australia) the grinding is separate from the dispensing, and it is a single shot per pull. It's a big world out there mate, might be more of an isolated cultural thing than you realize or my neck of the woods is special. Either way, likely varies.
I think there would be magnifying effects, but possibly in the opposite direction.
If coffee becomes more expensive, buying a bag of coffee for your home and being terribly inefficient with doseages and such would not be so viable.
If coffee houses can maintain price relatively stable they become much more viable. Especially since the other cost factors can keep coffee consumption in check.
I think you are using a very narrow definition of "nice beans". At one pound per cup in bean cost, you are doing some coffee equivalent of having a glass from a £500 champagne bottle or listening to music from a pair of £10k speakers. Amazing for sure, but not a reasonable floor for defining "nice".
Normal premium beans are around €15 in a 450g bag over here, and I can't imagine they are all that much more expensive in the UK. If you buy in bulk, they will be a lot cheaper.
Yes at £20 per 350g I am paying slightly more than normal for "nice beans". But most places sell for no less than £10 per 250g of light roast. That's still 76p ($1) per shot.
The only things going for less are darker roasts, supermarket coffee and blends.
Not a big deal. Coffee is not a necessity. The coffee monoculture is devastating for the environment. Most small coffee farmers and plantation workers don't earn a livable income. Only 10% of the retail price of coffee goes to farmers. The whole industry is exploitative.
It seems like there was lower coffee production so they hiked prices due to the more limited supply. It also seems like they hiked prices too high with suppliers saying that they've only sold 30% of their production when they'd normally have sold 100% by now.
It does kinda show how markets don't just magically hit an equilibrium price. The prices went up due to limited supply, but then the sellers couldn't sell at those higher prices. Negotiations over price aren't going fast and buyers are only buying what they can immediately use/sell.
> It does kinda show how markets don't just magically hit an equilibrium price.
Generally, markets do "magically" hit that.
Can you explain why, at the moment demand dried up at the higher price, the suppliers didn't immediately drop the price to meet demand? That's generally how these things work.
Unless there's some kind of cartel operation at play here. In which that's to blame, not the market.
Futures traders decided the price would go up 70%, and were very wrong. This led to the standard “C” contract (set by the ICE exchange) price being too high, tanking demand. If you want to participate in the futures market, you need to have a license you get from the exchange.
I’m sure some producers will try to bypass the exchange market that manages all that, but, ultimately, someone will have to lose a bunch of money. It’ll either be the traders (futures contracts end up being worthless) or the producers (coffee ends up rotting or being refused by the silo).
The article suggests it’s the latter, which makes me wonder how powerful the exchange is, and what happens if you just start freighting bags of coffee around.
I’m not an expert on agricultural commodity exchanges, but at least some (like the Chicago board of trade) look like a cartel from the outside. The cartel controls distribution, and squeezes the producers and the consumers.
If that’s happening here, that’d explain how we can be in a situation where the (1) retailers want to buy coffee, but can’t afford the newly hiked price, (2) the producers are sitting on unsold inventory that they can’t discount, and, simultaneously (3) there’s a glut of distribution capacity and things like silos are sitting empty and going bankrupt.
Whenever someone says the market doesn't work it's just because it's not doing what they think it should, as if there's some pre-ordained magical prices.
I'm curious to know from someone who understands better- isn't this the kind of volatility that futures markets are intended to prevent? If actual product movement has changed significantly then is it just that this moment is especially volatile, or are futures as a mechanism not particularly meant to deal with this?
Futures aren’t meant to do anything, are they? Like so much of the market, they are just another partial-information lottery which isn’t explicitly forbidden by weak regulators.
Futures market started as a way of (and in America were strictly limited to) prpducers and wholesale buyers to hedge/fix their costs.
Then American regulators started handing exceptions to allowable market participants out like candy and suddenly the markets are majoritarily financial middlemen who do not want to take delivery.
Futures markets make lots of sense and are very useful. How they are currently constituted does not.
> It does kinda show how markets don't just magically hit an equilibrium price.
There's lot of research on situations where market prices fail to work, but not much (as far as I'm aware) of when they largely work, but there are times when the market seizes up (and how to avoid such situations). or do the risk of such situations are so great that a product should not a be allowed to have a truly "free" market. e.g. petroleum.
it's difficult to impossible to believe that there is any failure currently in the international coffee market. (i'm replying as much to GP as to you, not disagreeing with you)
>markets don't just magically hit an equilibrium price
markets do magically, and quickly, hit a "market clearing price" where all the bids and asks that match are executed. the market can also slow when there are plenty of bids and asks but they are too far apart.
an "equilibrium price" seems to imply some sort of stability, but when the future is uncertain, prices will be uncertain, without implying a market failure. there can be "information failures" that steer prices wrong, but prices can be uncertain just the same even given all current information.
