Tag: coffee

What it takes to make that cup of fresh cof­fee

Cli­mate change, tar­iffs and more are stir­ring up java costs

This article was written by Ritika Dubey and was published in the Toronto Star on December 31, 2025.

As a stream of roas­ted cof­fee beans drops into a bar­rel, it fills an Oak­ville roast­ery with a smell prac­tic­ally strong enough to caf­fein­ate you.

The roas­ted beans, now a rich, deep brown, were once small and green, bagged in large bur­lap sacks and shipped to Cana­dian ports from the cof­fee­pro­du­cing coun­tries of Ethiopia, Colom­bia and Brazil.

It’s at Reunion Cof­fee Roast­ers where they find their defin­ing char­ac­ter. The strength of your brew and whether it will taste fruity or earthy is meth­od­ic­ally decided at the roast­ery’s lab, where they sample vari­ous beans and per­fect the taste.

Walk­ing through his roughly 50,000 square­foot roast­ery, Reunion pres­id­ent Adam Pesce points out industry­scale machines where the green beans are washed, weighed and roas­ted to get the pre­ferred col­our, fla­vour and aroma.

“Cof­fee roast­ing is a lot like bak­ing,” said Pesce, a second­gen­er­a­tion cof­fee roaster. It’s all about per­fect­ing the tem­per­at­ure, roast time and air­flow.

Each batch of beans, weigh­ing about 460 pounds, is roas­ted at 450 degrees in a rotat­ing drum for a period of time, usu­ally a little more than 10 minutes, before being dumped into a cool­ing cham­ber to pre­serve their fla­vour. The roast­ery pro­cesses 37,500 pounds of cof­fee a week.

While the roast­ing pro­cess hasn’t changed drastic­ally over the years, the cof­fee industry has.

Import prices for unroas­ted cof­fee beans have more than doubled over the past three years, accord­ing

to an ana­lysis from KPMG, as a com­bin­a­tion of factors led to sup­ply short­ages. The rising cost is for­cing import­ers, roast­ers, retail­ers and con­sumers to adapt.

Stat­ist­ics Canada data shows shop­pers paid 27.8 per cent more for cof­fee at the gro­cery store in Novem­ber com­pared with a year earlier — greatly out­pa­cing over­all food infla­tion, which was 4.7 per cent year over year.

“This is by far the most dif­fi­cult time that the industry has ever seen,” said Pesce, who said that 20 years ago when he got into the busi­ness, a seven or eight per cent price fluc­tu­ation would have been con­sidered mean­ing­ful.

Put another way, he said, a pack of mediocre cof­fee today sells for more than the best qual­ity cof­fee did two years ago.

“Think about how dis­rupt­ive that can be.”

Cof­fee is grown in rain­forests and hand­picked primar­ily by small­s­cale farm­ers. Often, farm­ers who don’t have an export license sell to col­lect­ors by the road­side in small batches, which are then bundled for inter­na­tional buy­ers.

Beans are sold by smal­ler oper­at­ors to pro­cessors, import­ers, roast­ers and other inter­me­di­ar­ies before reach­ing the con­sumer, said Ted Salter, exec­ut­ive dir­ector of sup­ply chain at KPMG in Canada.

But cli­mate change, drought and crop dis­ease have dis­rup­ted the global sup­ply at the source, hurt­ing many small farm­ers, Salter said.

With lim­ited crops, global demand for cof­fee has out­paced sup­ply. The trend is expec­ted to con­tinue unless the highly frag­men­ted global farm­ers’ com­munity is able to imple­ment costly irrig­a­tion solu­tions.

While cli­mate change is a big factor in cof­fee price increases, importer Jeff Flem­ing said farm­ers are deal­ing with an afford­ab­il­ity crisis along­side the high costs of oper­at­ing small cof­fee farms. Often, chan­ging gov­ern­ment policies on exports in the ori­gin coun­tries also push the prices higher for cof­fee — something an importer can’t con­trol.

