Coffee Retailers See Volatility
Editor’s note: Tariffs, taxes imposed by one country on goods imported from another country, have been in the national news a lot this year. But are the tariffs imposed so far, or the threat of tariffs, having an impact on local businesses? This week, The News-Gazette is launching an occasional series looking at the impact the tariffs may or may not be having on different sectors of our local economy. We’re starting with a look at the region’s coffee retailers.
Since returning to office in January, President Trump has ushered in a new wave of tariffs that expand and escalate many of the trade measures first implemented during his first term.
The administration’s trade policy now includes a universal 10% tariff on nearly all imports — except those from Canada and Mexico — with additional “reciprocal” tariffs ranging from 11% to 50% imposed on over 60 countries that the White House sees as unfair trade partners. These tariffs, initially rolled out during the so-called “Liberation Week” in early April, have been blamed by many for driving up costs on everyday goods.
Some of the steepest tariffs target goods from China. After briefly soaring as high as 145%, tariffs on Chinese imports were scaled back to 30% in May. Even at that level, the duties are hitting a wide range of items, including manufacturing equipment, packaging supplies, and electronics, especially hard. Tariffs on steel and aluminum remain in place from Trump’s first term, but have been reinforced and expanded in 2025, with new 50% duties on aluminum from most countries and extended coverage to household appliances and machinery.
This tangled web of trade restrictions has added layers of cost and confusion for small businesses that depend on imported goods — including those who roast, brew and sell coffee.
The coffee industry may seem far from the biggest factors in trade policy, but in reality it relies on a delicate global supply chain. From green beans shipped in from Ethiopia or Colombia, to the imported parts inside a countertop espresso machine, the effects of tariffs are showing up in unexpected places.
We spoke with local roasters and shop owners to understand how they’re adapting, what’s getting more expensive, and how trade policy decisions thousands of miles away are landing squarely on their counters.
Few American industries are as globally dependent as coffee. The U.S. grows almost none of it, aside from limited farms in Hawaii and California, and nearly every roaster in the country, including Roadmap Coffee Works just north of Lexington, relies on beans imported from Central and South America, East Africa, and beyond. “Literally every single coffee roaster in the country except for a couple in Hawaii is importing,” said Jack Scholl, manager of Roadmap. “We bring in beans mostly from Central and South America and East Africa. Occasionally from Indonesia, but not often.”
For businesses like Roadmap, the tariff landscape in 2025 has been less about outright disruption and more about volatility — the kind of economic back-and-forth that makes long-term planning difficult.
“We had actually prepared for change [before tariffs increased],” Scholl said. “The Mexico situation threw us for a loop. There was talk of a 25% tariff on Mexican imports, so we started looking for substitutes. But then coffee from Mexico was put back under the USMCA agreement, which means there’s actually no tariff now. So we went from thinking we were going to have to sever ties to Mexico to maybe bringing on even more Mexican coffee.”
That stop-start dynamic has become a defining feature of tariff policy in 2025. With new rules appearing and then getting revised weeks later, small businesses are left to navigate what Scholl calls “an interesting situation” — preparing to pivot, only to find they may not need to. For now, Roadmap has mostly “held pat,” waiting to see how the dust settles.
Roadmap doesn’t import directly, instead working through intermediary companies who handle logistics. But the cost burdens are still hitting home, leading to “significant price increases” in the last year for Roadmap’s offerings. “Those importers are passing 100% of the tariffs on to us,” Scholl said. “Every single one of them. There’s nobody eating any of it on our behalf.”
But here’s where the picture gets more complex.
Despite the headlines and the political posturing, tariffs aren’t actually the only reason your morning cup of coffee costs more this year. According to Scholl, the more dramatic force is the global spike in green coffee prices, a trend driven not by trade policy, but by climate and supply.
“We’ve seen a doubling in green coffee prices that has nothing to do with tariffs,” he explained. “Bad harvests in Brazil have seriously reduced supply, and demand just keeps going up. That’s driving prices more than anything.”
It’s a global reality that’s hitting U.S. coffee businesses and their customers across the board, regardless of political boundaries.
Still, tariffs add another layer to an already strained industry. “Consumers are seeing large increases in coffee prices,” Scholl said. “And I want to be clear — most of that is just supply and demand. But then the tariff is there too.”
When asked if he feels like small businesses like his are properly considered in trade decisions, Scholl was diplomatic. “I’m not in the room where these things happen. All I can do is control what I can control.” He paused. “But I will make one prediction: you may start to see some coffee shops not survive if this keeps up.”
With rising costs from both nature and policy, many roasters and café owners are finding themselves caught between forces they can’t influence — and customers who can’t absorb much more. -At Asunder Coffee Roasters in Buena Vista, owner Stephanie McCoy has taken a proactive — some might say preemptive — approach to navigating the current wave of economic uncertainty.
“I always prepare for the worst and hope for the best,” she said. “I hate instability. Just make a decision and stick to it, even if I hate the decision.”
So when she saw who was headed into the White House in January, and remembered his prior comments about tariffs, she acted fast.
“I bulked up on beans,” McCoy said. “I knew if tariffs were put on top of the prices we were already seeing, I wouldn’t be able to afford anything.”
Her instincts were wellfounded. Even before new tariffs took effect, prices had already soared. “When I first started roasting, a pound of beans from Mexico was $3.25,” she said. “Now it’s $6.85. That’s just over the past 18 months, and that’s from the country with no extra tariffs.”
McCoy’s go-to sources are coffees from Mexico and El Salvador, regions she favors for both flavor and familiarity. But she says even those oncestable relationships have become more tenuous, and she may have to think creatively about how to keep her small business afloat, especially because, unlike Roadmap, she has held off on raising menu prices as of yet, hoping to maintain the customer base the business has gained.
“I’m a very small operation with very little money,” she said. “So I bought ahead while I could. And honestly, I’m kind of glad things are a little slow right now. It’s cheaper for me to be slow.”
It’s a strange reality when a business owner feels relief at a lack of customers, but that’s the kind of upside-down math small operators are dealing with in 2025.
Like many roasters, McCoy doesn’t import directly. She uses Cafe Imports, a Minnesota based company with a global supply network. But even with a middleman handling logistics, she’s feeling the pinch — especially when it comes to equipment.
“I was looking at buying a new machine for my coffee bus,” she said. “The site said, ‘Buy before May 31 or the price is going up $75.’ I didn’t buy it.”
The inflationary ripple effect doesn’t stop with beans or equipment. “I already price shop,” she said. “But I’m sure I’m going to have to dig even deeper. I can’t afford specialty beans from Vietnam or Peru right now. It’s just basic coffee at the moment. Keep things simple.”
McCoy was blunt in her assessment of the current administration’s focus on tariffs and their real-world impacts.
“I don’t think anything was considered,” she said. “They’re trying to fix one small portion of the economy and they don’t understand trickle-down. They’re not looking at the whole picture.”
And while she’s doing her best to adapt, she also recognizes the limit to how much local resilience can absorb.
McCoy concluded with a similar statement Scholl had offered: “If this keeps up,” she said, “some coffee shops aren’t going to survive.”
