perspective - the view from coffee’s price peak

Nemesis began 8 years ago with the mission of coffee creating culture. We are grateful for everyone who visits our spaces to join us on this journey and we always strive to communicate the intention behind our choices. In this blog post we will explain our decision to increase our beverage prices as of February 21 2025 and share insights into the current state of coffee.

Thank you for being here and we look forward to hosting you soon - Team Nemesis

Why are we increasing our coffee beverage prices?

You may have heard about the unprecedented rise in the price of green coffee. The commodity price of coffee—the benchmark that coffee pricing is based on—has steadily increased in the past year and has more than doubled from $1.85/lb on Feb 20 2024 to an all time high of $4.39/lb on Feb 13th 2025.

This has affected all coffee prices globally and is putting pressure on every business in the coffee supply chain. Compounding this is the fact that green coffee is purchased in USD and the US/Canadian exchange rate increases our costs an additional 50%. While we have delayed raising our menu prices as long as possible, we are finally increasing the price of our coffee beverages in response to the sharp rise in the cost of green coffee.

What is the commodity price and C-market?

Coffee is one of the world’s most traded commodities and that comes with massive complexity. Like oil, wheat, copper, gold, sugar and cacao, these products are fundamental to our daily lives and yet the average consumer knows little about how these products are bought and sold.

To standardize the global trading of coffee, the C-market was established to provide a benchmark price for arabica coffee—a separate market exists for robusta. As a commodity market, the C-price treats all coffee as identical, regardless of quality. At the time of purchase, some additional value is added for local differentials (specific to the producing country), certifications (fair trade, organic), and quality grade.

To maintain the C-market and secure the global trade of coffee, coffee futures are traded on the New York stock exchange where investors or ‘speculators’ buy and sell contracts in units of containers of coffee in much the same way as stocks.

While this is necessary to maintain the annual trade of around 10 billion kilograms of arabica coffee, it puts significant power into the consuming end of the supply chain and disempowers farmers from setting fair prices for the product.

Specialty coffee aims to disrupt this power imbalance by recognizing coffee as unique based on the farm, quality, and cup score. Purchasing relationships are built on transparency and equitable terms tied to the cost of production that ensure profitability throughout the value chain.

What is causing the global coffee price increase?

This historic spike that we are currently facing is caused primarily by severe drought in Brazil and Vietnam, the world’s largest producers of Arabica and Robusta coffee respectively. The severe drought, paired with the worst forest fires in 70 years and harsh frosts in Brazil and a typhoon in Vietnam, greatly reduced last year's crop, which resulted in a global coffee shortage, sending prices of both Arabica and Robusta soaring.

How is Nemesis affected by this increase in price?

The short answer is that, along with every other roaster, Nemesis is paying more for coffee than ever before. As a result, we have had to increase our roasted coffee prices and that flows through to our cafe beverage costs. One silver lining is that Nemesis, like many specialty coffee roasters, has always prioritized paying farmers high prices for the best quality coffees.

While the price of the coffees we source have increased significantly, we are affected less than some commercial coffee roasters. We have held off on increasing our beverage prices as long as possible, but in order to continue our commitment to quality and the coffee farmers we work with, we have made the decision to increase our beverage prices.

Some much needed context.

It is worth noting that specialty coffee has long been advocating for higher prices for coffee farmers. The C-market price has been way too low for decades—literally below the price of production—meaning that farmers selling at or close to the commodity price were actually losing money. As a result, large commercial roasters have been benefitting from taking advantage of coffee farmers and falsely promoting the idea that coffee should be a cheap beverage and that specialty coffee is overly expensive.

The truth is that coffee farmers deserve to be profitable, to be paid equitably for their product. The fact that coffee farmers selling commodity coffee were making less than their cost to produce, effectively paying for people to drink cheap coffee, is unacceptable.

Specialty coffee roasters have historically struggled to explain this in clear terms. It’s a complex issue and large commercial roasters muddy the waters. Simply put, by supporting specialty coffee roasters that pay farmers equitable prices, you are participating in meaningful and long overdue change.

We are sure that some people will consider purchasing cheaper coffee as prices rise, but we hope that our guests will continue to support our mission to celebrate quality coffee and fairly support the producers that make our daily ritual possible.

Additional Thoughts 

While we may associate specialty coffee with fruit-bombs and latte art these are a means to an end. The foundation of specialty coffee is the decomodification and decolonization of the coffee supply chain, ultimately the rejection of exploitative and unsustainable trade. This is the legacy that Nemesis is committed to. 

The commodification of coffee and subsequent ‘price crisis’ is actually what started specialty coffee.  Like those that have come before us we believe that by championing quality and increasing the value of coffee - making it worth more to the people - we can make room to pay farmers equitably so that they and their communities can benefit from their work and the incredible coffees that they cultivate - and we enjoy.

That’s where anaerobic fermentation, latte art, and signature beverages come in. For that matter, that’s where intentionality around design, packaging, and hospitality come in. They help us to illustrate the value of the coffee and the hard work of the producers who grow them. We are their representative and through our hard work we earn the ability to pay properly for theirs.

It is also worth mentioning that the cost of purchasing coffee had already jumped in the pandemic due to massively elevated shipping costs, which tripled and quadrupled - in fact this has affected almost every industry. There are also several long-standing issues in addition to the commodity price of coffee. Climate change is not new and has been affecting coffee cultivation for years. A major frost in Brazil in 2021 combined with other factors related to the pandemic saw the c-market rise to $2.58/lb in 2022.  As a byproduct of rising temperatures coffee rust and other diseases/pests have been rampant.

Younger generations are leaving the hard and often unrewarding work of coffee farming to pursue urban lifestyles and work, creating an aging farmer population - the average age of coffee farmers is over 50. This is leading to families selling their farms or switching to more profitable crops, all of which means less coffee being produced. Meanwhile the demand for coffee is increasing with rising global populations and most notably coffee is taking off in 3 of the most populous countries in the world  - China, India, and Pakistan - all previously tea drinking nations. These factors are all putting pressure on a dwindling coffee supply.

It’s not all doom and gloom. Let’s end on a positive note. 

Specialty coffee as a network of farmers, exporters, importers, roasters, cafes, research groups, not for profits and individuals have achieved amazing things and the world is paying attention. While there are many challenges, coffee has never tasted better than it does now. Climate change is not going anywhere, but progress is being made on how we as an industry respond and adapt. World Coffee Research - who Nemesis is proud to support - and companies like them are receiving more investment than ever before to create new varieties. A lot of focus is on improving Arabica x Robusta hybrids that can thrive in the new conditions at origin. These varieties are drought resistant, rust resistant, producing a high crop yield and high cup quality.

Additionally, Nemesis is proud to support regeneratively farmed coffees through our partners and help promote climate resilient practices such as agroforestry and re-wilding of farmers’ lands through planting more diversity of trees and reducing chemicals.

There has been more rainfall in both Brazil and Vietnam and we are cautiously optimistic that the 2025 crop will be an improvement on 2024 and that 2026 will see some normality return. Many expect the C-market to respond by early next year and hopefully that price settles closer to, if not above, the price of production. In the meantime, we hope to use this opportunity to better explain the value of specialty coffee and the work we and our friends in the specialty industry are doing to build a sustainable future for coffee. Thank you for reading and supporting this vision. We are stronger together.