In 2021, the extra large 1200 grams pack of coffee beans cost €6,50 at the Lidl in the Netherlands. This month you probably won't find any at the Lidl (not in the ones near me in any case). Other supermarkets have similar empty shelves due to a conflict with the biggest brand name supplier (JDE Peet's), and what is available costs perhaps €10 per kilogram for some of the remaining supply, but €15 per kilogram is now the normal price.
One factor sometimes mentioned in addition to the bad harvest, is the rise in coffee consumption in China having an definitive impact on the market.
> Below-normal rain in Brazil has heightened coffee crop concerns and is supporting coffee prices after Somar Meteorologia reported Monday that Brazil's biggest arabica coffee growing area of Minas Gerais received 12.4 mm of rain last week, or 20% of the historical average. Brazil is the world's biggest arabica coffee growing country.
Interesting. I wondered what the alternative was made of, and their FAQ answers it very nicely:
What is Coffee Free Coffee made of?
Our blends consist of a mix of roasted cereals, legumes, roots and fruits.
The filter blend is made of roasted lupin, barley, chickpeas, chicory, natural aroma, dried black currant, citric acid and caffeine. The decaf version does not contain caffeine.
The capsules variant is made of roasted lupin, barley, fig, chickpeas, chicory, natural aroma, dried black currant and caffeine. The decaf version does not contain any caffeine.
The espresso is made of roasted lupin, fig, chicory, chickpea, natural aroma, caffeine, citric acid and baking soda. The decaf version does not contain any caffeine.
(If anyone from the company happens to be reading, I'll mention that my first attempt involved following the link from the front page to "Discover More", but this currently leads to a 404 Page Not Found)
I roast around 15 pounds a year. I noticed prices have gone up 1-2 dollars/pound at my main supplier (sweet marias). The average is now about $8.5/pound. That is a price I'm still comfortable with.
At my consumption level so far the price changes haven't been a big deal. It could be that high end beans haven't been as affected - or maybe that was the 'brutal' price hike.
I also roast for personal consumption, about 25 pounds per year, and concur on the price increase. Just a few years ago green coffee was in the $6.50 range (and when I started roasting about 7 years ago, even $5), but as you said more like $8.50 now. I just did a relatively large buy (about 20 pounds) as a just-in-case because it's impossible to predict what the demented orange or the ketamine-stuffed Nazi will do.
"They don't know if they will be able to sell their product at the new prices," he said, also asking not to be identified. "Some people are going down".
That's surprising to me, considering that coffee is quite addictive. Will consumers really stop drinking it if it gets too expensive? Is there a really a strong correlation between coffee production price and the amount sold to end consumers?
> That's surprising to me, considering that coffee is quite addictive.
I'm not sure that it really is. You can build a physical dependence to caffeine, but in my experience there's no mentally addictive component. For a period of time I drank a lot of coffee and then stopped cold turkey, and the only effect was a couple days of physical unpleasantness. I now limit my coffee consumption to a max of one cup per day, and have no issues switching between coffee/decaf/no coffee on any particular day or for any arbitrary period of time.
My personal experience is that my withdrawal symptoms are not that bad. I used to pause my coffee consumption when the euphoria significantly diminished.
I hope someone can authoritatively answer the correlation question.
No one has mentioned China's uptake of coffee drinking, or their long term contracts with coffee growers, buying up whole crops. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aR4RCqw-gg
This prompted me to re-order my 20lb bag of green beans early this year.
Looking back at my order history the price has been the same ($129) for the past four years, but now is $134. Not exactly a steep rise, but more than zero.
Really it’s an indictment of how poorly run Greenland is that such an agricultural paradise isn’t the leading producer of tropical produce. I mean the word “green” is right there in the name!
Is that a theoretical concern? Or do you actually know someone (personally, I mean) who has had such a change of heart?
One mark of a moral panic is the intensity of feelings people have about topics that are very distant from their actual experience. The kids say “touch grass,” but perhaps instead it should be “talk to someone actually involved.”
What is the goal of restricting examples to “personally”-known relatives?
Did people in 1943 personally knew people who got killed? Do I, as a gay person, personally knew the gay who was killed because he was crossing the main square of my city (France) which is under occupation by the muslims?
