The average price of a pound of roasted ground coffee at U.S. grocery stores reached $9.72 in April 2026, marking the highest level on record since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began tracking the figure in 1980.
As published May 12 through the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis’s FRED database, the $9.72 mark for April edged out the previous high of $9.60 in March, continuing a rise in the average-price series of roughly 39% since January 2025.
The BLS figure covers ground, regular-caffeine roast coffee sold in cans or plastic containers at retail, collected monthly across 75 urban areas as part of the Consumer Price Index survey. It is a measure of what U.S. shoppers are paying for packaged ground coffee at the shelf, not a commodity or futures price.
The latest BLS average-price figure shows the series has jumped 105% since April 2021 and 29% over the past year.
By comparison, specialty coffee prices have also increased throughout the first quarter of 2026, although only incrementally, according to the latest data from the Specialty Coffee Retail Price Index.
Coffee Outpacing Other Grocery Items
According to the latest BLS data, coffee prices far outpaced overall grocery inflation in April 2026. The BLS coffee index was up 18.5% from April 2025 to April 2026, while roasted coffee was up 17.3% and instant coffee was up 22.8%. Food-at-home prices, by comparison, were up 2.9% over the same period, while the overall Consumer Price Index was up 3.8%.
As DCN reported last October, the coffee price run has been driven by numerous pressures, including sustained nominally high costs for green coffee tied to supply constraints and rising global demand, combined with the Trump administration’s “reciprocal tariffs” enacted in April 2025. Analysts and coffee-producer groups have since warned that coffee production costs may continue to increase due to rising fertilizer and energy costs tied to the U.S. war in Iran.
The Trump tariffs, paid by U.S. importers, were especially hard on the U.S. coffee industry given its near-total reliance on green coffee imports to meet domestic demand.
The Supreme Court determined earlier this year that the tariffs were not authorized and the federal government has since launched a portal for refund requests. As of this writing, DCN has not confirmed any refunds to U.S. coffee importers.
Specialty Coffee Retail Prices
The grocery data stands in contrast with recent specialty coffee retail pricing data from the Specialty Coffee Retail Price Index, a companion to the Specialty Coffee Transaction Guide created by researchers at Emory University. The index tracks prices charged by a representative group of North American specialty coffee roasters selling roasted coffees online.
In the first quarter of 2026, the specialty retail index rose 3.9%, with the average roasted specialty coffee price reaching $32.75 per pound at the end of March. The average was $23.73 per pound for the lowest-priced coffees and $41.77 per pound for the highest-priced coffees among the roasters tracked.
Yet year over year, the average specialty retail price was up just 0.8%, with the lowest-priced coffees up 9.3% and the highest-priced coffees down 3.4%.
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Nick Brown
Nick Brown is the editor of Daily Coffee News by Roast Magazine.
