Morning Edition · Monday, July 20, 2026Published at 1:14 AM EDT · New York

Coffee Drinkers Shift to Whole Beans as Prices Climb, Lavazza Says

The chair of the Italian family-owned roaster said consumers are choosing less but better coffee as elevated bean prices push retail costs higher.

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Coffee Drinkers Shift to Whole Beans as Prices Climb, Lavazza Says

Rising coffee prices are changing how consumers buy, according to the chair of Lavazza, the Italian family-owned group. In an interview with the Financial Times, he said drinkers are turning toward whole beans and opting for less but better coffee as prices climb.

The shift shows how households absorb persistent food inflation. When the price of a staple rises and stays high, consumers do not simply stop buying. They adjust format and quality, choosing value over convenience, which changes demand across a product category without eliminating it.

Coffee belongs to a group of soft commodities, along with cocoa and sugar, where weather damage and constrained supply have kept prices elevated well beyond a single season. Those pressures feed into the persistent part of food inflation that central banks find hardest to bring down, because it responds to harvests and climate rather than to interest rates.

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What this means

Persistent increases in soft-commodity prices feed the food-inflation component that monetary policy struggles to influence, because it is driven by weather and supply rather than by demand. Roasters and packaged-food companies face margin pressure and pass some cost to consumers, who trade down in quality and format. The exposed parties are food manufacturers on margin and households on real income. The channel is supply-constrained input costs flowing into retail prices.

What to watch

Harvest conditions in major coffee, cocoa and sugar producers, because weather damage is the main driver keeping these prices elevated.
Whether packaged-food companies keep passing costs to consumers or absorb them, since that choice determines where the inflation lands.
Food-price components in inflation data, because persistent soft-commodity costs complicate the case for interest-rate cuts.

Observations to monitor, not financial advice.

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Source: Financial Times