• Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol says he wants to add an "aperitivo" menu — late afternoon bites.
• I decided to piece together an afternoon snack based on Starbucks' current menu. Not bad!
• Sitting with a fruity drink, a pastry, and a savory snack at 3:30 p.m.? I could get used to this.

Around 3:30 most afternoons, I go full raccoon mode in search of snacks — raiding my cupboards and fridge at home, or furtively rifling through the offerings in the office breakroom, searching for something sweet/crunchy/salty/savory/life-affirming.

Starbucks knows about raccoon mode and wants to expand its afternoon snack menu to serve those customers. CEO Brian Niccol said this week that he's looking at bringing the "aperitivo"-style menu it has in its European locations to the US. Think of the "aperitivo" as a little late afternoon or pre-dinner snacky-snack.

I say, with rabid enthusiasm (the rabies here is purely metaphorical), bring it on!

Checking out Starbucks' current snack menu

I ventured out around 3 p.m. to a local Starbucks to see what was currently on the menu that would fill that late afternoon void in my soul. What did it already have, and what was missing in terms of "aperitivo"-type snacks?

I browsed the online menus for Starbucks in a few European countries to see what we're missing in the US. There's definitely some difference in the food among countries.

The UK has a lot of sandwich options we don't have, as well as a strange breakfast sandwich that appears to be just sausages on a bun (I am told this is a classic British delicacy). France has some way better-looking pastry items, like a "pistachio pyramid," but, interestingly, has no egg-based breakfast items. Italian Starbucks locations have cannoli (nice), a wide array of doughnuts, and a grain bowl.

Most intriguing to me: Spain has a bagel or multigrain toast you can order with oil, tomato, and salt. Frankly, that sounds amazing.

But browsing these menus, I wasn't clear on what the "aperitivos" were. The stuff that Niccols might want to bring to America to serve during the 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. hour. What is it about some of these items that makes them more appropriate for a late-day snack instead of a morning one?

My afternoon at Starbucks — with snacks!

So when I got to my local Starbucks, I tried to find what might be considered a proper late afternoon snack based on the current menu. The shop was packed with kids from the nearby middle school that just let out, getting colorful iced drinks.

I ordered a new drink from Starbucks' "spring selections menu" — a Blackberry Sage Lemonade Refresher. Gotta say, that was fantastic.

To sample some more of the afternoon fare, I asked for a brownie (sold out) and then the vanilla bean custard danish (also sold out). I asked the barista what the most popular afternoon treat was, and she said the chocolate chip cookie. I've had one of those already, so I got the baked apple croissant to try something new. It was great.

I was particularly hungry, so I ordered the turkey pesto sandwich, which I've also had before. After the other items, which were quite good, the sandwich was kind of a dud. I didn't finish it.

The thing I think most fits the bill for an afternoon snack was the new spicy falafel pocket, which is a small wrap with falafel mush inside. It was too small to be a full lunch or meal, but perfectly snack-sized. It scratched the itch for a savory snack that isn't packaged like chips.

Niccol, who led turnarounds at Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, and Chipotle, has expressed his desire to get Starbucks back to its roots as a place people want to hang out and relax — not just a place to pick up a to-go order (or to use the bathroom).

Making Starbucks cool again

As a teen in the late 90s, I remember the days when Starbucks used to be a hangout. One of my first summer jobs was working at a Starbucks in Massachusetts. Even then, I was aware that it had a vibe problem: Its image in the popular consciousness at that time was as a pretentious chain that muscled out mom-and-pop coffee shops and forced customers to use ridiculous names for its sizes, like grande and venti.

The fast-food-ification of Starbucks in more recent years has helped it shed the image of a place that served oversized lattes to mean bosses — but it came at a price.

Starbucks is going through a bit of a rough patch. Sales fell 2% in the US last quarter. The new CEO has big plans to turn things around, including having baristas handwrite messages on cups, and possibly this new late-afternoon menu.

As I sat inside my local Starbucks, sipping my drink and eating a late-afternoon snack, it was really entirely pleasant. It was a sunny spring day, I was away from my computer. I typically don't linger in Starbucks often, but this … this was nice.

Did I aperitivo? Was I living a Continental lifestyle? Perhaps!

British and American "Food Wars" hosts Harry Kersh and Joe Avella swapped places to try each other's Starbucks menu items and find all the differences between the two. This is "Food Wars: Foreign Exchange."

• Mark Zuckerberg said he avoids caffeine and drugs in his daily life.
• He prefers to experience reality with an unaltered state of mind, he said.
• "DARE really worked on me," Zuckerberg told Theo Von in an interview.

Mark Zuckerberg seems pretty strict about what he puts in his body.

The billionaire Meta CEO said he isn't a fan of caffeine — or any other mind-altering substance, for that matter — during an interview on the comedian Theo Von's "This Past Weekend" podcast. Instead, he prefers to experience life as it is without the help of "chemicals," Zuckerberg told Von.

His sister, he said, calls him out regularly for "rawdogging reality." Zuckerberg told Von that he doesn't do drugs and typically drinks coffee only recreationally — on vacation, for example.

Instead, Zuck jump-starts his mornings by fighting, which works "better than caffeine," he said. He spends two hours in the morning practicing mixed martial arts to "recenter" himself so he can deal with his duties as the head of one of the largest companies in the world, he added.

While his tech peers, including Elon Musk and Bill Gates, have gone on the record about using cannabis, acid, or ketamine, Zuckerberg's substances of choice include creatine and vitamins. Von said abstaining from drugs is edgier than using them these days.

When Von asked about drug use, Zuckerberg said his upbringing steered him away. He credited Drug Abuse Resistance Education — an antidrug program prominent in the 1980s and '90s — with shaping his view of controlled substances.

"DARE really worked on me when I was in third grade," Zuckerberg said. "It really scared me."

On Thursday, OpenAI announced the addition of shopping features to ChatGPT Search. The new feature allows users to search for products and purchase them through merchant websites after being redirected from the ChatGPT interface. Product placement is not sponsored, and the update affects all users, regardless of whether they've signed in to an account.

Adam Fry, ChatGPT search product lead at OpenAI, showed Ars Technica's sister site Wired how the new shopping system works during a demonstration. Users researching products like espresso machines or office chairs receive recommendations based on their stated preferences, stored memories, and product reviews from around the web.

According to Wired, the shopping experience in ChatGPT resembles Google Shopping. When users click on a product image, the interface displays multiple retailers like Amazon and Walmart on the right side of the screen, with buttons to complete purchases. OpenAI is currently experimenting with categories that include electronics, fashion, home goods, and beauty products.

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• Some Starbucks baristas told BI they're not impressed by the chain's new dress code.
• Starbucks will provide two free shirts, but they said they expected to pay for their own extra clothes.
• A spokesperson pointed to testimonies from employees who said they welcomed the dress code change.

Some Starbucks baristas aren't happy about the chain's new dress code — or the direction of the company's turnaround plans so far.

Three Starbucks store employees told Business Insider that the dress code, set to take effect May 12, would likely result in out-of-pocket costs if they wanted to have enough work clothes to get through the week without having to do extra laundry.

They also said they felt Starbucks was focusing too much on what they wear and whether they should honor customer requests for free water, and not enough on core operational issues, such as long wait times at some stores.

Starting May 12, Starbucks store employees, whom the company calls "partners," will have to wear solid-black shirts and bottoms that are either black, blue denim, or khaki.

The goal, Starbucks says, is to highlight the green aprons that store partners wear.

"How is the color of our shirts going to get drinks out faster?" one employee at a store in North Carolina told BI. The employee was granted anonymity; BI has verified their employment with Starbucks.

The reactions to the dress code and Starbucks' broader turnaround effort come seven months after Brian Niccol became the chain's CEO. Under Niccol, Starbucks has made several changes to its stores, from cutting the number of menu items to requiring that patrons make a purchase or accompany someone who has to hang out in the café.

Neha Cremin, a barista at a Starbucks near Oklahoma City's famous "gayborhood," said that she worried the new dress code would prevent employees from wearing many Pride or LGBTQ+ shirts, including some that Starbucks has produced, because they're not solid black.

Meanwhile, long wait times for customers and understaffing are unresolved issues at her store, she told BI.

"I don't see anything about the fact that workers are running around with two or three people running a busy, full café," she said.

Starbucks, which is giving employees two free shirts as part of the change, said it would offer a variety of black shirts to choose from, including ones promoting employee groups for minorities.

