Why Coffee Costs What It Costs Right Now
And what we're doing about it.
If you've bought coffee in the last two years, anywhere, from anyone, you've noticed.
It costs more.
We're not going to pretend otherwise, and we're not going to hide behind vague language about "market conditions."
So here's what actually happened, where things stand now, and how we've handled it.
The short version
Green coffee, the raw coffee we buy before roasting, got dramatically more expensive, and it happened fast.
In February 2025, arabica coffee futures climbed to roughly $4.40 per pound, an all-time high.
In late 2022, that same benchmark had traded around $1.66 per pound.
Eventually, that pressure reached consumers.
The average U.S. price for ground roast coffee reached $9.72 per pound in April 2026, the highest level in a data series going back to 1980.
By July, that average had eased somewhat to about $9.32 per pound, but coffee prices were still significantly higher than they had been a few years earlier.
So yes, things have started moving in a better direction.
No, we're not back to normal.
What actually drove it
There wasn't one single cause.
Several things hit the coffee market at the same time.
Weather
Brazil is the largest coffee producer in the world, and it went through severe heat and prolonged drought that hurt production expectations.
Vietnam, the world's largest robusta producer, also dealt with extended dry conditions and production losses.
When two of the most important coffee-producing countries struggle at the same time, the entire market feels it.
Inventory
Coffee inventories also became extremely thin.
By mid-August 2026, certified arabica inventories had fallen to roughly 231,000 bags, a 2.75-year low.
When inventory gets that low, the market has very little cushion.
A bad weather forecast, slower harvest, shipping disruption or change in crop expectations can move prices quickly because there simply isn't much coffee sitting around as a buffer.
Tariffs
U.S. tariff policy added another layer of cost and uncertainty during 2025.
Most coffee was eventually removed from the reciprocal tariffs in November 2025, with the additional tariff on Brazilian coffee removed shortly afterward.
That helped.
But supply chains don't reset overnight.
Coffee is purchased months in advance. Importers carry inventory. Contracts are already in place. Freight has already been paid.
By the time a cost increase works its way through the system, it can take time for that same cost to work its way back out.
Production costs at origin
This part gets less attention, but it matters.
Farmers have been dealing with higher wages, labor shortages and rising production costs.
In parts of Central America, including Honduras and Guatemala, finding enough workers to pick coffee has become increasingly difficult and expensive.
Those costs exist regardless of what the futures market is doing.
A farmer still has to grow the coffee.
Someone still has to pick it.
Process it.
Dry it.
Sort it.
Bag it.
And get it ready for export.
That isn't speculation.
That's arithmetic.
So where are we now?
There are legitimate reasons for optimism.
USDA forecasts Brazil will produce a record 71.9 million 60-kilogram bags of coffee in the 2026/27 season, roughly 14% more than the previous year.
World coffee production is also forecast to reach a record level.
Honduras is expected to increase production by roughly 9%.
Those are all good signs.
More coffee coming into the system should eventually relieve some of the pressure we've been dealing with.
But a forecast isn't coffee sitting in an importer's warehouse.
Brazil's harvest has been running behind its normal pace.
Exchange inventories are still extremely thin.
Arabica futures moved back above $3.20 per pound in August.
Weather concerns haven't disappeared either.
So our view is pretty simple.
The supply picture looks better than it did a year ago.
We think that should eventually help bring costs down.
But we don't expect a perfectly straight line.
Coffee rarely makes anything that easy.
Why our costs don't follow the headline price exactly
Here's the part that matters when you're talking about specialty coffee.
The "coffee price" you normally see quoted in financial news is the ICE Coffee C market.
That's the global benchmark for arabica coffee.
It is a benchmark.
It is not the price on our invoice.
We buy specialty green coffee.
The coffees we purchase are selected based on things like origin, quality, cup profile, lot characteristics and availability.
Depending on how a coffee is purchased, it may carry a premium over the C market or be sold at a negotiated fixed price.
Then there are all the other costs involved in getting that coffee from origin to us.
Freight.
Importer costs.
Warehousing.
Financing.
Packaging.
Roast loss.
Labor.
And everything else required to get a finished bag from a coffee tree to your kitchen.
So if the C market falls 20 cents today, our cost doesn't automatically fall 20 cents tomorrow.
That's not how coffee purchasing works.
But when the underlying cost truly comes down, we see it.
And that's where our pricing philosophy comes in.
What we did about pricing
We held off on raising prices for as long as we reasonably could.
We absorbed increases where we could absorb them.
Eventually, the math stopped working.
When we finally moved prices, we increased them by what we believed the numbers required.
Not by what we thought customers might tolerate.
Not by how much other companies were charging.
Not because "everybody else is doing it."
By what we actually needed.
For some perspective, the Specialty Coffee Retail Price Index put the average roasted specialty coffee price at $35.98 per pound at the end of June 2026.
Our current coffee pricing remains below that overall benchmark.
It's not a perfect comparison.
Every roaster has a different sourcing strategy, product mix, overhead and business model.
But it gives you an idea of where we sit within the specialty coffee market.
And when prices were rising, there were a few things we chose not to do.
We didn't quietly shrink a 12-ounce bag.
We didn't turn a 12-ounce bag into a 10-ounce bag and hope nobody noticed.
We didn't add a "market adjustment" fee.
We didn't use rising coffee prices as an excuse to see how far we could push ours.
We didn't raise prices simply because the market gave us permission to.
We raised what we believed we needed to raise.
That's an important distinction to us.
The part we actually want you to hold us to
This is the part that matters most.
When our landed coffee costs come down enough to materially lower our cost per bag, we'll pass that savings on.
That's the deal.
We track what our coffee costs.
We know what goes into every bag we roast.
We know the cost of the green coffee.
We know our roast loss.
We know the packaging cost.
We know what it takes to produce that finished bag.
So if the supply recovery we're seeing in current crop forecasts eventually lowers our real cost, we don't believe that difference should simply disappear into our margin.
We're not promising that the futures market drops on Tuesday and your bag of coffee costs less on Wednesday.
That's not how this industry works.
Coffee is purchased ahead of time, inventory has to move through the system, and plenty of costs besides green coffee affect the final price of a bag.
What we are saying is this:
When our actual costs move meaningfully lower, we intend for our customers to benefit too.
Price increases have a funny way of becoming permanent.
Costs spike.
Prices go up.
Then costs settle down and somehow the retail price never moves again.
Everybody notices.
Nobody talks about it.
And eventually the higher number just becomes normal.
We don't want to run our company that way.
If costs go up enough that we have to adjust, we'll tell you why.
If costs come down enough that we can lower prices, we want you to see that too.
Why we're telling you all of this
Most people don't spend their mornings watching coffee futures or reading crop reports.
You shouldn't have to.
You just want a good bag of coffee at a fair price.
But when that price changes, we think you deserve to know why.
You deserve to know what you're paying for.
You deserve to know what goes into the coffee you're buying.
And you deserve a company willing to talk about pricing when the numbers are uncomfortable, not just when they're convenient.
We're not trying to be the cheapest coffee company.
There will always be somebody willing to sell cheaper coffee.
We're trying to buy good coffee, roast it well, charge a fair price for it, and be straight with you about what it costs.
That's how we want to do business.
And that's what you can hold us to.
Self Revive Coffee Roasters
Roasted for Resilience. Brewed to Revive. Driven by Purpose.
Questions about our coffee, sourcing or pricing?