INDIANAPOLIS — The price of coffee is on the rise, and that's true whether you're making it at home or buying it in a shop.
It's all because of the price of coffee beans, and it's something local coffee shops have been seeing for some time.
“The C price of coffee, kind of the globally traded price of coffee, that has been on the rise for several years now," Stephen Hall, Co-Founder of Tinker Coffee Co., stated. "We've seen, kind of, the base price of coffee increase a lot."
But now, even more factors have been added to the issue.
“Of course, demand is up," Hall explained. "And if countries, like Brazil for example, have a difficult harvest, maybe a rainy season that does not produce the amount of quality coffee they were hoping for, that can really have an upward effect on the price of coffee.
That's led to something Hall said no business owner likes to do.
"We had to institute a price increase," he said.
Other coffee shops have had the same issue.
"Within the past week or two honestly, we've just had to raise our prices," Taylor, a barista at Perk Up Cafe in Broad Ripple, said.
"We're looking at that [raising prices] right now," Andy Hassler, Co-Owner of Blue Mind Coffee Roasting on 38th Street, said.
WRTV spoke with several coffee shops across the north side on Tuesday. All of them said they had been impacted in some way.
“We do have like a pallet of coffee right now that has been held up in Miami from Colombia," Hassler said.
“Our Brazilian beans might go away because of the 50% increase in what our pricing would be for that," Taylor explained.
Now, they're worried about the reaction from customers.
“You always get nervous when you raise prices," Hassler said. "No one likes it. It’s not fun and you may lose some [customers], especially at first.”
"Now of course, with tariffs coming into more of an effect, that’s just had a little bit more of an increased pressure on us," Hall stated.
They're just crossing their fingers that people will understand.
“We love our customers and we want to keep them as happy as possible, but sometimes you have to be able to make a profit as a small business," Taylor said.
If you choose to brew your coffee from home instead, you might not see that much of a difference. The average retail price for a pound of ground coffee hit $8.41 in the month of July.