"We understand the importance of our partners being their authentic selves, and we want them to feel comfortable expressing that," a spokesperson said.

The chain also continues to consider operational changes to its stores, the spokesperson added.

"We're continuing to test and learn to ensure we make the right investments in staffing and deployment, processes and algorithm technology to improve the partner and customer experience," the spokesperson told BI.

Jasmine Leli, a barista at a Starbucks store in Buffalo, New York, told BI that many Starbucks employees worked more than two shifts a week and didn't have the time or money to do laundry multiple times a week.

Leli, who is also a bargaining delegate for Starbucks Workers United, the union representing Starbucks employees, said she expected many employees to choose to spend out of pocket on additional clothing that matches the dress code.

"You could spill milk on your shirt," Leli said. "And we're expected to wash our clothes after every shift? That's not sustainable."

On a Reddit page for Starbucks store partners, some posters said that they planned to overhaul their work outfits. They added that they were deciding whether to throw away Starbucks shirts that aren't solid black.

"It's not like I would ever want to wear them outside of work, so I guess I just wasted my money on them since they're essentially useless to me now?" a comment on one thread said.

The Starbucks spokesperson pointed to some testimonies from store employees who said that they welcomed the dress code change.

"We will spend less time focused on what we are wearing and more time on our craft," Starbucks quoted one store manager in Minnesota as saying.

The new dress code is the latest change under Niccol as he looks to make Starbucks cafés "inviting places to linger" with more connection between customers and baristas.

In February, the CEO said Starbucks might change elements of its digital ordering process, such as asking customers to select a specific pickup time.

So far, many of the changes to Starbucks have focused on other aspects of its stores.

Cremin, the barista in Oklahoma City, said that many of the patrons at her store strike up conversations with store workers about clothing and style because of what they're wearing.

"It's taking away from the human connections that make Starbucks a pleasant place to go," she said of the new dress code.

Do you have a story to share about Starbucks? Contact this reporter at [email protected].

• Chris Kornman is a coffee specialist and educator for an importer that runs a high-end coffee shop.
• The café raised its coffee prices by 50 cents because of tariffs.
• Kornman says other coffee roasters, shops, and even grocery stores will probably raise prices too.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Chris Kornman, who is the director of education for Royal Coffee and works out of the company's café and coffee lab, called The Crown, in Oakland, California. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I'm in a very unique position in the coffee industry, where I get to speak to almost everyone in the supply chain.

At Royal Coffee, we import beans and sell them to coffee roasters. Our business model also includes classes and the coffee we sell at The Crown café.

On April 10, we raised our café prices by 50 cents for every drink, except our $2 dark roast, which is an entry point for people who might not be used to specialty coffee and specialty prices.

That's because, as an importer, we are the first ones hit by the actual cost of tariffs. At the ports we get billed, literally, for the tariffs.

We bring in a lot of coffee from Brazil, Colombia, Ethiopia, and Indonesia, as well as every coffee-producing country in Central America and Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda. In total, we buy coffee from more than 30 countries.

President Donald Trump paused some of his proposed tariffs, but we're still being impacted by a 10% increase at the point of import for all those countries except Mexico. That erases our entire profit margin if we absorb it.

I think the coffee industry at large is facing an unprecedented crisis. We have to figure out how to make rising costs and uncertainty about tariffs and climate change sustainable for everyone involved, and part of that equation is asking our customers to pay a little bit more for a cup of coffee.

Everything's expensive all the time now

The tariffs come on top of historic high coffee-bean prices for the entire calendar year of 2025. That's been attributed to bad weather in Brazil and Vietnam, the world's two largest coffee producers.

Energy and labor costs continue to go up, too. Shipping costs have also gone up astronomically over the past couple of years. The cost of wholesale, unroasted coffee is already double or sometimes triple what people are used to paying.

I don't see a lot of real, meaningful relief on the horizon.

I was just speaking to a small roaster in Cleveland, Ohio, who's raising his prices. I've had a conversation like that with folks almost every day this year so far. So there was a pre-tariff concern about cost, and then the tariffs hit.

More sticker shock for cheap coffees

For people who are used to very cheap coffee — whether that's the bottom shelf at the grocery store or the gas station at the corner — I think at some point those coffees are going to be diluted by some non-coffee product like vegetable pulp or their prices are going to be raised in ways that will shock the average customer.

I think there's going to be a little less sticker shock for the fancy café customer who's used to paying $6 or $7 for a pour-over or a latte. The difference between $5.50 and $6 for a cappuccino at our cafe is very different from a $1.50 styrofoam coffee cup going up to $3.

We can't just turn up coffee production in the US. Even if we could, the only places that are growing it commercially, volume-wise, are Hawaii and Puerto Rico, and a very, very small amount here in California. They're in no way able to scale up production to make up for the 99% of coffee that we get from everywhere else in the world.

Coffee has been undervalued for a long time

There's been a long-standing desperation in people who produce coffee in many places in the world, that they're not being paid enough.

That breaks my heart, because I don't want to participate in an industry that's built on exploitation. I don't think that's us in the specialty coffee world, but there is a problematic legacy that predates all of us.

The good news is that for the past 20 or 25 years, a lot of folks like myself are trying to increase awareness about good coffee, and how it does cost more, and how coffee has been undervalued for a long time. So there's an opportunity, I think, for increased awareness — if we don't lose customers to alternative caffeine sources.

• I tried hazelnut creamers from six brands, including Coffee Mate, Starbucks, and Chobani.
• I wasn't super impressed with the creamers I tried from Barissimo and Wide Awake Coffee Co.
• Chobani's hazelnut creamer was my favorite, and International Delight's would be my second choice.

It's hard to know which creamer will make you the best cup of coffee just by looking at the bottle.

Since there are a lot of options at grocery stores, I wanted to know which hazelnut creamer I should be spending my money on.

So, I picked up hazelnut creamers from a range of brands, including International Delight, Starbucks, Chobani, Barissimo, Wide Awake Coffee Co., and Coffee Mate.

For my taste test, I added the same amount of each creamer to a 3-ounce cup of Eight O'Clock Coffee's dark Italian espresso roast.

Here's how the creamers stacked up, ranked from my least favorite to my top pick.

The Wide Awake Coffee Co. creamer contains real milk and cream.

The creamer from Wide Awake Coffee Co. says it contains real cream and milk, which I liked. This meant that, unlike most creamers on the list, the first ingredient wasn't water.

This 32-ounce jug cost $4 and contains 64 one-tablespoon servings. So, the price is about $0.06 per tablespoon.

This creamer didn't have a ton of flavor.

In my opinion, this creamer wasn't overly flavorful. It added a slight creamy thickness to my coffee but tasted far less sweet than its competitors.

I think I'd need to use a lot of this to notice a hazelnut taste in my coffee — but that's not necessarily a bad thing for people who prefer a more subtly flavored cup of joe.

Barissimo hazelnut coffee creamer was the most affordable pick.

Barissimo is a label from the budget grocer Aldi, so I wasn't surprised this was the cheapest creamer I tried.

A 32-ounce container with 63 one-tablespoon servings cost me $2.59, or about $0.04 per tablespoon.

This creamer felt a little runny.

Barissimo had the runniest formula of the creamers I tried, and my coffee didn't necessarily feel creamier or richer after I used this.

Like the Wide Awake Co. creamer, I feel like I'd need to add way more of this to my coffee to really get any sweet hazelnut flavor.

Still, the price was great, and I did enjoy the faint nutty flavor I could taste.

I had high hopes for the Starbucks nondairy hazelnut latte creamer.

For my only nondairy option of the group, I picked up Starbucks' hazelnut-latte coffee creamer, which is made with almond and oat milk.

At $5.98 for a 28-ounce bottle containing 55 one-tablespoon servings, this was one of the most expensive creamers I purchased. The price worked out to about $0.11 per tablespoon.

This nondairy option should focus on one nut.

Considering how recognizable and famous Starbucks is as a brand, I had high hopes for this creamer.

But I found the almond milk competed too much with the hazelnut flavors. The almond already gave this creamer a nutty finish, so the hazelnut felt almost overpowering and redundant.

The creamer was tasty, and this is a decent nondairy option — but I missed having real cream to help balance the taste of hazelnut.

Coffee Mate's zero-sugar hazelnut creamer was also one of the cheaper options.

I didn't intend to try zero-sugar options, but I really wanted to taste a hazelnut creamer from the famous Coffee Mate brand — and this was the only hazelnut one I could find after visiting multiple grocery stores.

