16-05-2025
Why coffee is more expensive
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) — Corey Gerlach, head roaster and co-owner at The Breaks in Sioux Falls, says coffee's rising price is not a new trend.
'This has been going on for years now in the coffee industry,' Gerlach said. 'It has consistently gone up in price.'
And when it comes to why the price for coffee beans might go up, he says there are several factors.
'The farmers, the producers don't set the prices; speculation in the market sets the prices,' Gerlach said. 'So, things for like, geopolitical tensions, climate change, plant diseases in coffee plants, those things also affect the price of coffee. Supply and demand. If a large producing country has a bad crop that year, that's going to shoot the market up.'
Coffee was expensive before the White House's tariffs of 2025. And Gerlach says tariffs aren't decisive in this equation right now.
'I wouldn't say tariffs is affecting the higher coffee prices directly at the moment,' he said. 'Over time, yes, they probably will.'
Per the consumer price index from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics on the average price of a pound of ground coffee, in January 2021 the cost was $4.59. By January 2023, it had jumped to $6.36, and it reached $7.02 in January 2025. The latest available data, for April 2025, lists the average price at $7.54 per pound.
Every business has to make its own decisions on what to do with prices they ask of their customers. For The Breaks, they have boosted prices to a degree.
'A little bit,' Gerlach said. 'For the most part, we've been absorbing those costs to not fully pass them on to our customer base and our clients. But we have in the past handful of months raised our wholesale pricing a little bit, our drink prices a little bit, our retail prices a little bit, but hopefully subtly enough to where people are okay with it.'
Gerlach says tariffs will more directly impact the cost of a coffee roaster or an espresso machine.
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