3mo ago

Things 'about to get scary' for coffee industry

www.rnz.co.nz

14 comments

I've already mostly cut out takeaway coffee, but if prices head upwards I might start cracking out the tea a bit more often.
- Yeah I don't buy enough cafe coffee to make a price jump from $5 to $8 a cup a big shock (I might get one every couple of weeks), but I'll be sad if prices shoot up for my home beans. How did they go from $3 a kilo to $13 a kilo over the past 4 years without coffee prices skyrocketing? Is the $3 a kilo from 2020 a cherry-picked number where it dropped to crazy-low prices because demand fell when cafes couldn't open due to lockdown?
  
  Climate change & demand.
  Demand is increasing all the time, climate change is making crop yields less reliable. Probably also complicated in that for espresso we're all essentially trying to buy Arabica, but there's also problems with the supply of Robusta more commonly used for instant.
  In the last year Brazil has had a drought that's impacted supply (and might have a consecutive one) of Arabica, and Vietnam has had both a drought and flooding impacting Robusta.
  https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/28/business/coffee-prices-climate-change.html
  Given futures are spiking, its also possible that its residual covid stimulus money still hunting for something to make money off.
  
  For home beans, Prices are going up for the same beans, some will try to cut costs by buying cheaper beans to blend. But my supplier of choice, C4 out of chch has warned us of the market situation and that they will be putting prices up instead of compromising quality.
- Loose leaf beats beans any day, I reckon.
  Get yourself a ginseng oolong and skip the coffee for a day and see how it goes

People are going to start setting up stands selling instant coffee or drip coffee.

My income buys perhaps ~5-10 coffees a week, that'd seriously have us reconsider buying out and making at home.

14 comments