vs Last Month
+$0.22
Climbing rapidly.
Average Coffee Price
U.S. City Avg · Ground Roast · Per Pound
$6.85
+$0.22 vs. last month
Past 12 monthsRange $5.05 – $6.90
vs Last Year+$1.65
5-Yr Avg$4.85
vs 2020+61%
Coffee is up $1.65/lb (32%) from a year ago, driven by Brazilian drought and strong global demand. The wholesale arabica price spike of 2024–25 is finally reaching retail shelves — and cafes will follow.
Historical trend
Monthly BLS retail price.
Source: BLS · APU0000717311
The long view: since 1980
Forty-five years of coffee at the U.S. grocery shelf.
Today $6.85 · all-time high rangeTrough $2.90 · 19905-Yr Avg $4.85
How today stacks up
vs Last Year
+$1.65
+32% in 12 months.
5-Yr Avg
$4.85
Today is $2.00 above the 5-yr mean.
vs 2020
+61%
From $4.25.
Use this price
Tools to budget around the coffee habit.
About the Average Coffee Price
The U.S. average retail price per pound of ground roast coffee — a cultural staple and one of the most internationally traded food commodities. Coffee prices are driven by arabica futures on ICE (the global benchmark), which respond to Brazilian and Vietnamese harvest conditions (the world's two largest producers), weather events (frost in Brazil, drought in Vietnam), and logistics costs. The retail price you pay reflects wholesale beans plus roasting, packaging, distribution, and retail margin.
Why coffee is on a multi-year tear
Three structural pressures: (1) Brazilian drought 2023–24 cut output significantly; (2) Vietnamese robusta crops were hit by climate and replanting cycles; (3) global demand kept growing especially in China and India. Wholesale arabica futures hit all-time highs above $4/lb in early 2025. Retail prices lag wholesale by 6–9 months, so today's $6.85 reflects the 2024–25 wholesale spike feeding through.
What this means at the cafe
The retail bag tracker isn't the same as your latte price — but they correlate. A $6.85/lb ground coffee equates to roughly $0.40 worth of beans in a 12oz drip coffee. Cafes raise menu prices reluctantly, but the wholesale spike has forced them to. Expect $5–7 lattes and $3.50+ drip coffee in 2026 as cafes catch up to bean costs.
Related trackers
Other live numbers that move with — or against — this one.
Frequently asked
What this number means, and what it doesn't.
Coffee is a globally traded commodity uniquely vulnerable to Brazilian weather. The 2023–24 drought cut output significantly. Combined with strong global demand growth (China, India), wholesale prices spiked. Retail prices follow with 6–9 month lag.
Marginal — whole-bean is typically $0.30–0.80/lb cheaper than ground, and it stays fresh longer (a real plus if you don't finish a bag fast). The bigger savings: buying in bulk (12oz vs 24oz bags), choosing store brands, or roasting your own (significantly cheaper but requires equipment).
Often less so — they're sourced from specific farms rather than the commodity market. But they're also higher absolute price ($15–25/lb) and harder to compare. The mass-market price is what BLS tracks.
Coffee follows a 2–3 year cycle. If Brazil has a strong 2026 harvest (which appears likely given current weather), wholesale prices could fall 20–30% by late 2026 — and retail prices would follow in 2027. No guarantees though.
Methodology
Source
Pulled from BLS · APU0000717311 and cached on the EvvyTools server.
Update schedule
Refreshed automatically by our cron whenever the upstream source publishes a new value. Historical values are not revised after publication.
How we compute
Display value is the raw published number, unrounded. Comparison stats use the closest available reference date. We never edit the underlying data.