Finally! Good news for coffee lovers! The price of coffee on international commodity markets is fal-ling. And one of the world’s biggest coffee companies is projecting price relief at the retail level, as early as later this year…
Nestlé ‘Coffee Boss’ Axel Touzet, head of Nestle’s Coffee Brands Strategic Business Unit, says the company will definitely take falling coffee bean costs into account when setting retail prices.
An end to the ‘drought’?
Reuters reminds us, coffee prices rose sharply in 2024 and reached record highs in 2025 as adverse weather hit supplies – but bean prices have generally trended lower this year.
“Lower coffee prices are a great thing for everyone, because it will low-er the cost and, you know, may lower the price,” Touzet says. “We will adapt, depend-ing on the markets and the situation, but, yes, we will take into account the decline when we decide on our coffee prices.”
Welcome news, indeed…
It’s like rain after a two-year drought. Coffee drinkers can expect price relief from at least one major coffee brand family sometime this fall.
The question remains: How much can retail coffee prices fall? And how fast?
Time will tell…
Coffee industry experts estimate it takes at least nine months for changes in raw bean prices to reach coffee drinkers, partly because of roasting lead times and contract negotiations, Reuters reports. As a result, coffee prices in shops and cafes remain elevated following last year’s price surge. And may not trend down until later this year. Or even early next year.
But prices are definitely trending down. Touzet says Nestlé considers recent dips more than just blips on the graph.
Most industry experts expect a coffee production surplus in the 2025/26 and 2026/27, October to Sep-tember, seasons. That, in turn, should eventually feed through to U.S. consumers.
Tariffs in play…
US President Donald Trump recently rolled back ‘reciprocal’ tariffs of between 10 and 41 percent on over 200 food items that cannot easily be grown in America, such as coffee. He also exempted coffee from an additional 40 percent tariff on imports from Brazil, which supplies the US with around a third of its beans.
However… “Most of the (retail) price increases we’ve seen so far are not in response to tariffs. (They’re) associ-ated with the record high (raw bean) market that we’ve been in since last year,” says independent coffee analyst Christopher Feran.
My take
Let’s not forget… Other factors are also destined to factor into retail coffee price adjustments over the next year or so. First of all – and perhaps most significant in the final tally – is how much of the raw bean price decrease coffee companies will pass on to consumers.
It will be very interesting to see not only how long it takes for world coffee price decreases to filter down to the retail end. But how low they’ll go…
~ Maggie J.