Flem­ing, founder of Cal­gary­based Apex Cof­fee Imports, works dir­ectly with farm­ers and export­ers across 11 coun­tries to buy their cof­fee, which is then shipped to Canada.

The tug­of­war between lower crop yields and higher prices is strain­ing many rela­tion­ships in the sup­ply chain.

Flem­ing, who deals in spe­cialty cof­fee from micro­farms, saw demand for spe­cial­ized beans fade as prices went up.

“Any time there’s a price shock through the mar­ket that we saw, it’s (been) bad for every­body,” he said.

For example, if a pound of cof­fee went up from five dol­lars to eight dol­lars, a roast­ery may be hes­it­ant to pass such a sig­ni­fic­ant cost on to its cus­tom­ers imme­di­ately. Instead, it might reduce its over­all pur­chase or pivot away from pri­cier options, which trickles back to the farmer.

Mean­while, Flem­ing said demand for less expens­ive cof­fee blends has gone up. He said he is con­stantly com­mu­nic­at­ing with farm­ers about the demand and whether there are mar­gins that can be adjus­ted on his end to con­tinue import­ing the best­qual­ity beans.

“It’s caused us to have to pivot and re­eval­u­ate and get a bit more cre­at­ive than we used to,” he said.

When someone ques­tions Pesce about cof­fee prices, he pulls up com­mod­it­ies exchange data on his phone and shows where prices are at — and how little con­trol he has over the fluc­tu­ations.

It takes about 13­18 weeks for cof­fee beans to get from a farm to gro­cery store shelves. The price of that pack­aged cof­fee was set weeks ago on the pub­licly traded com­mod­ity mar­ket for cof­fee futures, which is a way of meas­ur­ing prices based on con­tracts for future deliv­ery. Other resources are also traded this way, includ­ing oil, gold and wheat.

Futures trad­ing means a surge in cof­fee prices today won’t be felt by con­sumers for at least another three months.

The mar­ket has been volat­ile amid ongo­ing geo­pol­it­ical ten­sions, chan­ging gov­ern­ment policies in cof­fee­pro­du­cing coun­tries and tar­iffs that make the com­mod­ity mar­ket more uncer­tain, Salter said.

“The mar­ket, espe­cially when you’re trad­ing on a com­mod­ity, doesn’t like that unpre­dict­ab­il­ity,” Salter said. So, the high prices com­pensate for that uncer­tainty, he added.

As prices went up drastic­ally over the last two years, it became harder to man­age.

“Export­ers, import­ers, roast­ers, retail­ers — every­body’s shrink­ing their mar­gin because there’s just so much price pres­sure on everything,” Pesce said. “The industry as a whole has got­ten less prof­it­able.”

Add to that ship­ping costs, roast­ing and pack­aging costs, all of which factor into the cost of cof­fee served to con­sumers.

The cost of get­ting green beans into Canada alone makes up more than 70 per cent of the pro­duc­tion costs, accord­ing to KPMG.

Pesce said he has been absorb­ing some costs while passing the rest on to his private label cli­ents. So far, he has raised prices by more than 30 per cent in the past year.

But that often opens a floodgate of ques­tions about why it’s hap­pen­ing.

Reunion star­ted send­ing out reports or news­let­ters to its cli­ents explain­ing price surges, hop­ing to estab­lish trans­par­ency about what can and can­not be con­trolled.

Many rela­tion­ships in the cof­fee sup­ply chain are gen­er­a­tions old, Salter said.

“You’ve set up your roast­ing equip­ment, you’ve set up your pro­duc­tion pro­cesses in a cer­tain way that it’s very dif­fi­cult to switch over from one to another,” he said. “So what you tend to do is to try to improve the situ­ation you’re in, rather than change the situ­ation you’re in.”

A pound of cof­fee can brew about 40 cups. If the cost of cof­fee goes up by a dol­lar, it barely adds a few cents to a cup.

