Finding Coffee in Chaos: Strategies for Roasters as US Tariffs Sink In

 

In a room full of coffee roasters last week, longtime green coffee trader Mark Inman asked for a show of hands. How many people started buying green coffee professionally within the past few years?

Approximately half the room raised a hand, to which Inman replied, “I’m sorry. I apologize. It does get better, trust me, but you’re going to come out of the other end of this time with more knowledge than people who have been buying green coffee for 15, 20 years.”

Inman was addressing a roundtable discussion at the Roast Summit in Portland, Oregon, where between tastings, hands-on roasting demonstrations and education sessions, there was a palpable anxiety among U.S.-based roasters and traders grappling with green coffee prices and sourcing challenges in 2025 and beyond.

Many of the informal conversations around the event hall were focused on the Trump administration’s reciprocal tariffs — including the punishing 50% tax on goods from Brazil, the nation’s largest coffee supplier — which have added both costs and volatility to a green coffee market that has hovered at historically high levels for the better part of a year.

“I used to say it was adding firewood to a fire. I think it’s now like adding gas — it’s a much more severe thing,” Mike Ebert, senior consultant and partner of Firedancer Coffee Consultants, said. On Brazil, specifically, Ebert said, “This will have long-term effects we cannot even imagine.”

Daily Coffee News spoke with more than a dozen U.S. green coffee traders and roasters — both on and off the record — in Portland. In nearly every conversation, the word “chaos” popped up when describing current green coffee sourcing conditions.

However, several seasoned roasters and traders noted that this unprecedented epoch may also represent an opportunity for smaller specialty coffee roasters, particularly those capable of nimble blending while maintaining quality.

“The motto I’m operating with is, ‘adapt and improvise, but don’t compromise,'” Phil Beattie, Director of Coffee at Dillanos Coffee Roasters, told DCN. “For me, it’s a matter of how can I deliver the same quality while being creative with how we source those beans?”

So how does a smaller roaster or buyer cultivate creativity in sourcing these days? According to Emily Smith of Hacea Coffee Source, step one is admitting that business as usual has fundamentally shifted.

“Rather than trying to hide from the risk, we need to understand it, make educated decisions and continue with doing what’s best for our businesses,” Smith said. “We can’t be heads in the sand about it at all.”

Tariff Coffees Are Here

Numerous importers agreed with the assessment that tariffs — taxes paid by importing companies — are now fully making their way into the domestic green coffee market, impacting roasters.

Importers also universally agreed that they cannot absorb tariffs — which range from 10% to 50% and apply to nearly all major coffee-producing countries — over the long-term, given that traders typically operate on razor-thin margins of pennies per pound while functioning at larger-volume scales.

“It’s terrible for everyone, and we know that roasters are really feeling the pain of it, but importers are hit especially hard,” Chelsey Walker-Watson, green coffee sales representative and head of marketing at Seattle-based Atlas Coffee Importers, said. “Importers play many roles within the coffee supply chain, but a really foundational role is that we’re the bank for most roasters, right?… With tariffs, we need to pay a full tariff on a container before it can be released to us through the customs process, and we need to do it up front. Otherwise, we don’t get that coffee. And it’s really, really expensive.”

As importers have temporarily pulled back on purchasing from certain high-tariff producing countries, and as roasters have crossed fingers hoping for more favorable prices, the result in the U.S. coffee market has been a precipitous reduction in spot coffee inventory. 

“We do have plenty of supply of coffee globally, it’s just in the wrong place,” Inman, the director and senior trader at Covoya Coffee, said. “It’s sitting in Brazil, not shipping. And Brazil is the number one producer in the world. It’s got a 50% tariff. In a $4 market, that’s a $2 additional charge on coffee. Forget differentials. Forget the shipping and finance and all that. There’s two bucks that are going to this ridiculous system.”

Beyond tangible costs, uncertainty surrounding tariffs has required buyers of green coffee to devote an inordinate amount of time to inventory planning.

Joey Stazzone, president of the green coffee trading and roasting company Cafe Kreyol, said tariffs have affected all sides of the business, from importing, re-exporting and roasting to buying packaging supplies.

“My biggest complaint is how much time it’s taking us,” Stazzone said. “We’re having to work two or three times as hard for everything that we are bringing in inventory-wise… We don’t know when a tariff is going to be 10%, or when it’s going to be 45%.”

A Way Forward

Some importers are urging smaller specialty-focused roasters to research, learn about and engage in forward contracting, as opposed to buying spot or direct online for coffees already landed in the U.S.

“One thing I’m seeing, with how high the market is combined with the cost of tariffs, is a lot of people who are hesitant to buy coffee right now — a lot of people who are hesitant to forward-contract essential coffees that they are unwilling to pivot away from,” Walker-Watson said. “But advice that I will give you, strongly, is that if you are using Brazil now, you need to be decisive and make a plan for what you’re going to do if you’d like to substitute that origin.”

Numerous importers conveyed a similar sense of urgency as spot coffee on the U.S. market continues to evaporate.

“Coffee is going to be very, very scarce, and you have to be decisive about the contracts that you make,” Hacea’s Smith said. “You need to secure your coffee, and you need to understand the immense risk that’s coming with all of the contracts. There is risk on every side.” 

