Is Italy About To Lose Its €1 Espresso? – CoffeeTalk

Italy has a long history of offering cheap coffee, with locals and tourists being able to grab an espresso for as little as €1. This is due to the fact that coffee suppliers in Italy often cover the cost of opening a café, saving the people who run them a lot of cash. Additionally, there is a culture of family-run cafés, meaning they don’t need to hire and pay too many staff. However, coffee bean prices have soared by 48 percent in the last year and trebled since 2018, largely due to poor harvests in Vietnam and Brazil and supply chain issues between Europe and Asia since November 2023.

Coffee is not seen as a product in Italy, but as a human right. If the price of espresso is kept at a euro, it becomes unsustainable for everyone in the supply chain, including farmers, baristas, and cafe owners. However, customers have become so accustomed to the coffee prices that raising it becomes a political issue, and baristas feel immense pressure to not change the price.

Luciano Sbraga, deputy president of the Federation of Italian Public Establishments, said that a product like an espresso is a necessity, and it is not easy to raise the price when customers perceive it as such an importance. It remains to be seen whether Italy’s baristas will resist or succumb to peer pressure to keep the €1 caffeine hit.

Read More @ Timeout