Coffee generates €84.4 billion in gross added value and directly supports approximately 1.5 million full-time-equivalent jobs across the European Union’s 27 member countries, according to a new report commissioned by the European Coffee Federation (ECF).
The €84.4 billion figure represents direct gross value added (GVA), a measure of the value an industry creates after subtracting the cost of the goods and services needed to operate. More than 87% of those 1.5 million jobs are in out-of-home hospitality and foodservice, including cafes, restaurants, hotels, workplaces and vending channels, the report states.
Prepared by the London-based consultancy Europe Economics, the report was released June 25 and represents one of the most detailed quantitative assessments of the sector’s footprint to date. It said the goal was to “provide a clear and evidence-based account of the scale and structure of the sector’s contribution to the European economy.”
The report emphasizes how Europe’s coffee economy is concentrated after import, where value is generated through trading, warehousing, roasting, decaffeination, soluble coffee manufacturing, logistics, retail and hospitality.
The ECF says its membership includes 16 national coffee associations and 48 company members, representing more than 750 companies. The group says it accounts for approximately 90% of the coffee imported and processed in the EU.
Using an input-output model, the report estimates coffee’s direct, indirect and induced economic effects across the EU27, as well as the wider EU+ region, defined as the EU27 plus the United Kingdom, Norway and Switzerland.
Hospitality and foodservice dominate the report’s direct economic footprint. The report estimates that out-of-home coffee accounts for €76.5 billion in direct GVA in the EU27, far exceeding the estimated GVA from roasting and manufacturing or at-home distribution and retail.
The report also emphasizes Europe’s importance for coffee-producing countries. It estimates that the EU27 consumed approximately 41.9 million 60-kilogram bags in 2025/26, or roughly 24% of global coffee consumption. In 2025, the EU imported 2.9 million tonnes of coffee from non-EU countries, worth €18.7 billion, with more than 97% of those imports arriving as green coffee.
The report notes that green coffee trading coordinated through hubs such as Switzerland is likely understated because publicly available statistics may not fully capture transactions involving coffee that never physically enters Europe.
Notably, the ECF economic impact report arrived shortly after the 2026 edition of the Coffee Barometer. While both documents describe the economic scale and impact of coffee in Europe, the Barometer questions the systems that concentrate value downstream while many of the world’s approximately 12.5 million coffee-farming households struggle to earn a viable income.
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