Editors’ Note: This story was originally published as a video package on the Rockbridge Report on Jan. 30. It was reformatted for print by Emma Malinak.
Two Lexington coffee shops, Pronto Café and Roadmap CoffeeWorks, have decided to raise prices due to global coffee bean price increases.
Shop owners cite low supply from climate change issues and high demand as the reasons behind the increases.
Pronto owner Meredith Benincasa said she raised prices by 10% at the start of the new year. The increase has not had an effect on sales, she said, despite some customers spending nearly 30 cents more on a cup of coffee.
“We were informed by Lavazza, our coffee distributor, in early December that they were going to be doing an across the board increase,” Benincasa said. “And so we had to pass that along to our consumers.”
Repeated droughts and flooding have strained the global supply of coffee beans, causing the wholesale price of beans to jump more than 30% since November, according to the New York Times. In one market, prices broke a nearly 50-year high, the Times reported in January.
The United States is the world’s largest importer of coffee beans, which means extreme weather across the globe can affect local shop’s budgets — and, as a result, the price Americans pay for a cup of joe. A severe summer drought in Brazil and heavy rains in Vietnam harmed some of the world’s largest exporters of coffee beans this season, according to the Times.
Jack Scholl, the owner of local coffee roastery Roadmap CoffeeWorks, said he plans to raise prices on ground coffee bags in the coming weeks.
“It’s a big issue,” he said. “We are seeing price increases from 10 to 20% over the last year. We are having to raise prices.”
Roadmap CoffeeWorks supplies coffee to many restaurants and coffee shops in the area, including Season’s Yield, Lexington Coffee Shop and Pure Eats. Scholl said he expects these retailers will need to increase prices to keep up with Roadmap’s increase.
“This is a small margin game, and all these companies need to maintain their margins or else they go out of business,” he said.
But Ben Gilbert, manager at Season’s Yield, said the café does not have plans to increase prices.
Benincasa said the mismatch in supply and demand will eventually hit customers’ pocketbooks.
“We see a lot of the same people every day, sometimes multiple times a day, so it adds up,” Benincasa said. “30 cents here, next thing you know they are spending $10 more a week on coffee.”
Scholl said it’s the combination of short supply and high demand that is contributing to the global price increase.
“We have too many mouths and too little beans, is what is happening, so prices are going up all over the world,” he said.