Calgary coffee roasters and importers feeling the grind of climbing costs

This story was originally posted for CTV News Calgary on September 03, 2025

Calgary coffee bean brokers and roasters say they’ve been riding a “wild roller-coaster” of price increases for months, and there’s no sign global costs will come down.

“Brazil sneezes, and the whole world gets a cold in coffee, and Brazil started feeling terrible,” explained Carlos Gutierrez, the owner of Single Origin Coffee in Calgary.

The coffee importer and distributor said Brazil, the world’s largest coffee producer, was hit with drought, frost and hail that all severely impacted crops.

“The problem with coffee is, once it is damaged, it takes two years to recuperate,” he said.

Weather is the biggest factor contributing to the record-high prices of the commodity, but local roasters say tariffs are also dictating costs.

While many of the bigger coffee businesses in Calgary avoid the tariffs on beans by acquiring them directly from the country of origin, some smaller businesses broker their beans through the United States.

Tariffs brought on by that country against coffee-producing nations are shaking the market as a whole.

“We’re still in a shortage of coffee, recovering from the frost and the drought. We now have a scenario where the U.S. is tariffing Vietnam, Brazil and now India, who’s also a very large producer,” said Russ Prefontaine, the president of Fratello Coffee Roasters.

“What this is causing in the market is general uncertainty. So people are scared.”

Much of those costs are then passed on to the consumer.

“It has to be passed along when we get hit with price increases of 50 to 100 per cent in a matter of six months. This isn’t something we can absorb, and it happens so quickly,” Prefontaine said.

According to Statistics Canada, the average consumer price of 340 grams of coffee in Alberta has gone from $6.62 last June to $8.77 in June 2025.

This year’s harvest of beans is already anticipated to be below average.

“That means that, at the end of the day, if the price stays high, we’re going to buy very high. And the problem is not going to be solved immediately. It’s going to take more time,” Gutierrez said.

Despite price increases over the past several years, the Coffee Association of Canada says consumption in the country remains high.

An estimated three-quarters of adult Canadians drink coffee daily, the association reported.