Coffee Futures Have Fallen 23%, So Why Are Cafe Prices Still Going Up?

On 17 October the December 2026 arabica coffee contract in New York traded at 305.60 US cents per pound. On 8 October the same contract was at 292.78 cents, and over the past year it has fallen 23.97 percent.

Brazil’s 2026 harvest is estimated at a record of about 67.6 million bags after processing, up 19.6 percent year on year; Brazil’s exports in September rose 3.1 percent year on year, a 20-month high. Hedgepoint estimates a global supply surplus of about 8.9 million bags.

Put the two sets of figures together and it is easy to conclude that the coffee raw material has become nearly a quarter cheaper.

But futures reflect the market’s expectation of future supply, while spot prices reflect the beans that can actually be taken out of the warehouse at this moment. Low inventories and record harvest estimates can hold true at the same time; the two are not contradictory, they are simply measured on different time scales.

For a futures price to reach a cafe in China it must pass through three further layers of erosion.

The first layer is the lag in contract prices.

Roasters and traders mostly work on contract prices locked in ahead of time. Today’s fall in futures can only enter procurement costs once the earlier high-priced contracts have been digested one after another.

The second layer is the cost structure.

Green beans are only part of the cost of a cup of coffee in a cafe; labour, rent, energy, cups and logistics are all changing at the same time.

The third layer is the exchange rate.

Part of the decline in a dollar-denominated commodity is offset by the local currency exchange rate.

The reference points are already visible overseas.

Starbucks Japan raised prices across all its stores from 9 October, adding 4 to 35 yen to standard drinks. The official reason given was the cost of raw materials, logistics and energy, not bean prices alone.

UCC Ueshima Coffee announced in July that household products would rise from shipments on 1 November, by up to about 10 percent.

Statistics show that 3,153 food and beverage items raised prices in Japan in October, of which 1,399 were alcoholic drinks and beverages, topping the list for the first time since October 2025.

For buyers, if contracts for the first quarter of next year are still clearly above spot, it means the gap has not yet been closed and the window for locking in prices is open; if not, they can roll procurement at a normal pace without having to stock up all at once.

Roasters and chain cafes are better off building positions in stages, breaking long orders into short ones so that costs are not fixed at a high point before expectations are realised. Falling futures and expensive cafes can hold true at the same time because they are not talking about the same thing:

The former measures whether there will be enough to drink in the future, the latter decides how much this cup of coffee is worth today.

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This article is edited and compiled by coffeeyo.com and reprinted from Hongcan Net (canyin88.com), “Coffee Futures Have Fallen 23 Percent, but Why Are Cafe Prices Still Rising?”. The original copyright belongs to Hongcan Net and the original author. This reprint is for coffee-industry information sharing only and does not represent the site’s position; all data and views are subject to the original. We thank the original author for their work and sharing.
Original: Hongcan Net (canyin88.com), “Coffee Futures Have Fallen 23 Percent, but Why Are Cafe Prices Still Rising?”
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