Full disclosure on raising our retail prices
Current subscriptions and drinks at our brick and mortar location in Des Moines are not affected.
You may have heard that coffee prices have risen. We hated to do it, but we needed to do it. Forgetfulness has meant that it hasn’t hit our shop in Des Moines yet, but the snow storm has allowed me uninterrupted time to work on all the things that got left behind over a very busy past few weeks. All pricing on our Squarespace and Square sites for bags of coffee are officially updated. So now we are squared.
Nobody likes to raise prices, most of all small business owners. Ok maybe actually yeah definitely some people like raising prices…but we are not them and that is not us.
We love running the shop, serving people generally, and making connections with community so much that sometimes we wish we could just give free shit out to be quite honest. And we do have an idea in the pipeline on that note for a later date when we’ve acquired more financial security under our belts…
And then I remember that we are a business! Ha!
The uncertainty of coffee prices is something that Jarrett has been keen on since starting the company over a decade ago. It is also the underlying current driving our diversification efforts among our beverages and why we expanded into our own brick and mortar. We also have a plant based energy drink, Cobra Verde, and two years ago we purchased an old regional beer brand, Fox Head Beer. Fox Head Beer is contract manufactured down in Oskaloosa, using our recipe at No Coast Beer. Coming this spring we will add a Fox Head thc hop water (4mg thc) as well as a Cobra Verde thc (15 mg caffeine, 4mg thc) to our ever evolving beverage catalogue.
In saying all of that, we make every attempt to keep our prices fair to our customers while keeping it fair on our end as well. We obviously have the unique fortune and ease of roasting our own coffee, so that there’s no added cost beyond what we’ve already absorbed with importer costs, clocked roasting hours, and packaging. According to one customer, our drink prices are actually cheaper than Dunkin! I haven’t verified this as I haven’t been there since my short lived phase of drunken Dunkin’ donuts back in 2016…
Coffee commodities have been volatile for some time. Sprudge did a good job of outlining the situation recently that may be of interest to you. When that article was published last week, it led with the shock of coffee being at $4/lb—to date, February 13, 2025, it is at $4.20/lb and went as high as $4.30. In short, the price of coffee today more than double what is was a year ago and five years removed from when it it made its shocking plunge to just under a dollar per pound.
The rising coffee commodities costs are necessary to ensure that coffee producers can maintain some sense of control over their livelihoods as they continue to manage crop loss and overwhelming uncertainty. Ultimately this is a bandaid for farmers that are no doubt facing the very real threat of getting out of the coffee growing business entirely.
Climate unsurprisingly plays a major role in the coffee crop (the weather in Brazil as the defining factor) but on top of that, Coffee C Futures contracts ultimately steer price. This link will help break down those contracts for you if interested. When you add tariffs or even just the threat of tariffs into the mix, chaos ensues!
What this also means is that locally roasted coffee has turned into a luxury item for many, a fact of which we hate.
Stocking our slots at the grocery store surrounded by what I like to refer to as Big Coffee, always seeming to slash their prices like no big deal, can be emotional for tiny local roasting operations like us. Best believe that our chins remain high! We have acquired a really thick layer of skin working in this industry by now (especially Jarrett). Sorry that sounded really gross, but you get the symbolism.
The rows of mass produced coffee bags of which are a heck of a lot older than our freshly roasted bags beg the questions: Do I need to compromise on the quality of my coffee to save money or can I afford to fork over more money for a higher quality, locally roasted coffee? Selfishly we wonder how far sales would drop if those big coffee companies put roast dates on their bags like us and most local coffee roasting operations…
I did indeed survive on cafe bustelo from my local bodega (and adapted to its burnt flavor) for years when I lived in Bushwick in the early-mid 2010s…It was pretty much the only option at that point for me. We’ve all been there. So in no way do I judge anyone for buying a cheaper product to fit a budget, ever. Shelter, clothing, water, and food above all!
When I became accustomed to the Irving Farm coffee that we served at the restaurant I worked at, along with the perfectly roasted Variety Coffee shop pour overs, where I spent most mornings freelancing, I began to really fall in love with coffee as a drink and ritual.
We hope that you can fall in love with fresh, locally roasted coffee as a ritual, too.
Stay sweet,
Cristin