Why is coffee so expensive?

If you've noticed the cost of your morning brew creeping up, you're not alone. The difference can feel especially baffling when comparing a cup or bag from your local cafe (hi!) to the bags you see in the grocery store. Coffee prices have been climbing rapidly, and there are a lot of factors that influence that number. Let's take a look at what makes specialty coffee so special.

Commercial vs. Specialty Coffee

Let's talk about different kinds of coffee. There is commercial coffee - this is your average cup from the gas station, the cheap bag in the grocery store, instant coffee, you get the idea. It's also referred to as regular or conventional. It is a:

• mass-produced product, 
• often grown with the aid of synthetic fertilizers or pesticides.
• It offers little to no traceability, and
• cherries are often harvested by machinery, which means that unripe + ripe cherries can end up together.

In order to mask the imperfections of these practices, commercial coffee is roasted darker so that customers taste something more consistent and uniform.

While this coffee is more affordable, cheap coffee means that farmers are not paid fairly, and a lot of shortcuts are taken along the way, compromising quality and creating unsustainable practices. Chemicals can cause long-term damage to ecosystems and the production often involves clearing large areas of land, contributing to deforestation. Monoculture (growing only coffee on a large scale) can also lead to reduced diversity and create vulnerability to pests and diseases, enhancing the reliance on chemical inputs and contributing to soil degradation.
Yikes! What a vicious cycle. In order to keep coffee cheap for us, we’re creating a whole mess of issues.

All of that being said, we’re not turning up our noses at cheaper coffee or throwing shade at a dark roast. But we know there’s a better way!

What makes specialty coffee different?

Perhaps you can already guess where we're going with this.
Producers are not expediting the process and hiding the imperfections. They approach it with meticulous care and effort, centered around the desire to share a piece of the land with you. I’ll never forget when a young man from Colombia tasted some of our Colombian coffee without knowing the origin, and immediately knew - it tasted like home. 

Other practices that affect cost:

• Some farms plant with complementary crops or under tree cover in order to strengthen the soil, or plant in ways to work with the land rather than against it. This might mean less coffee plants, but they are stronger for it. 
• Hand-picking ripe cherries is an incredibly laborious job.
• Processing the cherries involves thinking through best practices for the environment as well. How to carry unprocessed fruit to the mill? How to conserve water and where to dump waste water?  Every step demands precision and dedication, more workers and more skill. 

Other Factors: Climate + Transportation

Coffee cultivation is also sensitive to climate conditions. Unpredictable weather patterns, increased pests, and diseases that affect coffee crops impact the supply of coffee, driving up prices. Specialty coffee farmers often invest in sustainable and eco-friendly practices to protect their crops and the environment, which can add to the cost but is an investment in future generations of producers.

Then coffee beans undergo a complex journey through the supply chain. These beans cover a lot of miles! From milling and exporting to roasting and packaging, each step involves specialized skills and logistics. By the time they arrive at our roastery, we are aware of how many hands have touched these bags of coffee, and we want to honor their work by doing our dang best to represent their efforts well.

Don't Forget About Fair Wages

In addition, supporting coffee farmers through fair trade practices is essential for ethical and sustainable coffee production. We also want to continue to incentivize producers to stay in specialty coffee, and this means making sure they are paid fairly! An $18-$22 bag of coffee is not getting anyone rich, but it does mean that farmers are getting paid more than the commodity market price for their coffee (a whole other rabbit hole), and it encourages future generations to stick around in agriculture as well. In our case, it also means a shift toward recognizing the often-unseen labor of women and helping to create healthier communities. 

Ahem...in conclusion:

There is so much more we could say about money and coffee and the C-Market and tariffs and maybe someday we will. For now, let's end with this. 
THANK YOU for supporting specialty coffee, for supporting producers who care so much, for supporting our humble but passionate little roastery. 
Buying specialty over commercial coffee is one of those small choices that makes a tremendous difference. You keep it up, and we'll all be out here together brewing a brighter future.