But the surge in prices has been con­sist­ent enough that it’s now dripped into the cups at local cafés and even big chains, such as Tim Hor­tons, which raised prices by an aver­age of three cents per cup earlier this year.

Still, most con­sumers notice sticker shock when they buy bulk cof­fee at a gro­cery store or their local roast­ery, and experts say this is likely to con­tinue.

“There’s very little actual price gou­ging going on that I can see at gro­cery, at cafés,” Pesce said.

“It’s just expens­ive.”

Reunion Cof­fee Roast­ers pres­id­ent Adam Pesce says a pack of mediocre cof­fee today sells for more than the best qual­ity cof­fee did two years ago. “Think about how dis­rupt­ive that can be,” he added.

Cof­fee prices on rise as crop shrinks

Tem­per­at­ure changes and dry weather caused by cli­mate change are push­ing costs higher

This article was written by Ritika Dubey and was published in the Toronto Star on October 7, 2025.

Your daily cup of java is get­ting a little more expens­ive as roast­ers and cafés grapple with rising cof­fee bean prices.

Cli­mate change has been the biggest con­trib­utor to the ongo­ing surge in bean prices, as cof­fee crops are very sens­it­ive to tem­per­at­ure changes, said Michael von Mas­sow, food eco­nom­ist at the Uni­versity of Guelph.

“We’ve seen some increases in dis­ease and some decreases in yield that have lowered sup­ply, and basic eco­nom­ics 101 — when sup­ply goes down, prices go up,” he said on Monday.

Cof­fee prices have remained high amid con­cerns of dry weather in Brazil, a major cof­fee­pro­du­cing coun­try.

That’s mak­ing your daily cup of cof­fee more expens­ive, whether you’re brew­ing it at home or buy­ing a cof­fee at a café. Stat­ist­ics Canada data shows Cana­dians paid 27.9 per cent more for their cof­fee at a gro­cery store in August com­pared with a year earlier.

Robert Carter, pres­id­ent of the Cof­fee Asso­ci­ation of Canada, said the surge in cof­fee prices is a con­tinu­ation of what roast­ers and cafés saw last year.

“The com­mod­ity side is still fluc­tu­at­ing, and the pro­duc­tion side, we’re still see­ing lim­ited pro­duc­tion chal­lenges out of vari­ous coun­tries such as Colom­bia and Brazil,” he said.

Carter said cafés and cof­fee bean roast­ers were already strug­gling with rising oper­a­tional costs, such as with pack­aging and labour, and now cof­fee bean prices are adding to their chal­lenges.

“The cost of goods, which cof­fee would fall into, has def­in­itely seen an increase … within the double digits,” he said.

Cof­fee prices are also see­ing added price pres­sures from tar­iffs, even as Canada dropped its counter­tar­iffs in Septem­ber.

Von Mas­sow sus­pects price fluc­tu­ations are likely hurt­ing smal­ler roast­ers in Canada more than lar­ger play­ers who buy dir­ectly from pro­du­cers. Small­scale cof­fee roast­ers typ­ic­ally buy cof­fee beans from brokers who aggreg­ate sup­ply from farm­ers and cof­fee­pro­du­cing coun­tries.

“The smal­ler roast­ers are going to get squeezed, every­one gets squeezed, as costs go up because we as con­sumers are res­ist­ant to price increases and they don’t want to see volume go down,” he said.

Von Mas­sow said it will be more dif­fi­cult for smal­ler roast­ers to pass down costs to their cus­tom­ers.

“They’ve always dif­fer­en­ti­ated not on price, but on product,” he said of smal­ler roast­ers. “But the greater the price dis­par­ity is, the less their demand will be.”

However, some costs will be mit­ig­ated for these roast­ers as the impact of counter­tar­iffs start to wear off, von Mas­sow said. Mean­while, other costs are likely to be passed on to cus­tom­ers.