A 32-ounce bottle of Coffee Mate's zero-sugar hazelnut creamer cost me $3.98 and contains 63 one-tablespoon servings.

At about $0.06 per tablespoon, this creamer was the second most budget-friendly of the group.

This creamer tasted balanced and seemed like a good value.

The Coffee Mate creamer left me somewhat impressed, especially considering it contains no added sugar.

It had a slightly thick consistency (perhaps because the second ingredient on the label is corn syrup) and added the perfect level of creaminess to my coffee.

The sweetness and hazelnut flavor seemed balanced and not overwhelming, but I didn't like the aftertaste this creamer left in my mouth.

The International Delight hazelnut creamer seemed promising.

I often see International Delight creamers offered in small containers at diners and continental breakfasts at hotels, so I hoped its hazelnut variety would be reliably tasty.

The 32-ounce bottle of International Delight creamer cost $4.29 for 63 one-tablespoon servings, or $0.07 per tablespoon.

This creamer had a nice toasty flavor.

This creamer seemed noticeably creamier than the one from Coffee Mate, which I really liked.

Unlike a lot of the other creamers I tried, this one had a pleasant toasty flavor — almost like the hazelnuts had been roasted over a fire.

The creamer also had a nice burst of sweetness.

I was excited to try the Chobani hazelnut coffee creamer.

I've seen many of Chobani's limited-edition and cookie-flavored creamers go viral on TikTok, so I was excited to see how the brand would tackle a more classic flavor like hazelnut.

A 24-ounce bottle cost $5.49 and contains 47 one-tablespoon servings. So, each tablespoon cost about $0.12 — making this the priciest creamer I tried.

This creamer had the thickest and most satisfying formula.

The Chobani creamer's first three ingredients were milk, cream, and cane sugar. For context, the creamers I tried all listed water as their first ingredient except for the one from Wide Awake Coffee Co.

I definitely think leading with dairy-forward ingredients helped give this creamer an incredibly pleasant thickness.

This was the thickest creamer I tried, and it had a sweet and wonderfully full-bodied hazelnut flavor.

For me, Chobani takes the crown.

Chobani's hazelnut creamer was my No. 1 choice.

In my opinion, it's the creamer to pick if you want to add the most full-bodied, nutty, authentic hazelnut flavor to your beverage.

Unfortunately, it's also the most expensive per serving. But the cost-per-serving differences between these creamers feel fairly negligible at just a few cents — especially if you wait for your favorite to go on sale.

Plus, since the Chobani creamer is so thick and flavorful, a little bit of it feels like it can go a longer way than most others I tried.

That said, if you prefer a more subtle hazelnut flavor or an add-in that's not going to make your coffee overly creamy, you'll probably prefer other options on this list.

• TJ Semanchin is the co-owner of Wonderstate Coffee, a Wisconsin-based coffee roaster.
• Donald Trump's 10% blanket tariffs mean Semanchin's company will have to make some hard decisions.
• Wonderstate typically imports 40,000 pounds of coffee in one transaction.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with 51-year-old TJ Semanchin, the co-owner of Wonderstate Coffee. Business Insider has confirmed Semanchin's identity and role at the company. The piece has been edited for length and clarity.

I've been in the coffee business for the last 25 years. Before that, I was living in Latin America studying issues around sustainable development in coffee lands.

After moving to a small rural town in Wisconsin in 2005, my wife and I started what was Kickapoo Coffee at the time — we've since rebranded — with our business partner, Caleb Nichols. We're a small company. We employ 85 people here in Wisconsin.

Today, Donald Trump's tariffs are 10% across the board, and we're in a business climate where there's so much uncertainty. You can't produce coffee in the United States. There's no replacement.

As an industry, we were in denial when Trump was talking about tariffs last year or earlier. Even as we've gotten closer, we were like, "Well, of course, he's going to make an exception."

We thought we were likely immune, so this has been something that is so disruptive. Importing a product that can only be produced outside of our borders is at the core of our business.

The coffee industry was already in a shaky place

The coffee market is getting zigzagged in every direction because there's so much uncertainty and volatility in everything right now.

For the last six months, the coffee industry has been dealing with historically high commodity prices.

Over the course of a few years, the world's largest producers of coffee, Brazil and Vietnam, have been hit with climate disruptions. It's unprecedented. This affects everyone, from a roaster like us to huge brands like the Maxwell Houses and Starbucks.

So, there's been a supply crunch, which has pushed the price up due to it just being harder for farmers to grow the beans.

It's going to cost a lot

We have coffee on the water right now that we think will be hit with tariffs.

Ethiopia is our biggest African source. In Central America, it's Guatemala, and Peru is the main source in South America.

If I want to bring that coffee into the country and get it through customs, that tariff needs to be paid. I pay that.

We deal in containers, which are 40,000 pounds of coffee. At $5 per pound, I'd pay $200,000 for one container. If we start at 10%, the tariff would be $20,000. We buy about 14 containers a year.

So we're looking at $250,000 to $300,000 of tariff impact. Some of that, no matter what, I have to absorb upfront. I have to finance it, I have to come up with the dollars.

I have to figure out how to afford that unexpected business cost. That means borrowing more money, which comes with interest, but it's also tying up my cash.

What now?

We have 33 coffee shops here in Wisconsin, around the state. We're in Whole Foods regionally, a bunch of Midwest grocery chains, and natural food cooperatives. We also sell to independent coffee shops, restaurants, and corporate campuses.

Tariffs are making me way more conservative in our outlook this year. We can't afford to invest in our people, invest in equipment, or invest in growth. We're pulling back on plans we had for this year.

We are working with the two sides of the coffee world: we're working to empower farmers while providing consumers with some of the best coffees.

We have loyal customers, but as we increase prices, where and when do people stop drinking coffee or go somewhere else? The business environment is really dicey.

I don't even know what the price of the bags that we put our coffee in is going to be. A lot of them come from Asia, and those tariffs are bouncing all over the place. Some come from China; some come from Taiwan.

I've talked to two of the elected officials and a senator from my state. I'm trying to make waves in Washington, DC. This is clearly going to slow our job growth.

Worst case scenario, we're going to have to cut jobs.

• Coffee shops are starting to raise their prices in response to President Donald Trump's 10% tariffs.
• The US has limited coffee production, so beans have to be imported.
• Some coffee entrepreneurs told BI they need to cushion their business against tariff uncertainty.

Don't be surprised if your next cup of coffee costs more.

Coffee shops in the US have begun to pass along tariff costs straight to customers' wallets.

Though President Donald Trump put a 90-day pause on most of his reciprocal tariffs on Wednesday, his 10% blanket levies remain in effect. Some coffee importers and cafés are now raising their prices in response.

"That erases our entire profit margin if we absorb it," Chris Kornman, the director of education at the importer Royal Coffee, told Business Insider. He called the situation "an unprecedented crisis" for the coffee industry.

The Crown, a specialty coffee shop that Royal owns in Oakland, California, announced across-the-board price increases on Thursday. All of its drinks will cost an additional 50 cents from now on, Kornman said, with the exception of its $2 dark roast, which is an entry-level drink for customers who aren't used to a natural-processed pour-over or washed Rwandan espresso.

"Unless we get a resolution in Washington soon, this appears to be the new normal, unfortunately," Max Nicholas-Fulmer, the CEO of Royal Coffee, said in a statement shared with BI.

Other coffee shops have also announced price hikes. The Wakery, an Illinois-based late-night coffeehouse, posted a statement to Facebook on Wednesday informing customers that it would be increasing the price of all of its coffee drinks due to the tariffs.

"Our coffee supplier needed to raise their wholesale price, and in order to make our ends meet, we need to respond by raising our coffee prices," it said.

Local reports also indicate that cafés in Austin, Grand Rapids, Michigan, and New Jersey are raising their prices or considering doing so.

Just the beginning

TJ Semanchin, co-owner of Wonderstate Coffee, told BI a 10% increase for a cup of coffee is only "the starting point."

The US is the second largest coffee importer in the world, with Brazil, Colombia, and Vietnam making up around 60% of its coffee supply, according to a 2024 United States Department of Agriculture report. Before he announced pauses to some of the country-specific increases on Wednesday, Trump's sweeping "Liberation Day" tariffs varied by country, with a 46% rate for Vietnam and 10% for both Brazil and Colombia. The blanket 10% tariffs remain for all three countries.

"The coffee market is getting zigzagged in every direction because there's so much uncertainty and volatility in everything," Semanchin said.

