Drinking an espresso at the bar, savoring a piece of chocolate or relying on the benefits of matcha tea are becoming increasingly expensive pleasures. The causes? The climate is acting up, but also production imbalances and speculative financial markets
How dear are those little moments of gratification that we allow ourselves with a cup of coffee, a piece of chocolate or, lately, with the matcha tea that has become so trendy! But expensive in the sense of expensive, not pleasant. 2025 proved to be the year of the most dramatic price storm ever recorded for three of the world’s most beloved drinks, transforming daily rituals into increasingly unaffordable luxuries. Raw materials ended up in a whirlpool of climate change, imbalances between global supply and demand, and increasingly speculative financial markets. A crisis that affects not only producers but also directly our habits and our wallets.
Coffee: hard awakening
The coffee market, which is worth around 269.27 billion dollars globally (with highly variable estimates depending on the sources), went through one of the most turbulent moments in its recent history in 2025. Last February, Arabica futures hit an all-time record of $9.70 per kilogram ($4.4 per pound), marking an increase of 79 percent compared to the previous year. The impact on consumers was immediate. Since last May, Lavazza has applied increases on all product lines, from capsules to ground coffee, also directly involving the internal market. Other historic brands such as Illy, Kimbo and Borbone have followed the same path, while in Italian bars the price of a cup has risen on average from 1.30 to 1.50 euros, with increases of 10-20 cents compared to 2023.
The causes of this escalation are multiple and interconnected. Brazil, which produces about a third of the world’s coffee, has suffered prolonged droughts and extreme temperatures that have seriously affected harvests. Vietnam, the world’s second largest producer, faced devastating floods that reduced Robusta production. To further complicate the picture, the United States has imposed tariffs of between 20 and 50 percent on the main producing countries since August. In recent months, prices have started to fall again but the increase compared to five years ago is impressive with prices having tripled. And the outlook is not encouraging: analysts expect continued high market volatility, with lingering concerns about supply constraints and resulting price increases.
Cocoa: a bitter truth
If coffee has had a difficult year, cocoa has gone through a real financial roller coaster.
After reaching historical peaks above 12 thousand dollars per ton between the end of 2024 and the beginning of 2025, the price of the “food of the gods” has undergone a drastic correction, currently standing at 5,864-6,038 dollars per ton. Values which however reached a level more than double compared to 2020. This fluctuating trend reflects a structural crisis in global supply. West Africa, which produces around 60-75 percent of the world’s cocoa through Ivory Coast and Ghana, has seen extreme weather events amplified by the El Niño phenomenon and climate change.
Prolonged droughts and floods have seriously affected harvests, with an estimated reduction in global production of 11 percent in 2024. To make matters worse, some diseases have also infected plantations, while aging crops and poor investments in previous years have made production even more vulnerable. Financial speculation then amplified this volatility, with large investors contributing to price spikes through speculative purchases of futures contracts.
The chocolate industry has had to deal with skyrocketing production costs. Cocoa butter, a key ingredient especially in milk chocolate, has seen even more marked increases than the beans themselves. Producers have adopted various containment strategies: reducing the size of products at the same price (so-called “shrinkflation”), reformulating with less cocoa or replacing cocoa butter with vegetable fats and advance purchases of stocks which have further fueled the upward pressure.
Matcha: an overwhelming trend
Matcha tea perhaps represents the most emblematic case of how globalization can upset age-old balances. This bright green powder, for centuries the prerogative of the Japanese elite and an integral part of the tea ceremony, has become in just a few years one of the most requested drinks in the world. The global matcha market has literally exploded: from 3.48 billion dollars in 2023 it is estimated that it will reach 5.5 billion by 2028.
But this global boom is putting pressure on the entire Japanese production chain. In the first auction of the year held on May 9 at the Uji distribution center, the average price of tencha, the unground leaf from which matcha is obtained, reached an all-time record of 8,235 yen per kilo (around 50 euros), marking an increase of 70 percent compared to 2023.
The causes of this escalation are structural and worrying for the sustainability of the sector. Tencha tea is extremely sensitive to temperatures and is grown in the shade for weeks, with harvesting typically concentrated in spring.
Last summer, in the Kyoto region where about a quarter of Japan’s total production comes, above-average temperatures caused poorer-than-expected harvests. But the problem goes beyond the climate. In Japan there are not enough young people willing to work as farmers, and many farms that produced matcha have closed: according to trade association data, 4 out of 5 businesses went out of business between 2000 and 2020, right before demand started to increase.
The result is a chronic shortage that has turned matcha into an increasingly rare commodity. In some tourist areas of Japan, stores have begun imposing purchase limits to avoid running out of stock. The Japanese don’t even like the industrial commodification of their ancient tradition too much.
Matcha has deep origins in Zen Buddhist culture and the Japanese tea ceremony, rituals that emphasize not only the drink, but also its preparation and consumption as a moment of presence, simplicity and quiet. And seeing it pop up in tiramisu or snacks isn’t welcomed with much enthusiasm. And if the green powder is made in China, a country that has become the world’s leading producer but of inferior quality, you can imagine the reaction of the more traditionalist Japanese.