“We’re see­ing big com­pan­ies start to announce some price increases as the short­ages become more sus­tained,” he said.

Cof­fee chain Tim Hor­tons said it will increase the price of its cof­fee by an aver­age of three cents per cup.

Spec­u­la­tion on cof­fee futures — a way of meas­ur­ing com­mod­ity prices based on con­tracts for future deliv­ery in a pub­licly­traded mar­ket — have also amp­li­fied price pres­sures.

“The cof­fee mar­ket has been on a roller­coaster for the past year,” said Adam Pesce, pres­id­ent of Oak­ville, Ont.­headquartered Reunion Cof­fee Roast­ers, which sells whole­sale and also runs a retail café in Toronto.

Reunion has had to increase prices over the past sev­eral months to match its rising costs, said Pesce.

Cof­fee prices are also see­ing added price pres­sures from tar­iffs, even as Canada dropped its coun­ter­tar­iffs in Septem­ber

BREWING STORM

This article was written by Mariya Postelnyak and was published in the Globe & Mail on July 30, 2025.

Sharon Nutzati, centre, shown in her Toronto café First & Last, says she’s paying more to suppliers for coffee, cocoa and matcha but has tried not to pass those costs on to customers.

Consumers could soon see a spike in the cost of their favourite treats as coffee, chocolate and matcha prices soar

Harsh weather and shifting habits are driving up the cost of treats at cafés and stores

Tucked in a residential neighbourhood at the edge of downtown Toronto, First and Last coffee shop serves cappuccinos, chocolatey treats and wildly popular matcha drinks to local students, artists and those needing a place to work.

Starting in the fall, however, customers may be paying just under 10, and up to 15 per cent more for their go-to drinks and pastries in increments, according to owner Sharon Nutzati.

“My first thought is always, ‘How can we make this cheaper rather than raise prices?’” she said, adding that the café tried to cut down on packaging and reduce waste. But, she said, “people don’t realize we’re eating a lot of the costs to keep customers happy.”

Harsh weather, shifting consumer habits and market speculation this year have driven up the price of coffee, chocolate and ground green tea powder known as matcha – a coffee shop’s bread and butter, so to speak – by as much as 30 per cent this year, with tariffs often exacerbating existing supply constraints.

And even those looking to save money by making these treats at home should note that while prices have spiked at both the retail and wholesale levels, consumers shopping at grocery stores have likely already seen their bill climb before the cafégoers.

Coffee shops such as Ms. Nutzati’s have strived to absorb rising costs until the last possible moment to retain customers amid fierce competition and razor-thin margins.

In addition to a moderate increase in coffee prices, Ms. Nutzati said she’s started paying 30 per cent more for cocoa products almost overnight. She also went from paying $8 to $11.85 per 100g of matcha while chasing multiple suppliers to work through persistent shortages.

“Things are either running out or the price is jacked up completely,” she said.

The price for an average bag of coffee at the grocery store, meanwhile, already peaked at about a 20 per cent hike earlier this year, said Adam Pesce, president of Reunion Coffee Roasters, a Torontoarea specialty roaster selling to both cafés and retailers.

For a 340g bag at an independent cafe, prices rose from around $18 to $20, to as much as $22, he said. At the grocery store, a $14.99, 340g bag is now $16.99.

Mr. Pesce has also noticed shrinkflation, with 300g bags sold for the same price a 340g bag used to be sold for.

Café-level increases are also playing catch-up because smaller roasters often don’t use futures contracts. They instead buy “spot coffee” for when they need it.

Larger roasters and retailers purchase coffee futures – securing inventory months in advance by committing to locked in prices – which strains cash flow immediately and often requires raising prices sooner for customers.

Extreme weather conditions this year are at least partially behind price increases for coffee, chocolate, and, to a lesser extent, matcha.

Rising temperatures and changes in precipitation patterns in the tropical belt, for example, have led to declining coffee yields this year, said Mr. Pesce. “Too little or too much water at the wrong time can devastate a harvest. . . the [beans] split and drop off the tree and they’re worthless.”