Uncertainty summer

Shop owners say tariff whiplash doesn't help. When Trump initially announced 25% tariffs on Mexico, Kornman said staff at Royal Coffee scrambled to scale back its Mexican coffee purchases and notify customers that it might charge more for those beans. Now, Mexico's agricultural products aren't affected. Royal has stopped buying coffee from India in case its tariffs go up to 27%, as Trump initially proposed.

"To quote our logistics coordinator, we're digging holes in all the wrong places," Kornman said.

Pierre and Jackie Marquez, who own Tasa Coffee Roasters in Chicago, say they already bumped up their prices in February because of overall rising costs. If Trump's reciprocal tariffs go into effect at the end of his 90-day pause, the Marquez's say they'll have to increase prices again.

"It's almost a guarantee," Pierre Marquez said.

Domestic coffee production is largely limited to Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and small parts of California. Those farms can't replace coffee imports, Kornman said.

The cost of coffee beans was already creeping upward before Trump's tariffs, due in part to shipping costs and extra-warm weather in Brazil, he added.

"There's also the threat of a global recession on the table at the moment, and that makes it pretty unsavory to talk about raising prices when people may not be able to afford a cup of coffee," Kornman said.

"I don't expect to raise prices again in an ideal world," he added. Still, "it's really hard to predict."

• Trump's tariffs on imports may raise prices for groceries like coffee and seafood.
• Most US fresh fruit, coffee, and seafood are imported, and much of it will face 10% tariffs.
• Canada and Mexico are exempt from certain tariffs, providing a buffer for some US imports.

President Donald Trump promised to make Americans' grocery bills more affordable. But his sweeping tariffs on imports of everyday staples like fresh fruit, coffee, and seafood are expected to raise prices, food industry analysts and retailers have said.

Most of the fresh fruit, coffee, and fish Americans consume are shipped from overseas from places such as Peru, Chile, and Indonesia, federal data shows. Meanwhile, France and Italy are among the top suppliers of wine to the US market. Vanilla, a key ingredient in pastries and other sweets, mainly comes from Madagascar.

On April 2, Trump, on what he called "Liberation Day," announced a 10% baseline tariff on imports from nearly all countries. Some countries were hit harder than others, including a threatened 20% tariff on products from the European Union and a 46% tariff on Vietnam.

As the stock market plummeted, Trump on Wednesday announced a 90-day pause on those steeper tariffs — except on China, which faces an even higher 145% rate — but kept a 10% tariff intact on most other countries.

"A 10% tariff is still likely to pose inflationary pressures on food prices, but with much less intensity and speed than the much higher rates included in the country-specific tariff list," Andrew Harig, the vice president of tax, trade, sustainability, and policy development at the Food Marketing Institute, a trade group representing grocery chains and food manufacturers, told Business Insider.

Harig added that while the 90-day pause is a good thing for retailers and consumers, the ongoing uncertainty over US trade policy will be challenging for them to navigate.

"For a company to change where they source product, they really need to know what the market is going to look like on a broader time horizon than three months," Harig said.

Kush Desai, a White House spokesperson, said in a statement that "Chicken Little 'expert' predictions" didn't pan out during Trump's first term and will not during his second term when the president "again restores American Greatness from Main Street to Wall Street."

Over the past five years, grocery staples like eggs, coffee, and olive oil have gotten more expensive thanks to a confluence of issues, including the bird flu outbreak, supply-chain disruptions from COVID-19, weather disasters in some countries, and broader inflation.

Fresh fruits like bananas, pineapples, and avocados could see price hikes quickly because they don't have a long shelf life. Suppliers can't build up large inventories of produce and try to sell them later if prices rise because of tariffs.

For packaged foods, it could be months before costs go up. How much depends on whether importers, manufacturers, and retailers spread out the additional cost hikes, Harig added.

He said one silver lining is that agricultural and other goods from Canada and Mexico that comply with those countries' free trade agreements with the US are exempt from higher tariffs. Most of America's fruit and vegetable imports come from those two countries, and Canada is also a top supplier of fish.

Here are five grocery items that likely will be more expensive:

Coffee

The US relies on Brazil, Colombia, and several other Central American countries for much of its coffee supply. These countries, as well as Kenya and Ethiopia, are now facing 10% tariffs.

"Coffee is seasonal, so at this time of year, coffees from Ethiopia and Kenya are in some stage of transport," Noah Namowicz, the chief operating officer and a partner at Cafe Imports, a Minneapolis-based company that sources coffee from 24 countries, told BI. "They will be subject to these tariffs, in addition to most Central American coffees."

Coffee growers in Peru and Brazil typically start shipments in August and September.

Namowicz said the coffee industry was already experiencing unprecedented cost increases this year because of a drought in Brazil and a typhoon in Vietnam that shrunk production. Adding tariffs to the equation exacerbates the costs.

"Ultimately, the average cup of coffee or a bag in stores in cafés is going to increase," Namowicz said.

He added that the US produces some coffee in Hawaii and California, but the climate is not ideal for growing coffee elsewhere in the country.

Bananas and broccoli

Mexico and Canada are the top suppliers of US fruit and vegetable imports overall, and most agricultural goods are exempt from Trump's new tariffs.

However, federal data shows that Guatemala, Ecuador, and Costa Rica are leading exporters of bananas. Guatemala is also the third-largest exporter of fresh and chilled broccoli and cauliflower to the US.

Bananas are the most popular fruit in the US, and the majority are imported. While broccoli and cauliflower are grown in California year-round, it isn't enough to meet all of the US demand.

Wine

Wines and all other products imported from France and Italy — the two largest suppliers to the US — will be hit with 10% tariffs. Wines from Argentina, Chile, and New Zealand will likely be more expensive, as well.

"Previously, when the cost of those wines went up, consumers switched to California wine," Harig said. "But then sometimes you see those costs go up, too, because there's more demand. So it creates a little bit of a counterintuitive result."

Harig said wine goes through a multistep distribution process, through shippers, receivers, brokers, and distributors. Each player may absorb some of the tariff increases to limit the impact on consumers.

Seafood

The US relies on other countries to feed Americans' growing appetite for seafood. About 80% of US seafood comes from abroad.

India, Ecuador, Indonesia, and Vietnam are the top suppliers of shrimp — the most popular seafood in the US — while Chile and Norway export a lot of farmed salmon.

Do you have a story to share about how the tariffs are affecting your finances or business? Email this reporter at [email protected].

• The FDA recalled over 4,000 bags of ground coffee mislabeled as decaffeinated across 15 states.
• The recall applies to 12-ounce bags of Our Family's Traverse City Cherry Decaf Light Roast.
• The Michigan company said customers should return mislabeled packages for a refund or replacement.

Does your decaf have you twitching? It might be mislabeled coffee.

The FDA issued recalls for more than 4,000 bags of Our Family coffee grounds that were mislabeled as decaffeinated, according to a notice released by the agency on March 13.

The recall applies to 12-ounce bags of the Traverse City Cherry Artificially Flavored Decaf Light Roast Ground Coffee from Our Family, according to the notice.

"A portion of the production of Our Family Traverse City Ground Coffee was mislabeled as decaffeinate," the FDA said in the notice.

The mislabeled coffee was distributed to 15 states — primarily in the Midwest — through food distributor SpartanNash Company, per the notice.

Cases of the mislabeled coffee grounds were distributed and sold in Colorado, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, North Dakota, Nebraska, Ohio, South Dakota, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

Our Family Coffee and SpartanNash Company did not immediately return requests for comment from Business Insider on Saturday. SpartanNash told USA Today in a statement that consumer safety is its "top priority."

"We issued the recall on March 13 immediately after being notified by our supplier that the product had been mislabeled," the company said in the statement. "All recalled product was already removed from store shelves and destroyed prior to the FDA's classification of the recall earlier this week."

Our Family said one "lot code" of its Traverse City Cherry Decaf flavor, which has a best-use-by date of August 3, had been recalled.

The Michigan-based company encouraged customers who bought the mislabeled decaf to return it to the store for a refund or a replacement.

"We are committed to your health and safety, and we follow best practices to ensure the quality and safety of the products we sell," the company said. "We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused."

• TWG Tea and Bacha Coffee, with their ultra-maximalist interiors, exude luxury.
• But products in their cafés start at around $10.
• The brands' CEO says he wants people to be able to afford a luxurious experience at a low price.

Stepping into a TWG Tea store in Singapore is a sensory overload.

The store is designed to be ultra-maximalist. Golden tins of hundreds of different tea blends are stacked on the walls. Warm ambient lighting and polished checkered floors make the space feel like a palace.