Do I care? Yes, absolutely. As a gay person, I have the electoral choice of either we become a muslim-majority country, either I vote for the French equivalent of trumpism.
Result: In my city, 35 out of the 35 core group of the extreme-right party are gay.
Coffee YouTuber James Hoffman makes a pretty convincing argument that we are living in the golden age of coffee. Lots of excellent coffee and it’s pretty affordable. But he thinks it could end soon.
Everybody knows that climate change could be a problem, but he says an even bigger problem is urbanization. The average coffee farmer’s age is 50-something and their kids don’t want to take over the farm, they want to move to the city. The people who are willing to work the farms, want to be paid a lot more, so there’s upward pressure on prices.
Right now cafes can charge $4-$6 for a coffee drink and people seem to be willing to pay it. As coffee gets more expensive, how many people are willing to pay $6-$8? For a lot of cafes, it won’t take much of a drop in business to kill them.
I've been able to buy a pound of high-quality whole bean coffee for $15-$20 for about 20 years now. I assumed the cost at cafes had more to do with labor and rent.
The cost of coffee beans in a standard espresso drink is ~25 cents, and that's if you are brewing ultra high-end $15-20/lbs beans. Raising the price of the beans by 15% or 30% or even 50% isn't going to make all that much difference to margins when the end product retails for $4-6 or more.
The coffee shop business is only tangentially related to coffee. Whether you will be successful or not depends more on location, labor, branding, interior decor, music, bakery, food, upsells..
Might want to check your math there. At $20/lb, zero waste (!!), 18g of coffee is $0.80/shot. Add in 10-15% waste (accurately predicting exact supply of beans is almost impossible, plus dialing in, mistakes, and training) and a more standard 22g basket, you get $1.12 per drink.
Aiming for 25% COGS, that pushes up the price of a cup to $4.50 before milk, syrups, cups, etc. If the cost of coffee doubled, you'd be looking at the cost of coffee only being 38% COGS for a $6 drink. That kind of increase is not only going to completely remove all margins, but likely put you in the red per drink served.
There is no "standard 22g basket". Regular 8-12 oz drinks at most coffee shops have a single 7-10g shot. Double shots and larger sizes always cost more.
Outside of Italy nobody uses single shot baskets.
All espresso based drinks you will find will be double-based.
And especially any place which is doing specialty coffee is going to be using larger doses to make extraction more consistent with lighter roasted coffee (in the realm from 18g to 28g).
It's pretty normal nowadays to see 20g or 22g baskets used in specialty coffee shops.
You can obviously order a single but the price difference is just a trick, the other shot gets dumped unless two people order singles at the same time.
I have no idea what you are talking about. The world's largest coffee chain (Starbucks) uses a single 1 oz/7 g espresso shot in their short (8oz) And tall (12oz) drink sizes. To get two shots you have to upgrade to "grande" (16oz), or specifically ask for (and pay for) an extra shot. Most coffee shops do the same for their smaller drinks.
Starbucks does use singles in some Tall drinks (your point stands - Latte & Cappuccino), but not all (Americano & Flat Whites have 2 shots in a tall).
Meta: I've never seen anyone order a short, the only thing I've ever seen in those cups are espresso pulls or water (but it turns out a Short Flat White still has two shots - worth a look)
Starbucks makes coffee flavoured desert drinks. We are talking about specialty coffee shops. I've also never seen starbucks use a single shot basket to pour a single shot. They always just split, this is broadly the standard. Nobody outside of Italy is making single shots with a single shot basket.
> Outside of Italy nobody uses single shot baskets. > All espresso based drinks you will find will be double-based.
Do you have a source for these claims?
For #1:
Ask any coffee professional (someone who actually knows what they're doing).
Or just go walk around. Try to find a cafe which is using different portafilters with single spouts (an indication of a single shot basket). Or ask them. Buy a single espresso and watch what they do. You will never see them use a single shot basket or a single spouted portafilter. You will always see them split a double.
For #2:
Since nobody is using single shot baskets, and no reputable coffee shop is setting aside split shots to use in someone else's drink, the only time it would make sense to make a coffee from a single shot is if it would be too intense with a double (hard to imagine). The alternative is just wasting coffee in most cases except when you're lucky and your customers order drinks where you can use the other split shot. But I don't really see anyone splitting shots for milk drinks, maybe I've not paid enough attention as I don't drink them that often. Either way, you're still brewing a double shot.
You can again, just watch what they're doing. I've never seen a coffee shop where you can't see the bar and the machine. Just watch what happens.
