First the £10 pint, now the £6.50 flat white: coffee industry faces inflationary pressures

The head of Lavazza coffee says customers so far have been absorbing the jump in cost, but ‘there are limits’ to how much they would be willing to pay. Photograph: Washington Imaging/Alamy View image in fullscreen The head of Lavazza coffee says customers so far have been absorbing the jump in cost, but ‘there are limits’ to how much they would be willing to pay. Photograph: Washington Imaging/Alamy First the £10 pint, now the £6.50 flat white: coffee industry faces inflationary pressures From harvests dampened by El Niño to wage and tax rises, getting coffee beans from crop to cup costs more than ever Drinkers across the UK were shocked when a pint in some London bars hit £10, and now a cup of coffee is facing a similar inflationary rate. Some baristas are now charging £6.50 for a flat white. Higher energy bills, inflated by the war in the Middle East , as well as government policies which have increased tax and wages, are filtering through into coffee prices, experts said. The price is also being raised by volatile weather in coffee growing regions, with a “super El Niño ”, a weather phenomenon which causes extreme rainfall and drought, forecast for the end of the year. There was heavy rain in Brazil throughout June already, which will dampen harvests and cause prices to rise. In the week ending 28 June, rainfall was nearly 2,000% higher than the historical norm. Waterlogged fields precluded machinery from entering, and the rain severely worsened bean quality, delaying harvests to 52%. In Vietnam, the largest producer of robusta beans, farmers are fighting early drought, and fertiliser and fuel prices in the country have jumped by 30% year-on-year, and labour costs by 33%. The Italian coffee company Lavazza warned that the sector faced “exceptional volatility”, with arabica bean prices increasing by 230% since 2021 and robusta up 325% over the same period. View image in fullscreen The price of a takeaway flat white from Lavazza’s main cafe in London has increased from £4 to £4.40, and from £5.50 to £6.50 to drink it in. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images Giuseppe Lavazza, the company’s chair, said: “Volatility is the new constant. This has been a year of high turbulence and pressure, not just in the coffee market but in the general economy. The coffee market now shows fundamental changes compared with the past. We are living in an environment we don’t know very well.” He said at least two years of good harvests from Brazil and Vietnam would be needed to calm the market. The weather conditions make this unlikely. The conditions, he said, have created “the perfect environment for speculators to step in to move the price to the record levels we’ve seen”. Lavazza has had to pass costs on to consumers. A flat white at Lavazza’s main cafe near Regent Street in London has risen from £4 to £4.40 to take away, and from £5.50 to £6.50 to drink in. Coffees at other high street chains are also becoming expensive. A flat white is £5.20 to take away in a cen