Your Daily Coffee Habit Is About to Get More Expensive
Coffee roasters have a problem. The cost of the beans that they import has soared this year, leaving roasters anguishing over whether their customers, from grocery stores to cafes to people looking for their daily latte, will tolerate higher prices.
Extreme weather has damaged crops in Brazil, the world’s largest coffee exporter. On top of pandemic-related shipping bottlenecks and political protests that stalled exports from Colombia, that has pushed the cost of beans up nearly 43 percent in 2021.
It’s not yet a problem for Starbucks or Nestlé, coffee giants that buy their supplies far in advance and won’t have to deal with the price gains for a year or more. But some smaller roasters have already had to raise prices, and others expect to — all the while worried about alienating consumers.
“These increases are making me nervous because one of the main tenets that we operate on is being able to make specialty coffee and make…