Lastly, you can't dial in a single shot basket and a double shot basket at the same time, you need to have dedicated grinders dialled in for both. Nobody outside of Italy bothers with that. For specialty cafes you'd be doubling the number of dialled in grinders which would be especially impractical.
> you need to have dedicated grinders dialled in for both. Nobody outside of Italy bothers with that.
Huh? Most cafe's I see (Australia) the grinding is separate from the dispensing, and it is a single shot per pull. It's a big world out there mate, might be more of an isolated cultural thing than you realize or my neck of the woods is special. Either way, likely varies.
$15-$20 / lb is not ultra high end. That’s the normal price for beans from most roasters. High end is around $40 / lb and ultra high end is much more.
I think there would be magnifying effects, but possibly in the opposite direction.
If coffee becomes more expensive, buying a bag of coffee for your home and being terribly inefficient with doseages and such would not be so viable.
If coffee houses can maintain price relatively stable they become much more viable. Especially since the other cost factors can keep coffee consumption in check.
25 cents (20 pence)? Ultra high end $15-20/lbs (£6.40-£8.50/250g) beans?
Where are you getting good coffee that cheap? You're pulling shots out of 7.5g of coffee?
I am buying some nice beans here in the UK and my espresso coffee cost has now reached £1.10 per.
I'm doing relatively standard 19g shots.
I think you are using a very narrow definition of "nice beans". At one pound per cup in bean cost, you are doing some coffee equivalent of having a glass from a £500 champagne bottle or listening to music from a pair of £10k speakers. Amazing for sure, but not a reasonable floor for defining "nice".
Normal premium beans are around €15 in a 450g bag over here, and I can't imagine they are all that much more expensive in the UK. If you buy in bulk, they will be a lot cheaper.
The actual premium beans are even more expensive.
Yes at £20 per 350g I am paying slightly more than normal for "nice beans". But most places sell for no less than £10 per 250g of light roast. That's still 76p ($1) per shot.
The only things going for less are darker roasts, supermarket coffee and blends.
Nah, coffee can go to $12 a cup and people will still pay. We will see corporations subsidize the cost for their workers as necessary.
Don’t they do that already?
Corporate agriculture will buy up the land and find ways to produce at a profit.
Starbucks regularly charges $15 for coffee flavored drinks today.
I'm not worried about coffee. I'm worried about climate induced resource wars.
I'd take that chance to (slowly) quit coffee. Possibly go into lower caffeine beverages like tea.
That's because coffee farmers don't make any money it's all going to Western corporations.
I swear most cafes I've been to are already selling coffee for $6-$10.
I mean let’s be honest, coffee will rise to 6-8 bucks either way cause of inflation
Not a big deal. Coffee is not a necessity. The coffee monoculture is devastating for the environment. Most small coffee farmers and plantation workers don't earn a livable income. Only 10% of the retail price of coffee goes to farmers. The whole industry is exploitative.
Don’t drink coffee. It’s that easy.
It seems like there was lower coffee production so they hiked prices due to the more limited supply. It also seems like they hiked prices too high with suppliers saying that they've only sold 30% of their production when they'd normally have sold 100% by now.
It does kinda show how markets don't just magically hit an equilibrium price. The prices went up due to limited supply, but then the sellers couldn't sell at those higher prices. Negotiations over price aren't going fast and buyers are only buying what they can immediately use/sell.
> It also seems like they hiked prices too high
How is that even possible?
> It does kinda show how markets don't just magically hit an equilibrium price.
Generally, markets do "magically" hit that.
Can you explain why, at the moment demand dried up at the higher price, the suppliers didn't immediately drop the price to meet demand? That's generally how these things work.
Unless there's some kind of cartel operation at play here. In which that's to blame, not the market.
Can you provide any links with greater detail?
I was wondering how it’s possible too. The article mentions this exchange:
https://www.ice.com/products/15/Coffee-C-Futures
My take:
Futures traders decided the price would go up 70%, and were very wrong. This led to the standard “C” contract (set by the ICE exchange) price being too high, tanking demand. If you want to participate in the futures market, you need to have a license you get from the exchange.
I’m sure some producers will try to bypass the exchange market that manages all that, but, ultimately, someone will have to lose a bunch of money. It’ll either be the traders (futures contracts end up being worthless) or the producers (coffee ends up rotting or being refused by the silo).
The article suggests it’s the latter, which makes me wonder how powerful the exchange is, and what happens if you just start freighting bags of coffee around.
So why is an exchange setting a price at all?
