255 E. Chandler Blvd, Phoenix, AZ 85048
Coffee got expensive and stayed that way. If your regular bag jumped in price over the last two years, you’re not imagining it, and it probably isn’t dropping back down.
It starts with the raw material. Green coffee, the unroasted beans roasters buy, spiked hard. Arabica futures hit an all-time high of $4.41 a pound in February 2025 after drought and rough weather hurt crops in Brazil and Vietnam. Prices eased since then. As of late 2026, arabica sits near $2.93 a pound, still about double what used to count as normal. You can track the industry outlook here.
That cost rolls downhill. Roasters buy beans months ahead, so the 2025 spike is still hitting shelves now. At the grocery store, a pound of ground coffee averaged about $9.32 in July 2026, up from a full-year average of $6.32 in 2024. Specialty bags run higher, with the median around $18 to $20. The full numbers are here.
There’s a second force at the top end. Rare, high-scoring lots from single farms sell for huge sums, and that drags the ceiling up for anything labeled premium. Light roasts and single-origin beans cost more because they use better green coffee to begin with.
Drinkers are responding by buying smaller. Instead of a two-pound bag of one coffee, more people grab a small premium tin, brew it carefully at home, and treat it as something worth savoring. Smaller formats also let roasters set a price that doesn’t cause sticker shock, even when the cost per gram is higher. A 100-gram tin feels reasonable next to a $20 bag, and it matches how younger drinkers shop, in smaller and more frequent buys.
For Brewed Awakening, the lesson is practical. Customers watch prices but will still pay for quality when the portion feels right. Offer smaller retail sizes and talk plainly about why prices moved, and it will land better than acting like nothing happened. Being clear about sourcing helps too.
Cheap coffee hasn’t vanished. The gap between commodity and specialty just got wider, and people are picking their spots.
