Coffee in the Time of High Prices

Take a trip back in time with us to July 2019. We had just hosted our company launch event in Tampa, Florida, and roughly 70 people joined us from all over the state. The energy in the room was palpable — plenty of baristas and roasters were excited to connect with a local source and taste interesting coffees they’d never experienced before.

Coffee had hit 90¢/lb that month on the Intercontinental Exchange, more commonly known as the C Market. A generationally low price, well below the cost of production for many farmers, was fueling a rapid expansion of “specialty” coffee consumption across the United States. Farmers were looking for ways to break the low price cycle by planting new varieties, or experimenting with new processing methods. A small improvement in the cup could fetch an elevated price for the farmer, meaning the difference between breaking even or breaking down. Many roasters boasted about paying double or triple the market rate for coffees, fueling even more drinkers to believe they were not only making a better choice for their palates, but for their ethic as well.

We started Yellow Rooster around this time believing that we could be bridge-builders, connecting our unique network of producers across Latin America to our network of roasters in the USA. As opposed to many legacy coffee importers or traders who come from bank or finance backgrounds, we ourselves cut our teeth in the coffee industry at coffee shops, roasteries and coffee machine repair workbenches. We thought we could carve out a niche and create something roasters and producers alike would want to be a part of.

For the most part, we’ve accomplished that goal. We’ve imported millions of pounds of coffee from seven origins and have personally visited or interacted with hundreds of roasters across the United States. We’ve seen relationships we’ve fostered and the associated coffees win competitions, awards, and accolades. Our partners at origin and our roaster partners alike look to us to continue building and strengthening the bond for seasons to come. This work we do with much pride, care and attention. We don’t take any of it for granted.

That said, 2025 came hard at a lot of us in the coffee industry. Market chaos, pushing prices above $4.40/lb. Political unpredictability, with tariffs adding at least a surprise 10% charge. Changing trends, where new varieties and processes emerge almost weekly. Some of our roaster partners closed shop, while some former producer partners adopted new distribution models. And, to be nakedly transparent, we at Yellow Rooster made (what turned out to be) bad bets for our bottom line. Our message of consistency and long-term, farmer-forward thinking prioritizes showing up harvest after harvest as a reliable outlet through which producers can move their harvests. This includes the bad times, like when maybe the weather didn’t behave as expected and the cup quality faltered; and the good times, like when a farmer’s first harvest of their newly planted Gesha is ready for export. Unfortunately, in those three or four years it takes to grow a new crop, the market trends and economic realities continue to move at light speed. And in the coffee market of our current day, the old adage of “Higher Prices Paid for Better Cup Quality!” looks downright quaint and naive. It has become clear to us that for many American roasters, among all the challenges of running a shop or roastery, paying higher and higher prices for coffee has its limits.

In light of these new challenges, we at Yellow Rooster have taken on the task of analyzing our operation with the goal of threading the needle between being a faithful partner to our origin relationships while bringing the best value possible to our roaster partners in the USA. One thing that is clear to us is that for the vast majority of our coffees, our costs at origin, including price paid to the farmer and associated logistical costs (milling, packing, freight) are in line with everyone’s expectations. There’s no sugar-coating at Yellow Rooster; no snakes, no coyotes — we pay fairly, we don’t twist arms, and we live up to our obligations and agreements. Transparency is a two-way street, and we take our job as contextual and cultural translators seriously. We are proud to pay fairly and work as partners with producers to help establish their coffees in new markets.

The other thing that is clear to us is that our margin model, that is, how much of the operational costs and profit we build into our pricing structure, was obliterated by the two-headed dragon of changing market conditions (as mentioned above) and our own growth as a company. We have imported more coffee year over year since 2019, and the simple mathematical truth is that typically as volumes go up, margins come down. We took a good, honest look at where we needed our margins to be to remain viable in 2019 versus where they were in late 2025, and noticed we could make some adjustments. That said, we’ve lowered some prices, particularly on both our existing Colombian spot stock, and our forward booking prices on future imports. This move is not to be interpreted as a devaluing of the products we represent, nor of our own labor and the labor of the producers, of which we have been clear about since day one: Coffee is complex product and supply chain, and if you like something, you should pay appropriately for it. However, all of us, from farm to end consumer, have had to have some hard conversations on how to remain agile in the face of challenges.

And if you’ve read this far, it is important to keep in mind the following: We have built our reputation on quality, and that is not changing. Quality cups can ONLY be born out of quality relationships, and quality relationships are born out of mutual respect every actor along the supply chain has for each other. While we are making some price adjustments, and future imports may have a wider range of options, we are firm in believing a better cup is possible, and that the specialty coffee industry should not shy away from those challenges. We want to be your importer of record, your trustworthy partner in helping curate the best experiences possible for your staff and customers, whether it is providing container loads of your baseline daily driver or sourcing your next competition submission.

If you’re a roaster that’s worked with us in the past and has shied away from Yellow Rooster because of these recent upward price creeps, we humbly invite you to take another look at our spot menu and place a sample order, or reach out to us at hello@yellowroostercoffee.com to reignite the conversation. We know roasters have options, and we want working with us to be a no-brainer because the coffees are great, the service is special, and the prices are fair and sustainable.