But financial speculators have also taken the opportunity to run up prices, he said.

Commercial roasters were caught short, having not locked in long-term contracts. Speculators went long, forcing roasters to buy at elevated prices.

These price surges were compounded by global macroeconomic volatility and trade disputes. The U.S. is Canada’s thirdbiggest coffee importer as major manufacturers are located there – and they’re often importing from places hit or set to be hit by U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs.

In Japan and across East Asia, record temperatures have curbed matcha green tea production – but the biggest culprit is a skyrocket in demand driven by the product’s stardom on TikTok and social media.

Less than a decade ago, the rising popularity of coffee in Japan took a bite out of matcha’s market share.

“Within a decade, they went from having this problem of a lack of demand to now. … huge, huge global demand,” said David O’Connor, the co-founder of Genuine Tea in Toronto, of matcha.

This year, he said buyers he’s worked with have admitted to him that, “people have been coming to us with duffel bags full of cash, trying to buy our supply.”

His company often has to pay double for the same product as in previous years – and that’s when there’s supply at all.

In Toronto, Ms. Nutzati went on several wild goose chases across the city in search of matcha at inflated retail prices when her suppliers say they’re sold out at the last minute.

The challenges are compounded when it comes to ceremonial matcha, a higher-grade product, said Jason Johnston, CEO of Lemon Lily Organic Tea in Toronto.

“We’ve gone up from about $129 a kilo to $200 a kilo,” he said, adding that his company has hiked prices three times in the past year alone.

While the surge of chocolate prices hasn’t been subject to the same attention as matcha, prices have skyrocketed due to a mix of climate disruption – including extreme rainfall in West Africa, where a majority of global cocoa beans are grown – and market speculation from hedge funds.

Cocoa bean prices spiked from around $4,000 to as much as $12,000 per metric tonne in 2024, said Daniel Poncelet of Vancouver-based Daniel Chocolates.

There is some good news. For coffee, prices have been falling since hitting about $4.30 per pound in February, all the way down to $2.90 in recent weeks, according to Mr. Pesce.

However, coffee shops are now the ones catching up to the even higher prices and preparing to pass those along to consumers because they buy their coffee in smaller amounts. Less frequently, the timing of when their higher prices could hit doesn’t line up with the retail market.

“[They’re] still using $3.50 to $3.60 coffee” bought months ago, Mr. Pesce said.

Factors beyond demand leading to rise in cost of coffee

This article was written by Santul Nerkar and was published in the Globe & Mail on December 30, 2024.

Global coffee supplies in 2024 were affected by severe weather in Brazil, the world’s largest exporter of arabica beans, and Vietnam, which owns the largest reserves of robusta beans.

Recent droughts and flooding have added extra strain on the volatile java market

When it comes to coffee, Thaleon Tremain has always tried to ignore what the market is telling him. As the chief executive and a co-founder of Pachamama Coffee in California, Mr. Tremain sells his specialty beans for more than what the global commodity price might dictate. He wants his customers to think of coffee as a luxury product and pay for it accordingly, so that farmers who grow his beans in countries such as Peru, Nicaragua and Ethiopia can cover their costs.

But now, Mr. Tremain is worried that coffee is getting more expensive for the wrong reasons. In recent years, repeated droughts and flooding have strained the global supply of coffee, frequently causing prices to soar, as climate change has done for other staples, such as cocoa, olive oil and orange juice. At the same time, global demand for coffee has continued to rise, with few signs that java drinkers are cutting back. This month, prices in one market broke a nearly 50 year high.

Even though prices might fall, Mr. Tremain said the volatility threatened the sustainability of businesses like his – and the livelihoods of the farmers who grow his beans. Lattes will probably also eventually get more expensive.

“Over time, we’re going to see much higher prices,” Mr. Tremain said in an interview. “Supply is not meeting demand.”

