There is a moment at the grocery store I have started to dread. It is the coffee aisle.
I have bought the same can for about twenty years. I know its weight in my hand. Lately I also know its price, which is new for me.
Here is the part that bothers me. The government took the tariff off most of that coffee last November. I waited for the can to get cheaper. It did not.
$9.33
Average price of a pound of ground coffee in U.S. stores, September 2026
$4.73
The same pound, September 2021
Nearly double in five years. And every month this year, with the tariff gone, the pound has stayed above $9.
That is your kitchen table. It is also mine. Most of us drink it every morning, and we are not about to stop.
A habit that steady is a customer every seller dreams about. The question is which seller actually gets paid.
Most of us will never own a coffee farm. Until recently, owning a piece of a private coffee company was a deal for funds, not for people like us. That door has opened.
So why did the can hold its price? Because the price of coffee is set long before it reaches a store.
It starts with the raw bean, which trades on a global market. In February 2025, the main grade of that bean passed $4 a pound for the first time ever. Then came a 50% tariff on coffee from Brazil, the country that supplies the most of ours.
The tariff is gone now. The scarcity behind the bean price never left with it.
Where the cohort’s money sits this quarter, and where the morning cup fits.
Here is what the price tag hides. A high bean price is not a cost for everyone in the chain.
For the coffee shop and the brand on the shelf, it is a squeeze. For the grower holding the harvest, it is a raise.
The honest catch is that high prices carry their own cure. Growers plant more, and a few years later the bigger harvests arrive. When they do, bean prices can fall hard.
There is a kitchen-table ceiling, too. I switched to the store brand myself this summer.
The same rule runs well past coffee, though. Money collects wherever the bottleneck sits. In AI right now, one bottleneck is how fast data can move between the chips.
The arithmetic
Average price of ground coffee, 100% ground roast, per pound, U.S. city average: $9.33 in September 2026 and $4.73 in September 2021, above $9 every month of 2026 so far: Bureau of Labor Statistics, via the St. Louis Fed (series APU0000717311). 73% of Americans 60 and older drank coffee in the past day: National Coffee Association, National Coffee Data Trends, Spring 2024. Arabica futures above $4 a pound for the first time in February 2025, and the 50% tariff on Brazilian coffee: Daily Coffee News, September 15, 2025. Tariffs on Brazilian coffee removed by executive order in November 2025: Daily Coffee News, November 21, 2025. Newly planted coffee trees take about three or four years to bear fruit: Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, coffee crop guide. “Nearly double” is Boomers Trade’s own comparison of the two BLS figures.
Next month the government posts October’s coffee price. Watch whether the pound finally slips under $9. Until it does, the can on your counter is telling you who holds the harvest. Pour the second cup anyway. It is still the cheapest good hour of the day.
Andrew
Boomers Trade is written by someone getting older right alongside you, and watching who profits from it.
|