Coffee prices in 2026: what cafés should do about the cup

Cost one cup from your own roaster invoice: grams of coffee in the cup × the price of a gram, plus the milk and the cup. National data shows coffee on the shelf cost 4.8% more in August 2026 than a year earlier and 47% more than two years earlier, even though green coffee has eased since late 2025. Re-cost each drink, see how many points its food and drink cost % has risen, and under 1 point hold the price, from 1 to 3 raise it by the extra cost, and over 3 pair a smaller raise with a recipe change.

What the primary sources say coffee prices did

Coffee has three prices that move at different speeds: the green (unroasted) bean that roasters buy, the roasted coffee on a store shelf, and the bag your roaster sells you. The first two are published. All figures are as of the dates given, and they change every month.

Green coffee

The World Bank's Pink Sheet of October 2, 2026 gives the price of arabica, one of the two main coffee species (robusta is the other), in dollars per kilogram. The per-pound column below is worked out from it (1 kg is 2.2046 lb).

So 2025 averaged 51% above 2024. The highest of the quarters shown is October to December 2025, and the July to September 2026 quarter was 4% below the same quarter a year earlier but still 37% above 2024's average. The International Coffee Organization (ICO) publishes the daily prices behind this. Its monthly price sheets give the composite indicator in US cents per pound: 330.44 for November 2025, 248.90 for June 2026, 287.29 for August and 262.18 for September. That's a 25% fall from November to June, then a 15% bounce by August and a 9% dip in September. USDA's Foreign Agricultural Service said in its July 2026 report that prices had dropped 25% in the last seven months as more supply became available.

That same report describes a forecast crop, not a forecast price: a record world harvest of 189.7 million 60-kilogram bags in 2026/27 (July 2026 to June 2027), led by Brazil, Ethiopia, Uganda and Vietnam. Nobody can tell you what your roaster will charge next quarter, and this post doesn't try.

Coffee on the shelf

The Bureau of Labor Statistics' average price series for ground roast coffee is what US shoppers paid per pound, averaged across cities. Its latest month at the time of writing is August 2026.

Two things stand out. First, the shelf price kept rising for months after green coffee's October to December 2025 quarter: it hit its high in April 2026, then eased 4.4% by August. USDA's Economic Research Service notes that retail food prices typically lag farm and wholesale prices, which fits. Second, coffee is still far above where it was two years earlier. ERS's Food Price Outlook of September 25, 2026 puts retail coffee prices 6.1% above August 2025. That's a different measure from BLS's average price, so it differs from the 4.8%. It adds that coffee has risen faster than other nonalcoholic drinks, which as a group, coffee included, were up 3.7% over the same year.

What none of this tells you

Your roaster's bag price also pays for roasting, packaging, freight and the roaster's own margin. We found no published source for how much of it is the green bean, so we don't guess. Your roaster may also buy at different times from the dates in the tables, so your price can move earlier or later than they do. Your invoice is the only number that counts for your menu.

Cost one cup from your bag price

You need four numbers: the price of a gram of coffee, the grams in each drink, the milk, and the cup. Weigh the grams on a scale for a week instead of guessing, and write down what you get.

Example: Corner Café (a made-up café) buys a 5 lb bag of espresso blend for $70.00, which is $14.00 a pound. It pays $4.50 a gallon for milk, and a cup, lid and sleeve cost $0.30. The doses below are examples too: a latte uses 18 g of coffee and 9 oz of milk, and a 12 oz drip coffee uses 22 g. The bag holds 5 × 453.6 = 2,268 g, so a gram costs $70.00 ÷ 2,268 = $0.0309.

Run your own drinks through the plate cost calculator, and keep one number for each: the grams you really use.

What a rise in the bag price does

Say Corner Café's roaster raises the 5 lb bag 15%, to $80.50 (an example, not a forecast). A gram now costs $0.0355.

A 15% rise in the bag adds $0.08 to a latte and $0.10 to a drip. That's small per cup, so look at the whole month. Say the café sells 3,000 lattes at $5.00, 2,500 drip coffees at $3.00, and $7,500 of other items that use no coffee, at a 35% cost. Before the rise it takes in $30,000 and spends $8,740 on food and drink: 29.1%. After the rise, with the same sales and prices, it spends $9,230: 30.8%. That's $490 a month, $5,880 a year, and 1.6 points of food and drink cost.

