If the caffeine doesn't wake you up, the prices might.
A typical coffee out now runs us
$3.50 a pop, up 50 cents from early 2023, according to May restaurant sales data collected by the tech platform Toast.
A standard cold brew is $5.40. And those Instagram-worthy summer frappes?
A cool $6+, thanks to all those extra ingredients and crafting time.
But there are habits and then there are
habits.
And coffee is our national beverage of choice, with two-thirds of adults downing an average of three cups of java a day, according to the National Coffee Association (NCA).
So what can you do to keep drinking without breaking the bank?
More Americans are brewing coffee themselves, for one. According to a January NCA study,
71% of U.S. adults drank coffee exclusively made at home the previous day, compared to 63% in 2020. You’ll miss out on barista skills and background atmosphere, but at an estimated
25 cents to 75 cents a cup,
it’s a relative steal.
That said, you might have noticed even DIY coffee isn't the bargain it used to be.
Droughts, floods, and other extreme weather events have made global coffee crops in countries like Brazil and Vietnam as unpredictable as everything else over the past year. And in the 12 months through May, the price of ground roast coffee has risen to an all-time high of nearly $8 a pound from about $6, according to
government data.
Worse, while Toast’s monthly median for a restaurant coffee has stayed put at $3.50 since February (when
Arabica coffee futures peaked), prices could
continue to go up this year,
according to the USDA. Besides the weather, tariffs on imports are another wild card.
If things get too terrible, you
could try to give up your morning jolt, though many experts are dubious this would happen on any kind of broad scale, given how attached we are to both the caffeine and the culture.
“Coffee is crisis proof,” Gerd Mueller-Pfeiffer, CEO of International Coffee Consulting,
told Food Navigator last month.
If your more realistic route is making some adjustments, consider these options:
• Ditching loyalty to a brand name.
• Embracing instant coffee, which is generally cheaper than ground coffee thanks to easily-grown Robusta beans.
• Shopping around. (A can of Folgers Classic Roast ranges from $5.88 at Walmart to $7.79 at Giant, according to Consumer Reports’ Price Tracker.)
• Dropping syrups or other spendy add-ins at Starbucks.
• Trading your fancy cold brew for a push-button blend at a local convenience store.
Related Reading
Here's Why Your Cup of Coffee Could Soon Cost Even More (CBS News)
Coffee Cost Calculator (Hugh U. Chou)
17 Ways to Save Money on Coffee Expenses (SoFi)
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