While the interiors and the products' packaging scream luxury, the packaged teas start at around 30 Singapore dollars, or $22.

If you dine in, you can choose from an extensive tea book consisting of over 800 tea varieties. Servings of the selected teas — brought out in round, gold teapots — start at SG$12, containing about three cups worth of drink.

Taha Bouqdib, the CEO of the Singaporean company V3 Gourmet, which owns TWG Tea and Bacha Coffee, told BI that keeping prices low is a top priority.

"When you enter our store, even from $10, you are our client already," he said.

TWG Tea's sister brand, Bacha Coffee, offers the same luxe experience. Red and gold boxes of coffee blends are stacked on the ceiling, and products are displayed on shiny golden shelves.

Like TWG Tea, it, too, offers affordable luxury. The Bacha Coffee outlet in Marina Bay Sands, one of Singapore's biggest malls, sells croissants for SG$10 and pre-packaged coffee boxes for SG$32.

Affordable luxury

TWG Tea started in Singapore in 2008 and is now sold in over 100 locations globally. Bacha Coffee, founded in Morocco in 1910 and revived by V3 Gourmet in 2019, sells products in 28 stores around the world.

Bouqdib says he fell in love with tea when he was a child, living next to the Chinese Embassy in Rabat, Morocco.

"They always gave us, as the neighbor, some teas," Bouqdib said.

"In Morocco, normally we have this tradition of drinking tea with mint and a lot of sugar," he added. For him, Chinese tea had a very "unique" and "particular" taste — one he'll never forget.

That experience led Bouqdib down the path to creating a beautiful place packed to the brim with teas.

From there, he expanded to coffee, with Bacha. He wanted to have "coffee around the world in one place," where customers can "discover other countries, other cultures, just in one store."

Young people are good for business

Bouqdib said that young people — even those without deep pockets — are good for TWG Tea and Bacha Coffee's business.

He said he wanted to price his products so that children or students with some spare pocket money could buy them as gifts or to pamper themselves.

If SG$12 strikes you as a lot for a cup of tea, remember that Singapore is a country where a flat white from Starbucks can easily cost you SG$9 — and that's for a takeaway order that doesn't include the sumptuous experience of a TWG.

And on the fancier end of the spectrum, if you were to opt for one of Singapore's premier high tea experiences, you could find yourself shelling out SG$98 for tea and finger foods at the Raffles Hotel's Grand Lobby.

Its prices are also on par with or lower than its competitors. A set of five macarons at TWG Tea's outlet in MBS retails for SG$12.50. For comparison, Angelina, another upscale café in MBS located close to TWG, sells a set of four macaroons for SG$19.

Bacha, in particular, has been attracting a young clientele, Bouqdib said. This customer base is looking for premium products and is willing to spend "a couple of dollars more" on quality coffee, he added.

Keeping prices on the lower side has meant that TWG Tea and Bacha Coffee have been largely spared from the ongoing luxury slump, he said.

After the COVID-19 pandemic, the luxury industry took a hit when aspirational luxury shoppers scaled back on spending. In 2024, luxury spending stagnated, and big brands saw their share prices drop.

Bouqdib said luxury buyers feeling the pinch were less likely to spend thousands of dollars on expensive handbags and watches. But they still craved a luxe experience — which is where TWG Tea and Bacha Coffee are attempting to position their brands.

And Bouqdib says he thinks simplicity and authenticity are best, even in a market where there can be hundreds of permutations for coffee orders.

His stores "don't have this big machine for espresso with the barista behind," he said. They prepare the coffee as in the old days, he said. In Bacha stores, the coffee is served in gold kettles.

"I think the original always is the winner," Bouqdib said. "To go back to the reality, to go back to how I can appreciate a nice cup of coffee."

• The next Blue Bottle has hit New York's tech scene.
• La Cabra's popularity has soared since ChatGPT-maker OpenAI put down roots across the street.
• The Danish coffee chain is famed for its $9 pour-over brews and cardamom buns.

The line to La Cabra stretches onto the sidewalk, a tidy queue of office workers and shoppers sauntering through the warm, muggy embrace of a New York City spring.

Inside, at least twenty patrons hover near the bar like caffeinated moths around a flame, clutching iced matcha lattes and croissants. A barista weaves through the standing-room-only crowd, hoisting a tray of pain suisse aloft.

Welcome to New York's hottest club: the café across from OpenAI's office.

La Cabra, the latest export from Denmark's high-end coffee empire, has inspired a cult following among Manhattan's coffee cognoscenti. Led by founder Esben Piper and head baker Jared Sexton, a Dominique Ansel alum, the sleek, minimalist chain entices crowds with its $9 pour-over brews and cardamom buns worthy of sonnets. Since the ChatGPT-maker moved into SoHo in the fall of last year, the line to get in seems to grow longer each day.

Nestled caddy corner from the Puck Building, La Cabra finds itself in illustrious company. The red-brick structure is owned by Kushner Companies, a real estate developer founded by Charles Kushner, father of Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of President Donald Trump, and Josh Kushner, founder of Thrive Capital. The outdoor gear retailer REI covers 36,000 square feet over three levels. Above it, employees of Thrive and a smattering of its portfolio companies badge into their offices.

Thrive Capital, with nearly $25 billion in assets under management, has a small staff of about 75 people. Plaid also leases the entire sixth floor, while OpenAI occupies 90,000 square feet of office space at its first New York City outpost.

Together, their proximity to La Cabra has turned the Danish coffee roaster into an unofficial think tank for anyone in the mood for a latte with a side of world domination.

Amanda Herson, a tech investor at Founder Collective, says she's been buying coffee and cardamom buns for her office since La Cabra opened on Lafayette Street. She goes in the early morning "when there isn't much of a wait." Tech consultant Jason Liu agrees that mornings tend to have lighter traffic. On frequent trips to New York from San Francisco, he holds office hours at the Puck Building and dashes over to La Cabra for a chocolate croissant and iced espresso with milk.

First Round Capital is a five-minute walk from La Cabra, and partner Hayley Barna goes for the pastries and trendspotting. "Honestly, it's tricky to make it a meeting spot because seating isn't reliable," Barna said.

When I stopped in on a Thursday morning, I took in the scene from a stool at the counter, sipping a cardamom latte from a handleless stoneware cup. With its natural color palette and cabinets inset with panels of rattan, La Cabra feels like a Japanese ryokan meets Ikea. Baristas floated behind the counter wearing the de rigueur Danish uniform of beige shirts with three-quarter sleeves designed by Copenhagen clothier Another Aspect.

First, I dug into a $7 ham-and-cheese croissant baked to a medium brown and speckled with sesame seeds and parsley. It had a crisp, caramelized exterior so that when I bit in, a gust of flakes fell like helicopter seeds, which I picked up and popped into my mouth. The beauty of the laminated spiral gave way to a satisfying buttery crunch with a scant portion of ham. I found it skimping on cheese but recognized that more filling would make the interior soggy.

I couldn't resist trying the $6 Swedish cardamom bun I'd read about online. This knotted pastry was delightfully unexpected: chewy and dense like a cinnamon roll, yet airy enough to puff back into shape with each bite. The recipe goes heavy on the cardamom, infusing the pastry with a piney warmth and gentle sweetness.

The cardamom buns are known to sell out, though Piper, La Cabra's founder, says the chain makes deliveries from its East Village bakery three times a day to restock the pastry case. To expand its operations, the company has secured a fourth location in Manhattan, Piper told Business Insider exclusively.

As I licked my fingers clean of sugar, I scanned the cafe in search of employee badges or logo apparel, hoping for a glimpse of a startup executive in their natural habitat. In New York, unlike San Francisco, it seems that such overt displays of corporate allegiance are not as prevalent. Here, the tech elite and builders blend into the street milieu, swapping hoodies adorned with company logos for more voguish attire.

Feeling the caffeine buzz kick in, I left knowing that I'd return soon — if not for a meeting, then to try the pain suisse.

• I was a Starbucks barista for nearly a year, so I've tasted almost every item on the menu.
• For drinks, I recommend the iced caramel macchiato and the strawberry-acai refresher.
• I'm also a fan of the chain's glazed doughnut and the bacon, Gouda, and egg sandwich.

I worked as a Starbucks barista in Chicago for almost a year. Between tasting everything I made during training plus the free drinks and meals I received each shift, I've tried nearly everything on the menu.

I prefer things to be sweet and cold, but you can use these drink recommendations as a baseline and adjust your order to your own preferences. 