That's not how exchanges generally operate. They generally simply match supply and demand.
An exchange setting prices is the literal opposite of a free marketplace. Is this more of a cartel, like OPEC?
I’m not an expert on agricultural commodity exchanges, but at least some (like the Chicago board of trade) look like a cartel from the outside. The cartel controls distribution, and squeezes the producers and the consumers.
If that’s happening here, that’d explain how we can be in a situation where the (1) retailers want to buy coffee, but can’t afford the newly hiked price, (2) the producers are sitting on unsold inventory that they can’t discount, and, simultaneously (3) there’s a glut of distribution capacity and things like silos are sitting empty and going bankrupt.
Whenever someone says the market doesn't work it's just because it's not doing what they think it should, as if there's some pre-ordained magical prices.
A market that allows gamblers to cause resources to rot rather than lose money on their own bad bets is working exactly as a market should?
Seems to me the bigger magical leap here is in the observer who considers this to be either desirable or necessary.
I'm curious to know from someone who understands better- isn't this the kind of volatility that futures markets are intended to prevent? If actual product movement has changed significantly then is it just that this moment is especially volatile, or are futures as a mechanism not particularly meant to deal with this?
That was always touted as a reason, yes. I am sure it is partly true, within certain bounds.
Futures aren’t meant to do anything, are they? Like so much of the market, they are just another partial-information lottery which isn’t explicitly forbidden by weak regulators.
(But I’m not someone who knows better)
Futures market started as a way of (and in America were strictly limited to) prpducers and wholesale buyers to hedge/fix their costs.
Then American regulators started handing exceptions to allowable market participants out like candy and suddenly the markets are majoritarily financial middlemen who do not want to take delivery.
Futures markets make lots of sense and are very useful. How they are currently constituted does not.
futures markets (among other things) allow producers to temporally match assets and liabilities.
Sellers will start holding more inventory. and wait for buyers to run through theirs.
> It does kinda show how markets don't just magically hit an equilibrium price.
There's lot of research on situations where market prices fail to work, but not much (as far as I'm aware) of when they largely work, but there are times when the market seizes up (and how to avoid such situations). or do the risk of such situations are so great that a product should not a be allowed to have a truly "free" market. e.g. petroleum.
it's difficult to impossible to believe that there is any failure currently in the international coffee market. (i'm replying as much to GP as to you, not disagreeing with you)
>markets don't just magically hit an equilibrium price
markets do magically, and quickly, hit a "market clearing price" where all the bids and asks that match are executed. the market can also slow when there are plenty of bids and asks but they are too far apart.
an "equilibrium price" seems to imply some sort of stability, but when the future is uncertain, prices will be uncertain, without implying a market failure. there can be "information failures" that steer prices wrong, but prices can be uncertain just the same even given all current information.
In 2021, the extra large 1200 grams pack of coffee beans cost €6,50 at the Lidl in the Netherlands. This month you probably won't find any at the Lidl (not in the ones near me in any case). Other supermarkets have similar empty shelves due to a conflict with the biggest brand name supplier (JDE Peet's), and what is available costs perhaps €10 per kilogram for some of the remaining supply, but €15 per kilogram is now the normal price.
One factor sometimes mentioned in addition to the bad harvest, is the rise in coffee consumption in China having an definitive impact on the market.
This isn't tariff related.
Per NASDAQ:
> Below-normal rain in Brazil has heightened coffee crop concerns and is supporting coffee prices after Somar Meteorologia reported Monday that Brazil's biggest arabica coffee growing area of Minas Gerais received 12.4 mm of rain last week, or 20% of the historical average. Brazil is the world's biggest arabica coffee growing country.
It's climate related.
I've switched to a 50/50 blend of regular coffee and coffee-free alternative from Northern Wonder (https://northern-wonder.com).
I combine 50% traditional coffee beans with 50% coffee alternative made from locally produced beans in my espresso machine.
The blend works so well that I have no desire to return to using 100% regular coffee beans.
I maintain the 50/50 ratio because real coffee provides an incredible aroma that I don't want to give up (for now).
Interesting. I wondered what the alternative was made of, and their FAQ answers it very nicely:
What is Coffee Free Coffee made of?
Our blends consist of a mix of roasted cereals, legumes, roots and fruits.
The filter blend is made of roasted lupin, barley, chickpeas, chicory, natural aroma, dried black currant, citric acid and caffeine. The decaf version does not contain caffeine.
The capsules variant is made of roasted lupin, barley, fig, chickpeas, chicory, natural aroma, dried black currant and caffeine. The decaf version does not contain any caffeine.