Despite being one of the world’s most consumed beverages, coffee can be grown only under very specific conditions, requiring misty, humid and tropical climates, with rich soil free of disease. Aside from a small batch grown in Hawaii, the United States produces little coffee domestically. It is the world’s largest importer of the beans. The scarcity of sources leaves global coffee prices susceptible to the effects of extreme weather.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, around 57 per cent of the world’s coffee production last year came from arabica beans, and Brazil is the largest exporter. But a severe drought there this summer devastated the harvest, which typically runs from May to September, and it could threaten next year’s crop as well.

In Vietnam, a severe drought followed by heavy rains harmed the world’s largest reserves of robusta, which is the second-most popular variety globally and is commonly used in instant-coffee blends.

The concerns over the crop were reflected in a characteristically erratic moment in the often volatile coffee market. The wholesale price of beans has jumped more than 30 per cent just since the start of November. Futures prices for arabica beans – or what buyers pay for beans to be delivered from producer countries to ports in the United States and Europe – rose to more than US$3.30 a pound in mid-December, breaking a 47-year-old record.

Despite being one of the world’s most consumed beverages, coffee can be grown only under very specific conditions, requiring misty, humid and tropical climates, with rich soil free of disease.

“History suggests that coffee prices will only ease back as, and when, supply improves and stocks are replenished,” David Oxley, the chief climate and commodities economist at Capital Economics, wrote in a note last month.

Extreme-weather events are growing increasingly common, experts say, and contributing to swings in coffee prices. In 2011, prices skyrocketed after droughts and heavy rain in several countries squeezed coffee production.

Even as production has faltered, global demand has increased, partly because of the rise in coffee consumption in China. A June report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture found that China’s coffee consumption had increased more than 60 per cent over the past five years.

Other factors have also played a role. In 2021, supply chain bottlenecks caused by the COVID-19 pandemic combined with political instability in South America to slow exports, causing prices to shoot up. But even as high inflation has moderated, many consumer companies are making plans to charge more, including big ones that are better positioned to absorb price shocks. Nestlé, the world’s largest coffee maker, announced last month that it planned to raise coffee prices next year and shrink the size of its packages. J.M. Smucker, whose brands include Folgers and Dunkin’ Donuts’ at-home coffee, announced price increases in October.

It may take up to two years for Brazil’s coffee crop to recover from the drought, said Kevon Rhiney, an associate professor at Rutgers University who researches coffee production.

But he worried that coffee prices were stuck on their upward trajectory, like other valuable crops that have been affected by climate change. Coffee plants will grow less productive as the Earth’s temperature continues to rise, and practices such as deforestation will continue to threaten the sustainability of the industry.

“In some ways, this is a sign of what is to come,” Prof. Rhiney said. “The areas that are suitable for making coffee will shrink over time.”

The volatility in prices worries Scott Conary, the president of Carrboro Coffee Roasters, an independent company in Carrboro, N.C. “From an industry sustainability perspective,” he said, “It’s not healthy.”

In the past, Mr. Conary said, he typically dealt with the volatility by raising prices gradually – less than a dollar each time for a cup of coffee at the roaster’s flagship cafes and for a bag of beans. For the coming years, he said, he is most worried about big increases in transportation and storage costs.

But Conary also said he welcomed higher prices, as long as they raised awareness about what went into growing coffee and encouraged customers to buy from smaller, more boutique producers like him.

“People have to get their heads around how coffee is an agricultural product,” he said, adding that consumers “aren’t paying enough for coffee.”

Steep price

Extreme weather driving global coffee costs higher: report

This article was written by Rosa Saba and was published in the Toronto Star on September 26, 2024.

Brazil and Vietnam, the two biggest producers of coffee in the world, are both currently grappling with drought, which experts warn could lead to supply shortages and higher prices.

Climate change is driving and intensifying extreme weather in the world’s major coffee-producing countries, jeopardizing future crops and putting pressure on global prices.

