Brittany Stampone is torn.

The Northeast Philly native likes supporting independently owned coffee shops, but she said she can seldom justify the prices.

“I really try to find something within my budget,” said Stampone, 35, who works in health insurance.

When visiting Wildwood last month for Irish Weekend, she said she couldn’t find a place selling iced coffee for less than $5. She ended up going to one of her cheap-coffee mainstays, McDonald’s, which advertises $1 any-size iced coffee before 11 a.m.

With climate conditions and tariffs driving up coffee costs, caffeine-loving consumers are feeling the pinch at coffee shops and grocery stores, where it’s difficult to find a 10-ounce can of ground coffee for less than $7, or a 26-ounce one for less than $15.

Stampone said she’s grateful she’s not a picky coffee drinker. In the grocery store aisle, she and her husband typically buy whatever brand is on sale.

And, she reminds herself, it’s still more cost-effective to buy coffee at the store and make it at home than to order it each day from a café or vendor: “I’d rather spend maybe $8 on a tin of coffee vs. buying something that is only going to last me a day.”

How much a cup of coffee costs in Philly

Coffee is increasingly expensive for a variety of reasons.

Volatile weather conditions in coffee-growing regions like Brazil and Vietnam, as well as the Trump administration’s 50% tariff on Brazil, has put“upward pressure on the market, " according to the International Coffee Organization.

Across the U.S., this pressure has U.S. consumers paying more. The price of roasted and instant coffee jumped nearly 21% between August 2024 and August 2025, according to the most recent Consumer Price Index from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. It was the largest annual increase since 1997, the bureau found.

Naturally, Philly customers are also paying more at coffee shops, according to data from the restaurant-management platform Toast.

The median price of a cup of hot coffee in the city rose to $3.84, an increase of nearly 10% between August 2024 and August 2025, Toast found in a data analysis released Monday in honor of National Coffee Day. Over the same period, the median price of a Philly cold brew saw a small 1% hike, rising to $5.

But if you want lattes, macchiatos, or other concoctions, expect to pay more.

Victoria Mendez, 25, who runs a local foodie Instagram account, Impulse Food, with her husband, Rafael Aponte, said she visits about two city coffee shops a week. She usually pays between $8 and $8.50 for a specialty drink, often her go-to vanilla iced latte.

Sometimes, she said, the drink is worth the price tag.

“It honestly depends if it’s good or not,” Mendez said, and whether she could replicate the drink in her own kitchen.

Why Philly-area coffee shops are charging more

Local coffee shop owners said they must strike a balance between making money and not scaring away customers with eye-popping prices.

At Càphê Roasters in Kensington, customers pay about $6.50 on average for a specialty drink, which can include homemade syrups, expensive dairy and nondairy milk, and espresso or coffee, said CEO and founder Thu Pham.

Meanwhile, the cost of a 12-ounce drip coffee, served hot, is $2.75. A 12-ounce bag of ground or whole coffee beans is between $18 and $20.

Pham has raised prices about 10% to 15% since the 20% tariff imposed on Vietnam, where she sources most of her coffee beans, she said. More price increases could come in the future, she said, but don’t expect anything too drastic.

“We try to make it competitive, but being in Kensington, serving regular people … we like to make sure our regular drip coffee is as reasonable as possible,” Pham said.

In Gloucester County, Joe Fultano, owner of Endgrain Coffee Roasters, said he recently raised the prices on his 12-ounce retail bag from $14 to $15. He said the $1 jump felt like the “safest increase without offending people” in the “blue-collar, working-class” town of Pitman.

Fultano, who has owned Endgrain for a decade, said he had no choice but to increase prices. Even though he no longer sources beans from countries with high tariffs, he said he is still paying about a dollar a pound more for unroasted coffee than he did at this time last year.

Each month, he added, Endgrain goes through approximately one ton of coffee (about 2,000 pounds).

Coffee-loving consumers cut back

Some local consumers said they’ve cut back on coffee-shop splurges, instead opting to make coffee at home or settle for cheaper fast-food coffee.

In Haddon Township, Jessica Rumer, 32, said she rarely gets coffee out anymore.

“I refuse to pay Dunkin’ Donuts or Starbucks prices,” said Rumer, who works at an auto body shop. “It’s too much.”

She’s eliminated some grocery store items, too, including the jugs of premade iced coffee that she once drank regularly. She can no longer justify the price.

“It has skyrocketed,” Rumer said, with a 48-ounce container costing as much as $7.

Instead, she said, she makes hot coffee at home with the cheapest grounds or grabs a McDonald’s $1 coffee in the mornings.

Mendez, the Philly food and coffee influencer, said she’s grateful that Philadelphia prices still remain lower than in some other large metro areas. Of 20 major U.S. cities, only Charlotte, N.C., and San Antonio, Texas, had lower median hot coffee prices than Philadelphia, according to the Toast report, and no city had cheaper cold brew.

While visiting New York City last week, Mendez said, a friend spent $13 for a specialty coffee. Fortunately, she said, the drink was delicious.

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