New Coffee Isn’t Made With Coffee
Coffee is getting very expensive. Climate disasters have affected crops in Brazil and Vietnam, which supply most of the US’s coffee beans. This has caused coffee prices to rise $6,700 per ton last year to $9,846. This spells trouble for Starbucks and home brewers alike. One new solution is coffeeless coffee.
Bloomberg conducted a series of tests to determine which ingredients can be used to create drinks that mimic the taste of coffee. None cut, but a few came close. “Startups are deploying techniques like fermentation and roasting borrowed from the coffee-making process to add flavor and complexity to ingredients like chickpeas and date pits. Blends also lean on components like barley and chicory for coffee-like taste and depth.”
Are these ingredients and processes to make coffee-line products enough? That depends on two things. The first is taste, and the other is price.
$3 Coffee
A cup of coffee at Starbucks can cost $3. That is a lot by any standards. Add something else from the menu or to the coffee, and that quickly tops $10. Dunkin Donuts and McDonald’s are not much better. Each of these companies has thousands of stores, which means they have a way to test what customers will accept.
The home coffee maker may not notice as much. A can of coffee goes up in price. On a per-cup basis, the issue may not be as obvious.
The coffee taste conundrum is another example of how climate change affects economics. At least some people will change their behavior based on price. If coffee beans remain expensive, Americans may drive demand down. Of course, that could drive prices down as well.
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