Spokane Coffee Roasters Already Feeling The Tariff Pain – CoffeeTalk

The announcement of new tariffs on countries producing coffee beans will bring even more uncertainty and, mostly likely, higher prices to Spokane coffee roasters. Simon Thompson, founder of Spokane-based Cravens Coffee Co., said that the whole system of buying coffee has broken, and the tariffs are just another break in that mechanism. Cravens sources coffee beans from 11 countries for its variety of blends that includes Mission Mountain, Montana Jacks, and Spokane Express.

Bobby Enslow, owner of Indaba Coffee, said he’s already had to raise wholesale prices that he charges restaurants and stores as a result of a poor crop in Brazil, which leads the world in coffee production. He noted that he may be insulated, somewhat, from the decision this week by President Donald Trump to hit U.S. trading partners with new tariffs, because he paid for contracts a year ago for the coffee beans he’s using today.

As of Friday, Thompson said he had coffee beans, which are shipped unroasted and green, on transport ships headed to Spokane when the tariffs hit. He believes he’ll have to pay higher duties to get that already-purchased coffee to the Lilac City. If it has not left the country of origin, it will be tariffed.

Tariffs are charged by the importing country. If a 250-pound bag of coffee costs $100, for example, a 10% tariff would force the roaster to pay $110 to get those beans into the U.S.

Growing conditions have already caused coffee prices to rise to a 47-year high, with both Brazil, which produces arabica beans, and Vietnam, which produces the robusta beans mostly used in commercial-grade coffee, having crop failures last year. Demand for beans has increased because of more coffee drinkers in Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and China.

Coffee is particularly vulnerable to price pressures because there are only so many places where it can be grown. Most coffee is produced in countries located along the equator. Roast House Coffee owner Aaron Jordan still doesn’t know what the tariffs will mean to his business. He wouldn’t be surprised to see a 10-to-20% increase.

Much of the uncertainty comes from different rules. For instance, coffee from Brazil will likely face a 10% tariff. Vietnam, however, will face a staggering 46% tariff.

The only coffee grown in the U.S. is in Hawaii and a little in California, but both regions only have what he calls a “hobby farm” level of production. Technically, coffee could be grown in Brownsville, Texas, but only if it somehow rose about 5,000 feet above sea level and started to have about 70 inches of rainfall a year.

That leaves the dozen or so roasters in Spokane at the end of a long supply chain full of uncertainty. If it doesn’t even itself out, pricing will be impacted, and roasters need to be cognizant of that.

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