“Coffee is the canary in the coal mine for climate change and its effect on agriculture,” said Elizabeth Shapiro-Garza, associate professor of the practice of environmental policy and management at Duke University.

“If you like your cup of coffee in the morning, climate change is absolutely going to be affecting the quality, the availability and the price of that cup of coffee.”

Brazil and Vietnam, the two biggest producers of coffee in the world, are grappling with drought.

The drought in Brazil is the worst the country has seen in more than 70 years; it has also been dealing with wildfires.

Coffee is a finicky plant particularly vulnerable to heat and shifts in seasonality, said Shapiro-Garza, adding the drying process for coffee can also be adversely affected by extreme weather.

Experts say climate change’s impact on coffee is only expected to worsen. The potential for supply shortages in both countries due to the weather is driving global coffee prices higher, according to a recent report by the Center for Advanced Studies on Applied Economics at the University of Sao Paulo.

“We are seeing fairly dramatic changes in what otherwise we would call traditional normal weather patterns, and these have dramatic effects on the expected supply of coffee come next harvest season,” said Sven Anders, a professor and agricultural economist at the University of Alberta.

Recent heat waves, drought and wildfires in countries including Brazil and Vietnam have been intensified by climate change, research shows.

Amid all the factors affecting supply, demand for coffee continues to grow, said Anders, which puts extra pressure on the industry.

Canadian coffee drinkers today might not realize the price of their morning cup is at risk. Over the past year, the average retail price for roasted or ground coffee hasn’t risen much, according to data from Statistics Canada — about 1.6 per cent.

However, over four years, the increase is much steeper: 23.2 per cent between July 2020 and July 2024.

Futures for coffee — a way of measuring commodity prices based on contracts for future delivery — have been rising, said Anders, indicating potential price hikes to come as the industry predicts lower supply on the horizon.

The fact both Brazil and Vietnam are grappling with major weather events at the same time is likely to make the pressure more severe, he said.

“I think this is one of the first times that we’re seeing climate change really impacting coffee prices in a major way,” said Adam Pesce, president of Oakville-headquartered Reunion Coffee Roasters.

“It is a perfect storm sort of scenario when you have the two biggest coffee-growing countries in the world having the same sort of challenge in the same year. It’s never really happened before, and that’s why you’re seeing not just the pop in prices, but the pop being sustained.

“I would say there’s good indication that it’s going to be sustained for a prolonged period. But also, we’ve probably not hit the peak.”

After several years of consumers and businesses dealing with surging inflation in the wake of the pandemic, companies will soon face yet another tough decision, Pesce said.

“We’re being hit with this increased cost that no company is going to be able to sustain without increasing their prices to the consumer.”

Efforts to mitigate climate change’s effect on coffee include breeding different, more hardy trees, said Shapiro-Garza. For example, she said work is underway to make coffee that’s more resistant to roya, or “coffee rust,” a fungus that’s become a much bigger problem as it spreads more easily in hotter weather.

Other ways to make coffee farms more resilient include diversifying crops and planting shade trees as protection, said Anders.

But it’s not only the crop that’s increasingly vulnerable — it’s also the farmers themselves, many of whom run small, family-based operations.

“Many farmers are actually getting out of coffee because it’s too volatile for them,” Anders said.

Shapiro-Garza said more needs to be done to support coffee farmers so they can adapt to the changing climate and be less vulnerable to shocks in the system. This would not only help address price and supply volatility, but also lower the risk of farmers abandoning their livelihoods in search of something more stable, she said.

Between climate change’s effects on coffee-growing land and the increasing volatility it brings to the industry, “there could be less coffee in the world going forward if something doesn’t change,” said Pesce.

Anders said consumers should expect a near-term price shock in coffee, especially from smaller companies less able to swallow rising costs — but over the longer term he expects prices across the board to rise.

“This is not going to go away.”