The espresso is made of roasted lupin, fig, chicory, chickpea, natural aroma, caffeine, citric acid and baking soda. The decaf version does not contain any caffeine.
https://northern-wonder.com/pages/faq
(If anyone from the company happens to be reading, I'll mention that my first attempt involved following the link from the front page to "Discover More", but this currently leads to a 404 Page Not Found)
I roast around 15 pounds a year. I noticed prices have gone up 1-2 dollars/pound at my main supplier (sweet marias). The average is now about $8.5/pound. That is a price I'm still comfortable with.
At my consumption level so far the price changes haven't been a big deal. It could be that high end beans haven't been as affected - or maybe that was the 'brutal' price hike.
I also roast for personal consumption, about 25 pounds per year, and concur on the price increase. Just a few years ago green coffee was in the $6.50 range (and when I started roasting about 7 years ago, even $5), but as you said more like $8.50 now. I just did a relatively large buy (about 20 pounds) as a just-in-case because it's impossible to predict what the demented orange or the ketamine-stuffed Nazi will do.
"They don't know if they will be able to sell their product at the new prices," he said, also asking not to be identified. "Some people are going down".
That's surprising to me, considering that coffee is quite addictive. Will consumers really stop drinking it if it gets too expensive? Is there a really a strong correlation between coffee production price and the amount sold to end consumers?
Inventory along the distribution chain will take quite some time to draw down before people are actually drinking less coffee.
As for caffeine, there are cheaper alternatives to coffee if you just want the caffeine.
> That's surprising to me, considering that coffee is quite addictive.
I'm not sure that it really is. You can build a physical dependence to caffeine, but in my experience there's no mentally addictive component. For a period of time I drank a lot of coffee and then stopped cold turkey, and the only effect was a couple days of physical unpleasantness. I now limit my coffee consumption to a max of one cup per day, and have no issues switching between coffee/decaf/no coffee on any particular day or for any arbitrary period of time.
My personal experience is that my withdrawal symptoms are not that bad. I used to pause my coffee consumption when the euphoria significantly diminished.
I hope someone can authoritatively answer the correlation question.
No one has mentioned China's uptake of coffee drinking, or their long term contracts with coffee growers, buying up whole crops. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aR4RCqw-gg
This prompted me to re-order my 20lb bag of green beans early this year. Looking back at my order history the price has been the same ($129) for the past four years, but now is $134. Not exactly a steep rise, but more than zero.
Recent NYT piece of interest:
Coffee Prices Are at a 50-Year High. Producers Aren’t Celebrating.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/22/business/coffee-prices-cl...
I wonder how this affects small, subsistence farmers in PNG.
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I'm not worried, US will take over Greenland and convert it to coffee plantations.
Really it’s an indictment of how poorly run Greenland is that such an agricultural paradise isn’t the leading producer of tropical produce. I mean the word “green” is right there in the name!
How green is greenland? Emerald green, arsenic green,uranium green, majory tailor green, just unbelievable green!
Yeah, greenland is mismanaged, luckily the perfectly ran united states of america will want to take it over.
Before Global Cooling, it was Green. Sad!
https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/toast/t... - We can make it happen, just need a bit of genetic engineering and we will never be short of coffee again.
The link above is to a story called "Extracts from the Club Diary" by Charles Stross in his collection Toast.
https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/toast/t... - the collection in various formats.
Probably hard to make it taste good and more hardy at the same time
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Doctors providing healthcare to kids is a good thing.
What about newborn circumcision for boys?
Less good when it's impossible or very hard to reverse when there is a change of heart or regret after passing adolescence.
Is that a theoretical concern? Or do you actually know someone (personally, I mean) who has had such a change of heart?
One mark of a moral panic is the intensity of feelings people have about topics that are very distant from their actual experience. The kids say “touch grass,” but perhaps instead it should be “talk to someone actually involved.”
What is the goal of restricting examples to “personally”-known relatives?
Did people in 1943 personally knew people who got killed? Do I, as a gay person, personally knew the gay who was killed because he was crossing the main square of my city (France) which is under occupation by the muslims?
Do I care? Yes, absolutely. As a gay person, I have the electoral choice of either we become a muslim-majority country, either I vote for the French equivalent of trumpism.
Result: In my city, 35 out of the 35 core group of the extreme-right party are gay.
It really really isn't
Is it? How?
I think you mean narcotics. Without caffeinated adults, parenting will have to change
This is cause the harvests were fucked