Read on for my favorite things to order at Starbucks.

Iced caramel macchiatos are my go-to fancy drink

An iced caramel macchiato with almond milk is my favorite Starbucks order when I'm looking for a fancier drink — as long as the barista doesn't skimp out on the caramel drizzle (the most important part).

I'm usually not a huge fan of caramel, but something about the way it mixes with the espresso and milk gives it an irresistible flavor. 

A classic soy-milk latte is the perfect pick-me-up

If I'm looking for something simple with a touch of sweetness, a soy-milk latte is the way to go.

With the vanilla soy milk, there's no need to add syrup unless you're looking for a jolt of added sugar.

As someone who doesn't like to pay for air, this is a better alternative to a cappuccino since there's less foam and more milk. 

You can't go wrong with a simple black iced tea

When I'm trying to reduce my sugar consumption, unsweetened iced tea is the ideal choice. 

I prefer black tea because I find it a bit stronger, but green tea is also a solid choice. As long as the barista steeps it properly, neither should taste bitter.

I usually like to get as much ice as possible, so I ask for it without added water because the ice dilutes it enough. 

If you're a matcha fan, the matcha-crème Frappuccino is a must

I love a good matcha Frappuccino, especially on a summer day. It reminds me of a milkshake with a bit of caffeine.

The drink has the perfect blend of sweet and earthy notes.

If you're ordering it with nondairy milk, soy will give it that creamy texture Frappuccinos are known for. I've found it won't come out as creamy with almond milk.

The vanilla-sweet-cream nitro cold brew is sweet and strong

When I need a hefty pick-me-up, a nitro cold brew is unbeatable.

Compared to a regular cold brew, a nitro one is smoother, so it doesn't need ice to water it down. 

Even though it's smooth, I still need some sweetness. The vanilla sweet cream is a beautiful blend of heavy creamer and vanilla syrup that sits on top of the coffee until you're ready to mix.

If I don't want coffee, the strawberry-acai refresher is a great option

When I need a break from heavy caffeine and want something fruity and light, I'll go for a strawberry-acai refresher.

It's by far my favorite refresher flavor, but you can't really go wrong with any of them. It may just taste like fruit punch, but it's the perfect way to quench your thirst. 

The glazed doughnuts are the perfect companion to a cup of coffee

Pastries are one of my favorite things to pair with coffee.

Starbucks has a broad selection, but one of my favorites is the glazed doughnut — it's the perfect pastry for when I get the occasional hot drink.

I prefer to get the blueberry scones warmed up

If I'm not in the mood for a cold pastry, I'll order a warmed-up blueberry scone. The heat moistens it, making it taste fresher.

Starbucks' blueberry scones are also a bit fluffier than traditional ones, which I like. The scone goes exceptionally well with a black coffee, like the Pike Place or dark roast. 

The sausage, cheddar, and egg sandwich is a filling breakfast

When I worked early morning shifts and was really hungry, the sausage, cheddar, and egg Starbucks breakfast sandwich saved me.

It's greasy and filling in the best way. I found it was often a customer favorite — I was lucky if there were any left to grab during my break. 

I love the flavors of the bacon, Gouda, and egg sandwich

If I wasn't starving but still wanted something tasty in the morning, the bacon, Gouda, and egg sandwich always satisfied.

It's smaller, so you might not feel like you're getting your bang for your buck, but the quality is worth it. 

The Gouda pairs nicely with the bacon, and the ciabatta roll toasts to perfection. No soggy bread here.

This story was originally published in March 2022 and most recently updated on March 5, 2025.

• Starbucks is retiring 13 of its less popular and more complicated drinks.
• This includes several of its famous Frappuccinos.
• Good riddance, I say!

First, let me say: If the Chocolate Cookie Crumble Crème Frappuccino was your favorite drink, I'm sorry. Accept my condolences that it's among the 13 beverages to be deaccessioned from Starbucks' menu —  never to crumble or frapp again.

I know the retirement of your favorite obscure-flavored, mass-market food or beverages can be painful. I still mourn Diet Vanilla Coke in a 20-ounce bottle. (2002-2005, RIP.)

But with a clear head, anyone can see that the list of drinks that Starbucks' new CEO is axing makes sense. Quite simply, things had gotten out of hand.

Here are the drinks headed off to sweet treat Valhalla:

1. Iced Matcha Lemonade
2. Espresso Frappuccino
3. Caffè Vanilla Frappuccino
4. White Chocolate Mocha Frappuccino
5. Java Chip Frappuccino
6. Chai Crème Frappuccino
7. Caramel Ribbon Crunch Crème Frappuccino
8. Double Chocolaty Chip Crème Frappuccino
9. Chocolate Cookie Crumble Crème Frappuccino
10. White Chocolate Crème Frappuccino
11. White Hot Chocolate
12. Royal English Breakfast Latte
13. Honey Almondmilk Flat White

Look, I'm sure the Caramel Ribbon Crunch Crème Frappuccino hits a certain sweet tooth. By no means am I yucking anyone's yum — but goodness gravy, these drinks are ridiculous.

Most of these drinks are probably higher in sugar and calories than people expect. (A 16-ounce Caramel Ribbon Crunch Crème Frappuccino has 420 calories and 22 grams of fat — or nearly 30% of your daily fat guideline.) I'm not proposing Starbucks shouldn't offer dessert-ish drinks, but I can understand why Starbucks doesn't want its drinks to be synonymous with unhealthy indulgences.

To be clear: No one, certainly not my primary-care physician, would ever accuse me of being a healthy eater — and I love a novelty sweet treat. I am not joking or saying this for effect, but I literally was ambiently snacking on a few of the new Post Malone novelty Oreos while writing this.

Starbucks menu cuts are supposed to improve service

A representative for Starbucks told Business Insider that the move to cut these whimsical sugar bombs will help make the rest of the service at Starbucks better. In an email to my colleague, Starbucks said it will "make way for innovation, help reduce wait times, improve quality and consistency, and align with our core identity as a coffee company."

I worked at Starbucks in the late 1990s, at the dawn of the Frappuccino era, and I can tell you from experience that making these drinks was slow, labor-intensive, and unpleasant. I'm sure that the methods have gotten more efficient in the last 20 years, but I'd wager that these are still some of the most annoying drinks to make — they take extra time and require the baristas to learn obscure ingredients and ratios, which can lead to more errors in drinks.

Starbucks' new CEO, Brian Niccol, has said that he wants the chain to get back to its origins as a place people want to hang out — and shift away from the mobile app ordering that exploded during the pandemic. Part of the rise of mobile ordering is that it allowed — even encouraged — people to add extra syrup pumps and toppings for increasingly elaborate customized drinks that would go viral on TikTok.

The drinks got wackier and wackier, and it's time to rein it back in.

A Frappuccino is a wonderful invention, and the addition of the Mocha Frappuccino was inspired and brilliant. But when we're getting down to the difference between the Double Chocolaty Chip Crème Frappuccino and a Chocolate Cookie Crumble Crème Frappuccino? Get real.

These nonsense drinks have been mercifully taken out behind the dumpster and murdered. And it's the right call. Bravo, Starbucks.

• Business Insider spoke with coffee experts to find out how to improve your joe at home.  
• Buying fresh, whole beans makes a big difference in the overall quality of your final brew.
• They also said water quality is important for making good coffee.

Ordering coffee from your favorite café can be a treat, but it's not the most budget-friendly option.

Making a cup at home is often the cheaper alternative, so Business Insider spoke with coffee experts about their best tricks for at-home brewing. 

Start by cleaning your coffee maker regularly

Josh Zad, founder and creative director of popular café chain Alfred, told BI that one way to improve your cup of coffee is to clean your coffee maker regularly

"Make sure to get into the nooks and crannies of each part, especially where the coffee drains through the filter," he said. "The taste and aroma of old coffee really muddles the flavor of freshly brewed coffee."

The best way to clean those hard-to-reach stains is by tossing in a dash of baking soda, a splash of vinegar, and some water. Then, let it sit overnight.

Zad said it should scrub right off the following day.

Consider trying out a new brewing method, like a French press or moka pot

If you're ready to venture further into the world of craft coffee, there are so many fun ways to brew at home, Selina Viguera, café leader of Blue Bottle Coffee's Abbot Kinney location, told BI.

Moka pot, French press, AeroPress, Chemex, and a variety of pour-overs are just the beginning.

If you don't know where to start, Viguera said there are plenty of online resources, and most coffee-roasting companies have tutorials on their sites.

