By Charlie Comnick, Owner of Dream Cloud Coffee Roasters
As we all watch in awe at the coffee price hitting record highs—reaching an all-time high of $4.1969 per pound for Arabica coffee as of February 14, 2025—many of our contemporaries wait with bated breath. Specialty coffee companies have been using their philanthropic socioeconomic superiority to capture the hearts and souls of human-loving consumers since the early 1980s. Marketers, advertisers, and consumer science aficionados litter our world with mission-driven, aspirational fishhooks, trolling for targeted coffee lovers with their next 90-point micro-lot while hanging a wholesale program in the dim-lit background.
As their laurels rest on the company website—along with the possibility of health insurance for their baristas—many of these third-wave, specialty, sustainable, earth-friendly coffee companies spend their workdays pushing consulting fees on their communities and building internal sales mechanisms for wholesale clients while opening a plethora of local retail establishments.
But this is just one model. Let’s think about our accessibility-minded capitalist, focused on the low-hanging fruit of our ever quality-competitive grocery market. Not to mention the K-Cups now offered in a fully compostable format! What a dream come true. 🫠
This framework, where communicated ethics and aspirations are simply applicable to a very small percentage of offerings, is dishonest. Many third-wave companies have set up their business with an idealistic brand but a self-defeating process. This behavior—where specialty roasters purchase a majority of very low-cost coffee to ensure profitability and market share, while highlighting the price paid FOB for the fifteen bags of coffee they spent more than four dollars on—is manipulative.
Or better yet, let’s take those who fly around the world to piggyback on the labor already accomplished by exporters, mills, and green buyers, returning with proclamations of equity delivered to coffee producers in the process. Maybe it’s an auction lot you paid $22/lb for. Your customers loved it and now recognize the name. Maybe you should go down there and offer them $4/lb for their whole production so that you can have the micro-lots for free next year and tell your customers you offered the producer a more predictable income where they can rest easy and not worry… about the coffee price.
Maybe today is the day when shared risk comes to fruition. Only just a little bit. We are still so far away from an accurate price evaluation that it’s overwhelming to contemplate.
In the meantime, we can all be happy that the market has finally responded to what we’ve all been saying we want: higher prices for producers. This year, it may not just be the coffee growers whose income is affected by a changing climate.
To Find Charlie Comnick, the Owner of Dream Cloud Coffee Roasters 📍
• Dream Cloud Coffee Roasters
Address: 543 Scenic Drive, Two Harbors, MN 55616
Hours: Wednesday – Sunday, 9:00 AM to 3:00 PM
Website: https://www.dreamcloudcoffeeroasters.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dreamcloudcoffeeroasters/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DreamCloudCoffeeRoasters/
