Posted on 03/29/2026 6:03:00 PM PDT by Libloather
The price of coffee is increasing faster than any other household grocery, and it’s not just tariffs driving the surge — bad weather, war and a frenzy of market traders are also to blame for the rise.
Coffee prices have spiked by a stunning 18.4% in the last year, according to federal data from February.
Most other household spending items — from groceries to cars to haircuts — don’t close to that increase rate, figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show.
Those increases have affected both producers and consumers, and reflect a trend that has been running wild since the pandemic — a pound of roast coffee cost about $4.17 on average in 2020, and about $9.46 in 2026.
A storm of factors have collided to fuel those increases, with droughts in coffee producing powerhouse countries Brazil and Vietnam around 2024 leading to crop shortages that have fueled the chaos, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Then in July 2025 President Trump’s tariff war slapped a 40% tax on products from Brazil — the world’s largest coffee producer — causing further increases for importers in the US, who passed much of the costs on to consumers.
Making matters worse, according to the WSJ, hedge funds and commodities traders have been buying up coffee contracts as they made bets on the results of drought shortages and the tariff reactions.
That’s causing “roller coaster stupid” prices to reign, according to Emory University professor and pricing expert Peter Roberts.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
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They had a great sale on Chock full of nuts last week. Bought three of the huge cans
I’m very well stocked on coffee, maybe 2 years of frozen beans that I keep rotated, I rarely see great prices anymore.
If it goes higher than $16.99 I may make my own cold brew out of principle.
Never drank it. Filthy beverage. Stains everything it comes into contact with.
there is always something om sale.
unless you’re a coffee snob,
it’s more, but it’s not the end of the world.
Carry on-
I’ve been watching the price of coffee soar for a couple of years now. Another thing that I cannot live without is chocolate—— and the price of that is getting ridiculous, and it’s even getting scarce and hard to find. Cocoa, baking chocolate, milk chocolate, all have doubled recently.
I have a LOT of space on my credit card and I would hawk just about everything I owned before I stopped drinking coffee.
My husband’s sister and two of our kids gave us their favorite coffee beans for Christmas, 5 pounds in all. So most of it is in the freezer. Not sure how long it will last, but we are pretty good at stretching things when necessary. ;)
Having a big reserve in any food means we get to wait patiently for the next great price, I have a price set for coffee and when a sale hits that price limit or lower, I buy.
If a van pulls up to you in the parking lot and says they have a millions dollars of Kit Kat bars to sell cheap, jump on it.
Agreed...
Filthiest beverage bar None!
/$
Beware. There is a lot of fake chocolate out there now.
“Never drank it. Filthy beverage. Stains everything it comes into contact with.”
A morning with good music and a good cup of coffee is time well wasted.
Between my sister in law (lives in Kauai from Nov to April) and our children, we almost never buy coffee for ourselves unless we’re traveling. It’s a good problem to have! Honestly, I couldn’t tell you how much a pound of coffee is these days. I don’t have a clue.
“I would hawk just about everything I owned before I stopped drinking coffee.”
You are a man of distinction and well cultured
You picked the wrong day to stop sniffing glue.
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