For a fun and unique coffee experience, invest in a pour-over carafe

If you're looking for a specific brewing recommendation, multiple experts agreed that pour-over — which involves slowly pouring hot water over coffee grounds — is their favorite. 

With proper technique, Viguera said it can produce a really delicious cup of coffee.

Once you understand some of the variables for brewing coffee (grind size, water temperature, agitation), you can create different cups from the same bag of coffee, she added. 

Switch to buying whole coffee beans instead of pre-ground

"To make better coffee, buy better coffee," Viguera told BI. 

Alex Azoury, the founder and CEO of Home Grounds, said whole-bean coffee is usually fresher and has a more vibrant flavor than pre-ground varieties.

Brew fresh coffee within its first 2 weeks after roasting

"Coffee is a natural product (it's the seed of a fruit), and while it will never spoil, it will lose a lot of flavor if it sits around too long," Zad told BI. 

Viguera said coffee flavor peaks within the first two weeks after roasting, so it's important to make sure the coffee you're buying was recently roasted.

Proper storage is also important to maintain your coffee's freshness. Zad suggested keeping it away from heat, light, moisture, and the freezer. 

Invest in a good coffee grinder that suits your bean preferences

Once you've purchased quality beans, it's also important to invest in a good grinder.

"It's a good idea to get a grinder that will grind coffee in the amount and coarseness you want," Azoury told BI. "A good grinder will give you both grind and amount options to suit your taste."

Make sure to adjust your grinder to the right size

Viguera told BI that grinding coffee too finely causes over-extraction — too coarse, and it can be under-extracted. Over-extracted coffee can taste dry and bitter, and under-extracted coffee can taste watery or sour.

To avoid this, she said it's important to "dial in" your coffee. Baristas use this term to describe the act of adjusting your grind setting to find the right coarseness/fineness to brew a balanced cup.

Coffee has a sweet spot — a perfect grind setting — that produces a balance of bitterness, acidity, and sweetness. That sweet spot can vary with the origin of the coffee, roast level, and age.

Only grind the beans you're planning to brew right away

You should only grind the amount of coffee you're going to make.

"If you've pre-ground all your coffee but aren't going to brew it all right away, then you've drastically sped up how quickly the rest of the coffee will lose its delicious complexity," Zad told BI. 

A cup of coffee can taste different depending on the quality of your water

Another important factor to consider when making coffee at home is your water, which Viguera said makes up about 98% of your brewed cup of coffee.

"As the main solvent for extracting the flavor and aroma from your ground coffee, your water needs a certain level of hardness/minerality and alkalinity for a quality extraction," she told BI. "Depending on where you live, your tap water may be too hard/soft to bring out the best in your cup."

Light and dark roasts require different brewing temperatures

Water temperature is another key variable when brewing coffee.

"You want to use water heated to 198 degrees Fahrenheit to 202 degrees Fahrenheit to make a properly extracted cup of coffee," Viguera said.

The expert said lighter roasts can generally withstand more heat (closer to 202 degrees), and darker roasts should be brewed lower (closer to 198 degrees).

Try preheating your mug before pouring the coffee

If you're pouring hot coffee into a cold mug, it's just making the coffee colder the second it hits the ceramic.

Zad said a preheated mug can increase the length of time you can enjoy hot coffee in the morning.

Switch things up by making cold brew at home

Another way to mix up your coffee routine is by making your own cold brew at home.

To do so, Zad said to simply grind your beans coarsely and add water. Next, pop it in the fridge overnight to extract all the rich sweetness from the coffee.

Add spices to make your own flavored coffee

Zad told BI that many flavored coffees are full of artificial ingredients that don't complement the natural flavor of the beans.

Instead, he suggested adding the actual ingredients behind the flavors you like to your coffee.

"Try adding spices to your coffee grounds when you make your cold brew," he said. "Throw in cinnamon sticks, crushed roasted hazelnuts, cardamom pods, anise, cacao shells, or even savory elements like caraway to steep overnight in your cold brew, and you'll have natural spicy goodness in the morning."

Use a scale to achieve the right coffee-to-water ratio

Knowing your brew ratio — coffee to water — and using a scale can help you brew consistently good cups.

"For reference, the industry standard is 1:18 (one part coffee to 18 parts water), which typically produces a cup that is light in body but a greater clarity of flavor," Viguera told BI. "If you prefer a bolder, fuller-bodied cup, try a 1:14 ratio."

This story was previously published in September 2022 and most recently updated on February 25, 2025.

Read More:

• 10 ways to recreate your favorite Starbucks drinks at home
• What 6 baristas actually order when they go to a coffee shop
• A former Starbucks barista shares 9 of the most annoying drink orders
• 7 coffee hacks that can save you time and money

When I heard that coffee futures were reaching record highs, I got a bad case of the jitters. What would happen to my morning cup of Joe? How expensive could it get? Could I afford enough coffee to get me through the day?

I set out on a mission to find out.

Caffeine is the world's most popular drug, and coffee is the second-most-traded commodity after oil. On the futures market, traders buy coffee shipments months or years in advance — so price spikes can indicate what the rest of us might be paying down the road. After the pandemic began, prices for coffee futures rose, along with everything else. Accordingly, the consumer price index showed a steep increase in prices for store-bought coffee throughout 2022.

The problems didn't stop there. Thanks to severe droughts in 2023, major harvests in Brazil and Vietnam did badly, and water in the Panama Canal ran low, slowing ship traffic. Coffee futures started to tick up. Then, this past November, the commodity skyrocketed. Brazil, which exports the lion's share of the industry's preferred arabica beans, was beginning its growing season as the country's worst drought on record stretched into a second year. The clouds that usually shade coffee trees went missing. It would be the second bad harvest in a row. When the news hit, traders rushed to lock in arabica contracts, sending prices to all-time highs in December. Now prices are more than double their 2023 peak. Robusta beans, often used in instant coffee, hit their own record high this month.

Is this the end of coffee as we know it?

Climate experts say the underlying supply problems aren't going anywhere. Over the next two decades, bad harvests could become the norm, wild arabica coffee could move from thriving to endangered, and the land available for coffee cultivation is expected to shrink by half or more. While the coffee market has some flexibility to keep prices down, the long-term outlook for America's favorite beverage is bleak.

Coffee prices have already been going up for a few years. This past summer, brands like Folgers and Maxwell House raised their prices to pass on previous commodity increases to customers. Prices at my local café went up $0.35, so I started grinding my coffee at home. But, the addict that I am, I kept caffeinating. We all did.

This "inelastic demand" gives companies plenty of wiggle room to raise prices without worrying that people will stop buying coffee entirely. Both Folgers' parent company, J.M. Smucker, and Maxwell's parent company, Nestlé, reported higher coffee sales in the US last year despite raising consumer prices. But how much higher could prices get?

People who brew their coffee at home "are going to feel it," Jay Zagorsky, a professor at Boston University's Questrom School of Business, said. Since coffee beans are the only ingredient in a tub of Folgers, commodity price increases have a direct impact on grocery prices. Two decades ago, US Department of Agriculture economists looked at how commodity coffee price swings affected grocery shelves. They found that every $0.10 increase in futures led to an immediate $0.02 increase in prices for canisters of ground coffee. When commodity prices stayed high, the rest of the increase was passed on over the course of a year. According to consumer price index data from January, grocery coffee prices are already more than 3% higher than they were this time last year — instant coffee alone rose 7%. And Illy recently told Bloomberg that a 25% hike in prices in the next few months was not out of the question.

To counteract low supply, coffee retailers can fudge the quality: Robusta beans, which have a harsher flavor than arabica, can be mixed into blends, for example. Smucker recently told investors that for Folgers and its other coffee brands, the company had "the ability to flex formulas and still deliver the exact same consumer experience." In Indonesia, coffee shops are even mixing corn and rice with their coffee beans to stretch supplies. Some people have called this phenomenon of companies swapping in cheaper and lower-quality ingredients "flavorflation."

In cafés, Zagorsky said, commodity price swings have a less noticeable impact because most of the cost of a latte is not beans but labor. "If I was Starbucks, I'd worry much more about the unionization drive," he said. Massive companies such as Starbucks can manage the uncertainty around commodity prices by locking in multiyear contracts, playing the market, and hedging their bets. Last year, Starbucks actually came out ahead on coffee futures. The company expects that it has enough beans in storage or contracted to last through at least September. In December, its CEO said it would not raise its North American store menu prices before then — though it is removing some discounts.