The same arithmetic works downward. If your roaster cuts your price, re-cost and see where each drink sits. You may hold your prices and take the difference as margin rather than cut: that's your decision, not a rule.

Four ways to close the gap

Start with the rise from the table: the latte is $1.18 to $1.26 on a $5.00 menu, the drip $1.03 to $1.13 on a $3.00 menu.

Hold the price

The drip then leaves $1.87 instead of $1.97, so across 2,500 cups the café gives up $250 a month. The latte gives up $240 across 3,000. Holding costs real money, so do it deliberately for a reason, such as a quiet season or a bag price your roaster has told you is coming down, not by default.

Raise the price by the extra cost

To keep dollars per cup, add the extra plate cost: the latte $5.00 + $0.08 = $5.08, so $5.10 on a menu that moves in dimes; the drip $3.00 + $0.10 = $3.10. To get a drink back to its old cost %, divide its new plate cost by the old percentage: the drip is $1.13 ÷ 0.343 = $3.29. If you price in quarters, $5.25 and $3.25 are the next steps up, which are 5% and 8% rises. For comparison, USDA reports that the food-away-from-home index was 3.4% higher in August 2026 than a year before.

Change the recipe or the size

At $0.0355 a gram, dropping the drip from 22 g to 20 g saves $0.07 a cup. Taste it first: change the dose only if the cup still holds up, and tell the person on the bar. Other levers are a smaller default size, or asking your roaster to price a different blend. The Pink Sheet has robusta, the cheaper coffee species, at $3.92 per kg for July to September 2026, about half of arabica's $7.71. What a blend with more of it tastes like is a question for your roaster and your guests, not for a table.

Steer guests to drinks that leave more

Dollars per cup = menu price − plate cost. A latte leaves $3.74 now and a drip $1.87, so each guest who orders a latte instead of a drip adds $1.87. If 100 of the 2,500 monthly drip orders become lattes, that's $187 a month, about three-quarters of the $250 the drip gives up. It helps, but it won't close the gap by itself.

Which option to pick

Decide drink by drink, by how many points its food and drink cost % has risen since you last costed it. These cut-offs are RestaurantDoctorAI's rules of thumb, not an industry standard.

• Under 1 point: hold, write down the new cost and check again next month.
• 1 to 3 points: raise the price by at least the extra plate cost, rounded up to your usual price ending. The latte is 1.6 points over: $5.10.
• More than 3 points: split the fix. The drip is 3.3 points over, so raise it about 3%, to $3.10, and take the 20 g dose, which makes the plate $1.06.

Here is the whole month if sales hold, which they may not: 3,000 lattes at $5.10 and 2,500 drip coffees at $3.10, plus the same $7,500 of other sales.

A raise pays as long as guests keep ordering about as before. Check that against your own counts, as below. The food cost percentage guide shows how to work out the combined figure for your whole café and the ranges for each type of restaurant.

What to watch after you change a price

• Cups sold. Compare each drink's weekly count in your POS item report with the four weeks before the change. In the example, the $3.10 drip with a 20 g dose still beats the old $3.00 drip if it keeps 97% of its sales: $1.97 × 2,500 ÷ $2.04 = 2,414 of its 2,500 cups.
• Your invoice. If the bag price moves more than 5% from the one you costed at, either way, re-cost.
• Waste. Dumped batches and failed shots cost coffee too. If you throw out a lot, weigh it for a week and add that share to the grams per drink.

This week

1. 01Find your last roaster invoice and work out the cost per gram: bag price ÷ (pounds × 453.6). Do the same for the invoice before it, so you can see how far it has moved.
2. 02Weigh the coffee in your three best-selling drinks, three times each, and write down the average grams.
3. 03Cost those three drinks in the plate cost calculator, with milk and the cup, and write down each drink's points over its last costing.
4. 04Set each change by the cut-offs above, then put a date four weeks out in your calendar to check cups sold and the invoice again.