Your Coffee Cost Went Up. What to Do Before Raising Prices
12 October 2026 · MidaOne
The email from your roaster is short and the new price list is attached. The instinct that follows is almost universal: work out how much the cup now costs, add it to the menu price, print a new board. It is the right lever eventually and the wrong one first, because a price rise is the only response your customers can see, and it is the one that is hardest to take back. Green coffee moves — sometimes a lot, sometimes for a season, sometimes in a direction nobody predicted — and a café that repriced at every movement would have a menu nobody trusts. There are three cheaper levers before the visible one.
First, work out what actually changed
A percentage on a price list is not a percentage on your margin, and the gap between them is often large enough to change the decision. Coffee is one line in a cup that also contains milk, a cup and lid, a sleeve, sugar and syrup, and labour. For a milk drink, the coffee is frequently the smaller part of the ingredient cost, so a double-digit increase on beans may be a modest increase on the drink. For a black filter it is almost all of it. Until you have costed the specific drinks you actually sell most, you are guessing about the size of your own problem — costing a drink recipe properly is a short exercise and it is the one that tells you whether this is an emergency or an irritation.
Do the same sum across the menu rather than on one flat white. You will usually find the increase concentrated in a handful of items, which immediately narrows the response from 'raise everything' to 'deal with these four'.
Lever one: dose discipline and recipe drift
In most cafés the cheapest coffee available is the coffee currently going down the drain. Grind drift through a day, purging more than the shot needs, a double poured where the recipe says single, baristas topping up a dose by eye, shots dumped because nobody tasted them until the cup was made — each is small and all of them are ongoing. A café that tightens dose discipline often recovers more than the supplier increase took, without touching a single menu price. That is not a scolding; it is the only lever that returns margin and improves the drink at the same time, and a dialling-in routine someone owns is how it becomes a habit rather than a memo.
Measure it before you decide it is not your problem. Weigh what goes into the hopper over a week against the drinks the till says you sold, and compare that to your recipe. The difference is the conversation.
Lever two: waste, in the places you are not looking
Brewed filter sitting past its window and poured away. Milk textured for an order that changed. The jug that gets topped up all morning and tipped at close. Pastries and prepped items that have nothing to do with coffee but come out of the same margin. None of this shows up on a price list, which is exactly why it survives — it is invisible unless somebody writes it down. Keeping a waste log for a week is tedious and almost always finds more than owners expect, and unlike a price rise it costs the customer nothing.
Lever three: the blend, the pack and the contract
Now go back to the supplier, but not to argue about the percentage. The useful conversation is about structure. Ask what a different blend or origin in the same quality bracket would cost — a roaster who wants to keep you will usually have an option that holds your flavour profile at a different green cost, particularly for the milk-drink blend where the espresso is not the whole story. Ask what changes if you take a larger pack size or a less frequent delivery, and whether a committed volume over a defined period buys a fixed price for that period.
Be clear-eyed about what a fixed price costs you: it is insurance, and you pay for it by giving up the upside if green prices fall, and by committing to volume you may not sell. For a café with thin cash and a stable menu that can be a good trade. For one still finding its menu it can turn a cost problem into a stock problem. Either way, put it in the supply agreement rather than an email thread — what belongs in a coffee supplier contract covers the terms worth naming, and switching roaster entirely is a separate decision with its own costs, set out in switching a supplier without breaking service.
Lever four: price, done properly
If the three cheaper levers have been pulled and the margin is still short, raise prices — and do it once, deliberately, rather than in nervous increments. A single considered change lands better than three apologetic ones, and it saves you printing boards twice. Move the items where the cost actually moved rather than applying a flat percentage across a menu. Round to prices that read cleanly. Leave your signature item alone if you can, because it is the one customers price-check you on, and take the increase on the items where the comparison is less exact.
| Lever | What it costs you | What the customer sees |
|---|---|---|
| Dose discipline and recipe control | Management attention, and a scale on the bar | Nothing — the drink usually improves |
| Waste reduction | A week of honest logging, then a routine | Nothing |
| Blend, pack size or contract terms | Flexibility, and sometimes committed volume | Nothing, if the profile holds |
| Menu price increase | Goodwill, if handled badly | Everything — it is the visible one |
And when you do move prices, say so plainly rather than hoping nobody notices. Regulars always notice, and they mind far less than owners fear when the reason is honest and the change is not creeping. How to communicate a price increase covers the wording; the principle is that a short, specific note beats a silent new board, and a smaller cup at the same price is the version customers resent most.
Keep the measurement running afterwards
Coffee costs will move again, in both directions, and the café that handles it well is the one that already knows its food cost percentage month to month rather than recalculating it in a panic. Watch the trend rather than the month — food cost as a percentage of sales is the figure that tells you whether the levers worked, and it is also the figure that will tell you, next time, within a week rather than a quarter.
Where MidaOne fits
MidaOne holds the numbers this decision needs in one place. Sales by item show which drinks carry your volume, so you can tell whether a bean increase lands on a third of your sales or a twentieth. The sales summary shows cost of goods, gross profit and margin against revenue, so the effect of a change is visible in the period after you make it rather than at the year end. Waste by item gives you the figure that lever two is chasing, and live stock tracks the beans as they are sold so a purchase pattern you thought you had is checked against what actually moved. Updating a price updates it everywhere, including the QR menu, and across branches from one place. It is AED 200 a month flat, with every feature included.
See your cost of goods and margin by period, not at year end. Free for 14 days.
Start your free trialFrequently asked questions
My roaster raised prices. Should I raise my menu prices?
Not as the first step. Cost the drinks you actually sell to see how much of the increase reaches your margin, then tighten dose discipline, cut waste and talk to the supplier about blend, pack size and terms. Price is the right lever when those are exhausted, because it is the only one the customer sees.
How do I work out how much a bean price increase costs my café?
Take your top-selling drinks, cost each one at the new price per kilo using your actual recipe dose, and weight the result by how many of each you sell. A milk drink absorbs a bean increase far better than a black filter, so an average across the menu will mislead you in both directions.
Should I agree a fixed price with my coffee supplier?
It is insurance rather than a saving. You get a predictable cost for a defined period, and you pay for it by giving up any fall in green prices and usually by committing to a volume. It suits a café with a settled menu and tight cash, and suits a new café less well.
Is it better to shrink the cup than raise the price?
Customers tend to resent a quiet downsize more than an open increase, because it reads as something done to them rather than explained to them. If portion sizes genuinely need revisiting, change them openly and for a stated reason, not as a disguised price rise.
How often should a café review its drink costs?
Review the figures monthly as a habit and recost recipes whenever a major ingredient price changes or you change a recipe. The point of the habit is that the next supplier increase arrives as a number you can size in an afternoon, rather than a scramble.
A supplier increase is a test of your records more than your nerve. Cafés with costed recipes, a waste log and a margin they can see by period will know within a day how much of it matters and which three items to act on. Cafés without them will either absorb a hit they never quantify, or reprice the whole menu to cover a problem that was concentrated in four drinks. The lever you reach for first is the thing that decides which of those you are.