Small roasters buy quality beans for more than the commodity price, but unlike Starbucks, they are more sensitive to price swings. Over an Americano (her) and an afternoon decaf (me), Daria Whalen, a coffee buyer for Ritual Coffee in San Francisco, admitted she's worried.

She opened a 12-ounce bag of coffee and poured a handful of beans onto the table. She pointed out slight variations in their size, explaining that these beans came from five different farms in a family co-op that pays coffee pickers Colombia's minimum wage. In an industry rife with shady labor practices, from child labor to human trafficking, buying from farms that pay decent wages is "one of the only things we have left," Whalen said.

This bag retails for $25, more than five times the price of Folgers at Costco. It's not clear how much more consumers would be willing to pay. Thankfully, the more flexible part of that price is the flavor: Coffee beans are rated on a point scale, like wine. To adapt to a temporary price spike, Whalen said, she will choose beans that taste good but fall lower on that scale.

The big question for Whalen is what happens when the climate crisis makes these supply shocks more frequent. "I have anxiety, like probably 85% of the population," Whalen said. "So on some days, you catch me at cup four of coffee and I'm like, 'There's not going to be any coffee anymore.'"

The climate crisis is already changing coffee growing. The past two years have been the hottest on record, bringing more evaporation and making droughts more severe. Coffee harvests have suffered. "In the last year, I saw scorched coffee beans. Coffee beans that were shriveled because of extreme heat," Whalen said. She has also seen warmer temperatures nurture a disease called coffee leaf rust, push back growing seasons, and affect shipping logistics.

A 2022 data synthesis projected double-digit losses over the next few decades in the land that's good for cultivating coffee beans. Some areas will become newly available for coffee, but that won't be nearly enough to balance the losses. Unfortunately for connoisseurs, that new land will likely work best for robusta beans, not arabica beans.

In response to the changes, more growers are drying beans rather than washing them to save on water. That changes flavor profiles, favoring fruity flavors like blueberries, Whalen said: "Sometimes you can get a ferment-y flavor that we would call a defect, but a lot of people really love that."

There's some adapting that farms and supply chains can do, but these efforts may still fall short if countries don't aggressively limit their fossil fuel emissions. One study found that under a business-as-usual scenario, even with best practices in place for coffee growing and logistics, Starbucks could see persistent bean shortages as early as 2029. In its most recent annual report, Starbucks acknowledged that the climate crisis could materially influence its financial performance, particularly if it meant the company couldn't meet demand.

"If you care about your coffee," Regina Rodrigues Rodrigues, a Brazilian climate scientist, said, "you can't support any policies that allow the continued burning of fossil fuels. That's the thing."

Environmental concerns also popped up the last time coffee futures spiked, back in 1977. One environmentalist called the price increase "merely another way of telling us that the 4 billion souls on this planet must compete for a steadily shrinking supply of farm produce." That prediction turned out to be wrong. Since the 1960s, agricultural production has grown every decade. In fact, so much new land has been used for coffee that prices haven't even kept pace with overall inflation — Zagorsky pointed out that, adjusted for inflation, 1 pound of coffee today is still cheaper than 1 pound in 1980.

Looking back, it's tempting to hope that the world is crying wolf, but adaptive measures came with downsides. Agriculture boomed thanks to the clearing of forests and an unprecedented application of fossil fuels, both in fertilizers and as fuel for transporting food along vast global supply chains. One study estimated that most of the growth in agricultural production since the 1970s has not been in line with safe environmental practices. Now, as the world warms, agricultural growth is starting to slow, even as demand for coffee continues to rise. We have not solved our coffee problems; we have merely postponed them.

Is sad, watery 1950s diner coffee our fate? Or will we find new ways to make coffee growing productive and resilient? Zagorsky said that the futures market predicts a price decrease. But beyond that, he doesn't want to make any predictions. "Economists are terrible at guessing the future," he said.

So I took my fears and uncertainty to someone willing to predict the future: Dr. Honeybrew, a coffee fortune teller in Manhattan's East Village. Honeybrew took a look at the coffee dregs in my tiny espresso cup to read the future of coffee itself.

"Everyone is plunging a straw down in the ground and just sucking up all of the richness, all of the life, all of the power from the soil," he said. "This is Mother Nature's way of saying, 'You know what? In return, I'm going to give you guys the shittiest beans.'"

Honeybrew foresaw the sting of change. The chaos of revolution. And a shared love of coffee that, against all odds, could bring Americans back together. Really, he said, coffee's future hinges on the leadership of Melania Trump: "If the Trump family brings to the White House a cocker spaniel," Honeybrew said, "it will be a very good omen."

What Honeybrew didn't speculate on is the future-shaping potential of the Trump administration's recent activity: how new tariffs might increase coffee prices, whether cuts at the National Weather Service could make it harder to predict harvests, and how leaving the Paris agreement could make the underlying problems worse. Without a major course correction, even a cocker spaniel in the Oval Office probably won't save coffee.

Meg Duff is a reporter covering climate change and the environment.

• Starbucks is mulling a change to how customers get coffee when they order through the chain's app.
• Customers have been asking to choose a specific pickup time, CEO Brian Niccol said.
• Mobile ordering is an area Niccol is looking at as Starbucks attempts a turnaround.

Starbucks might soon ask you to choose a time to pick up your morning cup of coffee.

CEO Brian Niccol told The Wall Street Journal that the chain was considering the change to its mobile ordering system to help customers and baristas.

Right now, Starbucks' mobile app gives customers a pickup time — sometimes as little as a few minutes — when they place an order. Niccol said that often doesn't reflect when the customer can actually stop by to get their drink, especially if they aren't near a store when they order.

"When you mobile order, you'll get a message that says that the beverage will be ready in three minutes," he told the Journal. "But you physically can't get there in three minutes."

That leads to a mismatch between "when the customer wants it and when we should be making it," the CEO said.

He added that some Starbucks customers had been asking to choose when they retrieve their order. "The number-one request is actually 'Let me pick what time I can come pick up my beverage,'" he said.

Starbucks' mobile ordering system has been a sore spot for customers and for the employees who make their drinks.

Some store employees, whom Starbucks refers to as "partners," told Business Insider last fall that their locations were often overwhelmed by the number of mobile orders. They said that led to long wait times for customers as the partners struggled to prepare drinks and catch up.

Workers told BI that promotions for members of Starbucks' rewards program, especially those offering customers a discount if they ordered several drinks at once, contributed to the problem. Under Niccol, Starbucks has reined in the number of promotions it offers to rewards members.

Niccol became Starbucks' CEO in September. Since then, he has detailed a turnaround plan for the coffee chain aimed at reversing sales declines.

Niccol said this month that Starbucks' mobile ordering system "chipped away" at the chain's "soul." He argued that many baristas were too busy preparing drinks to chat with customers and provide other personalized services that Niccol wants the chain to be known for.

Niccol told the Journal he wanted to improve Starbucks' mobile ordering system over the next year.

"At a minimum, we will be a lot better than where we are today," he said.

Do you work at Starbucks and have a story idea to share? Reach out to this reporter at [email protected].

• Starbucks is offering free coffee to loyalty members on Monday as a post-Super-Bowl deal.
• Starbucks Rewards members can get a free 12-ounce hot or iced coffee.
• Starbucks is offering fewer deals for loyalty members than the chain did a year ago.

Starbucks is handing out free coffee to members of its loyalty program on Monday.

The chain is offering Starbucks Rewards members a free 12-ounce hot or iced coffee all day on Monday. The promotion, called "Starbucks Monday," is meant to be a free pick-me-up as members return to work the day after the Super Bowl.

"With the Big Game on Sunday, Feb. 9, many Americans will spend the day going big — which may lead to a long Monday," Starbucks said in a statement announcing the deal.

Loyalty members can get the free coffee using a coupon in the Starbucks mobile app, the company said.

Still, Starbucks has been offering fewer promotions since last fall when it cut back on deals under CEO Brian Niccol. The company said that it would give members points instead of offering as many free items or discounts.

"As we've shifted out of discounts into more broad-based marketing, that's helped us reach a broader base of customers," Niccol said on an earnings call last month.

Some Starbucks baristas previously told Business Insider that they were often overwhelmed by mobile orders when the company offered rewards members deals.

The cutback on promotions is one of several changes that Niccol has overseen so far as Starbucks' CEO.

Starbucks also aired a commercial called "Hello Again" during pre-Super Bowl coverage on Sunday.

Do you work at Starbucks and have a story idea to share? Reach out to this reporter at [email protected]