On risk, Smith shared a real-life example of a container of coffee bound from India to the U.S. When it first embarked, the U.S. had a 10% tariff on Indian goods. The ship then moved through another port, where the tariff would have been at 25%. By the time it arrived in the U.S., the tariff on Indian goods had jumped to 50%.

“We spent an entire day trying to figure out, ‘do we owe $20,000 in tariff fees, or do we owe $100,000 in tariff fees?'” Smith said. “And those are fees that have to be paid right away. There’s only so much you can do if so much of your cash flow and resources are being tied up in tariffs.”

Other coffee traders, like Shaa’ista Sabir of Artisan Coffee Imports, suggested smaller roasters can mitigate extreme volatility by working with importers who operate on fixed-price contracts with specific producer groups or countries of origin.

“Fortunately for us, because we only do Ethiopian and Rwandan women-owned and -grown coffees, we are looking at a 10% tariff, which in the bigger picture of things is much cheaper than some other origins,” Sabir told DCN. “But we have been doing a lot of roaster education, talking to roasters transparently about, ‘this is what it looks like; please reach out if you have questions about your options.'”

Leaning Into Relationships

Transparency and open dialogue between roaster and importer emerged as two recurring discussion points. While most roasters expressed genuine concern over escalating prices — and the prospect of passing them on to customers — importers were quick to stress they, too, are experiencing financial strain.

“Anytime you get times of crisis, the roasters that have great relationships with their supply chain are the ones who are going to find a way through,” Beattie, a longtime coffee roaster, said. “This is the time where you try to lean on those relationships, lean on those years of doing business and years of quality discovery.”

Walker-Watson encouraged smaller roasters, especially, to lean into the supply relationships they have cultivated, since they are the ones who might be left out as larger buyers seek new channels or absorb spot inventory.

“Really trust the people that you’ve been working with,” she said. “Use your importers and resources, and please trust us when we give you guidance that it’s time to buy coffee. You are all in the business of roasting coffee. You need to have coffee to roast. And even though it’s a scary time to buy coffee, you have to buy it if you want to stay in business.”

Blending as an Advantage

Over and over again, importers and roasters pointed to the same strategic advantage that smaller specialty-focused roasters may have over their mass-volume counterparts: blending.

One reason is because smaller roasters may be more nimble in how they can blend, based on their naturally limited volumes and operational agility.

“Not doing blends? Learn the art of the blend,” Firedancer’s Ebert said. “This isn’t for the lowest common grade. Right now, this is the opportunity I see for specialty.”   

In one example, an importer suggested that the cost of a cup of coffee from a major national retailer may well exceed the cost of a cup of coffee from a well-known specialty coffee roaster by next year, simply because that major retailer is committed to a year’s worth of Brazilian coffee.

While coffees from Colombia, Peru and Mexico are among those commonly cited as potential alternatives to Brazilian coffees in blends, Ebert urged roasters to approach the cupping table with renewed vigor to identify solutions.

“Take into consideration the coffees you assume you need,” Ebert said. “Sometimes this is in our own heads and not reality, and is not based on objective sensory analysis.”

Maintaining Quality

When prices are high, roasters may instinctually seek cheaper coffee, which in most cases will be lower quality. This instinct, according to Ebert, is the first step in a steep and slippery “slope to mediocrity.”

“If you’ve been using Brazil just as a lower cost alternative, that’s one thing,” Ebert said. “But most of it is also unique in blends. [It] has the ability to bring extremely different coffees with different cup profiles together well. Not that other coffees cannot do this, [but] Brazil is what we are all used to using.”

As a buyer, Beattie said blending has become “the most important question” at the Dillanos roastery as the company seeks a way to balance quality and cost in the coffee tariff era.

“You’re going back to the drawing board of R&D and doing all the testing — testing the different blend components, testing different roasts and how they react, then taking those to the cupping table and the espresso machine,” Beattie said. “All of this is a bunch of labor and a bunch of effort put into something that you don’t even know if a month from now it might be taken away — but you have to do it.”

Small Business Survival

Beyond strategies within the roastery walls, Smith encouraged roasters to reach out to their congressional representatives to urge an end to tariffs on coffee. The concept already has bipartisan support, and Smith urged small businesses to make their voices heard.

“We have to continually elevate these stories and elevate what’s going on with our businesses and how it’s being impacted,” Smith said. “As soon as you say, ‘impacting local small businesses’ to a state representative or somebody in Congress, it really perks their ears and they start listening to what you have to say. We need to be advocating for our businesses with our customers, and also with our representatives.”

Others suggested that specialty coffee has some inherent resilience in the U.S. market, while urging roasters to remain steadfast in their missions and quality aspirations.

“People who are going to drink specialty coffee are not going to go anywhere. You’re not going to have a customer who’s drinking your coffee going to Folgers,” said Inman. “Your customers are going to ride the wave with you… They’re coffee drinkers. They may change the way they buy coffee to save money. They may stop coming into your cafe and may buy your beans to brew at home — that’s a huge savings for them — but they’re going to ride this out.”

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