Mar. 27, 2025 "Coming to a store near you: double-digit coffee price hikes": Today I found this article on BNN Bloomberg:
Roasters such as Lavazza, Illy, Nestle and Douwe Egberts maker JDE Peet’s are currently in talks with retailers about
passing on costs from a near doubling of arabica coffee prices over the past year,
according to eight industry sources.
Raw arabica prices have spiked due to four successive seasons of deficit as adverse weather makes it harder to grow enough of the delicate beans to meet consumer demand.
As roasters press for price hikes,
grocery stores and supermarkets push back,
postponing signing new supply deals to the point where some have run out of coffee stock.
In one such example Dutch supermarket chain Albert Heijn, the country’s largest, ran out of coffee products like Douwe Egberts and Senseo.
The products returned to the shelves on March 20, albeit at higher prices, a spokesperson for Albert Heijn said after the firm concluded talks with JDE Peet’s, one of the world’s top coffee roasters.
“JDE’s purchase prices have increased significantly.
We will absorb part of this price increase to keep the products affordable,” the Albert Heijn spokesperson said.
JDE Peet’s, which has warned of a profit decline this year due to surging coffee costs, said the stand-off with buyers in the Netherlands and Germany resulted in some of its products missing from the shelves. It added, however, that it has since concluded 90 per cent of its price negotiations globally.
Global prices for arabica, typically used in roast and ground blends,
have gained more than 20 per cent this year after soaring 70 per cent last year
as Brazil- producer of nearly half the world’s arabica
- suffered one of its worst droughts on record.
On average, the raw beans account for about 40 per cent of the wholesale cost of a bag of roast and ground coffee.
That means that if last year’s raw bean price jump was passed through in full this year, it would equate to a 28% price rise to the consumer, said Reg Watson, director of equity research at Dutch Bank ING.
Watson believes prices will rise 15 per cent-25 per cent and that in some markets consumers may feel the hike in one shot.
Rationing
Even steeper rises are taking place in countries whose currencies have weakened significantly against the dollar.
These include Brazil, the world’s second largest consumer of the beverage as well as the top grower.
According to documents sent to clients and seen by Reuters, 3 Coracoes, a large Brazilian roaster, raised roast and ground prices by 14.3 per cent on March 1, having previously hiked them by 11 per cent in January and 10 per cent in December.
3 Coracoes did not respond to requests for comment.
Brazilian coffee roasters association ABIC said price rises in the country are steep because in local currency terms, raw bean prices rose 170 per cent in Brazil last year.
In response, Brazilian shop shelf prices have surged 40 per cent,
with more increases coming as early as this month, said ABIC.
“People are already rationing,
changing their habits.
If before they used to make a big thermos at home for the family, sometimes throwing what was left down the sink, now they cut the waste,” ABIC President Pavel Cardoso told Reuters.
Data prepared for Reuters by market research firm Nielsen shows the volume of roast and ground coffee sold in North America and Europe, by far the world’s biggest consuming regions, fell 3.8 per cent last year as prices rose 4.6 per cent.
With price rises this year expected to be far steeper, the decline in sales volumes should widen.
Folgers coffee maker J M Smucker, which sells to U.S. retailers such as Walmart WMT.N and Target, expects a decline in volumes in its fiscal year starting in May as it raises prices again, its chief financial officer Tucker Marshall said at a conference call earlier this month.
The firm, which also sells Dunkin and Cafe Bustelo coffee, already raised prices last June and October.
Living hand to mouth
Of equal concern for roasters is the fact that cash strapped consumers are pushing back against higher priced goods by
bargain hunting
or trading down
to supermarket brands like Tesco’s finest.
These brands, which the industry calls “private label,” include many products beyond coffee
and are produced in-house by supermarkets in order to
cut on costs
and provide consumers with cheaper alternatives.
Data prepared for Reuters by Chicago-based market research firm Circana shows that in terms of volumes sold,
U.S. private label coffee’s share of the total market grew by 13 per cent between 2021 and 2024,
from 20.51 per cent of the total market
to 23.12 per cent.
Roasters are, as such, in a bind.
They can absorb some cost increases and hope consumers keep buying,
or they can raise their prices so that their profit margins don’t fall.
Either way the result is a hit to overall profits that hasn’t even spared coffee house chains such as Starbucks - far less exposed than the likes of JDE Peet’s as raw beans account for less than 2 per cent of the cost of a cup of coffee in a cafe.
Roasters and traders are meanwhile buying as little coffee as possible as they struggle to pass on costs to supermarkets.
An executive at a large storage sector firm said coffee depots close to U.S. ports currently have half their normal volumes.
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Reporting by May Angel, Marcelo Teixeira and Jessica DiNapoli. Additional reporting by Helen Reid; editing by David Evans.
Oct. 5, 2025 "Tim Hortons raises coffee prices, calls hike ‘more than reasonable’": Today I found this article by Joe Van Wonderen on BNN Bloomberg:
Canada’s iconic coffee chain is charging more for the drink, reflecting a wider trend of jittery coffee prices.
In a statement to CTV News, a Tim Hortons spokesperson said the restaurant chain is raising coffee prices for the first time in three years, suggesting that compared to inflation,
the price increase of 1.5 per cent per cup was “more than reasonable.”
The price of coffee beans has more than doubled, Tim Hortons said.
According to MarketWatch.com, the price jumped from C$2.21 to C$5.45 per pound over the last three years.
The coffee chain said that the price hike would boil out to “an average of three cents per cup.”
Outside of drive-thrus, Canadians paid 27.9 per cent more for their coffee at grocery stores in August compared to the same time last year, StatCan reported last month.
Canada imports nearly a quarter of its coffee from
Colombia,
with Brazil,
Mexico,
Peru
and Central American countries making up the rest.
The coffee trade was valued at more than $1.3 billion in July, importing 131 million kilograms of unroasted coffee.
U.S. tariffs affect your cup of joe
Although most of Canada’s unroasted coffee comes from Mexico and further south,
roasted coffee largely comes from the United States, according to StatCan.
Canada imported 3.9 million kilograms of roasted coffee, mostly from the U.S. in July 2025.
Roasted coffee was among the products affected by U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs on Brazil
and then were part of Canada’s retaliatory tariffs on the U.S.,
StatCan reported.
The statistics agency said that the counter-tariff measures were “possibly affecting costs for some Canadian coffee importers.”
Food prices rising especially fast
Food prices rose 3.5 per cent in August, Loblaw reported in their September food inflation report.
It found that food prices are rising faster than the Consumer Price Index, which only bumped up 1.9 per cent that month.
Loblaw claims that counter-tariffs were raising prices for Canadians, but since Sept 1, when most were dropped, products are back to “flowing through” to customers.
Loblaw also highlighted coffee in their report, saying “coffee prices have climbed back near their 2025 highs,”
blaming the 50 per cent U.S. tariffs on Brazil,
the largest coffee exporter in the world.
Loblaw suggested that buyers have to “compete” for alternative suppliers while Brazilian coffee growers are “holding on to their beans,” and being cautious with their sales.
U.S. tariffs and cautious Brazilian coffee growers are “keeping global coffee markets volatile,” Loblaw said.
Correction
This article has been corrected to reflect the current market price of coffee.
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