Canadian caffeine addicts beware: Coffee is expensive and it's likely to keep going up

Enjoying that morning cup of Joe?

Well, get used to savouring it like the luxury item it’s become given the price.

August saw Canadians paying almost 28% more for store-bought coffee than they did last year, according to a September Statistics Canada report.

And between 2020 and 2025 the monthly average retail price of coffee went from $5.36 to $9.30 for 340 grams, almost doubling, according to StatsCan.

And the prices are unlikely to come down, says Sylvain Charlebois, a professor and researcher of food distribution and policy at Dalhousie University in Halifax.

“It’s going to get more expensive,” said Charlebois. “It’s essentially production headwinds challenges in different parts of the world, mainly Brazil and Vietnam where yields have been affected by inclement weather with Arabica beans in particular.”

“You need a constant specific climate to grow Arabica beans in mountains and there’s been drought or two much moisture,“ he said. “It hasn’t been stable. Over the first six months of the year in 2025, things were actually looking better, but now things have turned and prospects aren’t necessarily great for both countries in particular, so that’s been the challenge. They do influence the price of coffee worldwide.”

Charlebois does say other coffee-growing countries include Costa Rica, Columbia and Kenya, “but it’s really about getting the best price possible and volume. If you’re a buyer, like McDonald’s, you need volume and some countries may not have it.”

Charlebois says the two coffee beans widely used are Arabica – made popular by Starbucks due to its bitterness, which he calls “the Starbucks effect” – and Robusta.

Charlebois says currently coffee futures are above US$4 a pound “for the first time in many, many months. When prices stay up for a while, eventually it’ll catchup to us as consumers.”

Asia’s middle-class turning to coffee

He also says demand for coffee consumption is on the rise in Asia due to “a growing middle class. And middle classes will let go of tea a little bit, and adopt coffee as a symbol of wealth. It’s a social status.”

And due to the demand, sellers will likely not lower their price.

Still, says Charlebois: “A lot of people are price-sensitive. All of the sudden that eight dollar coffee cup (at a coffee shop) no longer makes sense to their budget, they’ll go somewhere else. With retailers what I’m anticipating is if coffee continues to rise, my guess is grocers will start investing more in their private label, so President’s Choice coffee, No Name coffee, all that stuff. It’s lesser quality but it’s cheaper too.”

According to Dalhousie University’s latest Food Price Report, released Thursday, a quarter of Canadian households are food insecure and the average family of four will spend up to $994 more on food next year.

“Part of the story is coffee,” said Charlebois. “We don’t think coffee is going to get cheaper. I’ve been saying, ‘Well, if you like coffee, and you want coffee, and you want a good deal, I don’t see how it’s going to cheaper until probably six to eight months from now.”