Coffee — the world’s most popular psychoactive drug — is a daily essential for millions. But as news outlets are desperate to tell you, there’s trouble brewing: global coffee prices have hit record highs, with little relief in sight.
Agricultural experts like Wandile Sihlobo attribute the surge to bad weather in coffee powerhouses Brazil and Vietnam; poor harvests and depleted stocks are driving the price higher.
“These problems may last for some time. In 2025/26, Brazil’s coffee harvest may again be poor as the weather challenges persist, leading to another lower global stock,” Sihlobo tells Currency.
For caffeine fiends standing before drawers of multicoloured pods and debating between Amaha awe Uganda and Nordic Cloudberry, the important question is what this means for their morning mug.
Your high-end flat white is safe, for now
Perhaps some good news is that the rise in global coffee prices currently has little direct impact on what you’ll pay your top-hatted barista in a Cape Town shop for a perfect flat white.
This, says David Donde of Truth Coffee, perhaps South Africa’s most famous coffee shop, is because you’re already paying a premium on your bespoke blend. High-end coffee shops also tend to bypass the global commodity market entirely, purchasing beans directly from farmers.
“Many speciality coffee businesses operate on long-term contracts with producers, which often include stable prices above the commodity market price. These premiums ensure farmers are fairly compensated regardless of global price swings, and the shop benefits from predictable costs,” Donde tells Currency.
Coffee maths might suggest, therefore, that all future coffee be bought from stores like Donde’s. But buying even one daily coffee from a specialist store is likely to rile even the most understanding of personal finance columnists. If you purchase a R35 coffee every day in 2025, they’ll tell you, it’ll cost you R12,775 — assuming that price doesn’t rise. Invest that cash at an annual interest rate of just a 5%, and you’ll leave the year with R638 more in your back pocket.
But we’re not here to dissuade you from drinking coffee. And besides, for many, there’s a benefit to hitting a button on a plastic machine rather than queuing at a coffee shop.
This is exactly what companies like Nespresso and Keurig banked on with their onslaught of coffee pod machines, creating a capsule-based industry that Grand View Market Research estimates is worth $1.67bn.
Of course, these companies are in it for profit, and, gram for gram, the teaspoon of coffee grounds in each pod costs significantly more than anything else on the market – including some beans sold by high-end coffee shops.
The cost of convenience
By Currency’s calculations, you’re paying between three and four times more for your pod coffee than if you bought the identical beans sitting alongside it. If you care about cost, you could fairly easily stuff these into reusable pods and save a fortune, though the result is much the same.
But aficionados say these are the microwaves of coffee making, producing the equivalent of preheated meals. Passable in a pinch but hardly what you’d consider fine dining.
Of course, there’s a middle ground, and even Donde is happy to concede that you can achieve solid results in your kitchen – provided you discard the coffee capsule machine.
“My recommended way of making coffee at home is first to buy a quality burr grinder; the rest of the equipment doesn’t really matter,” Donde says. “You could make an amazing cup of coffee with a French press or pour-over, or even a basic vacuum flask filter coffee machine, provided you’ve ground your beans correctly.”
As with microwave meals, it’s not only quality that apparently suffers on the pod machines – gram for gram, you’re paying significantly more per cup of coffee. And the cost of each is almost impossible to compare while standing in the hot drinks aisle of any local supermarket. This is because each pod has a different volume, and you’re buying different quantities over the larger bags of beans.
Of the coffee capsules Currency checked, all contained between 5g and 6g of coffee. At this pod microdose, you pay more for packaging, shipping, intellectual property and marketing than for the actual coffee.
Contrast this with the typical foil-lined bag of beans you’ll find on those same supermarket shelves, usually in quantities of 250g or 500g, and you may find yourself reassessing your coffee habits.
The price premium on pods
Currency identified the most expensive mainstream pods on supermarket shelves as those by Illy. Illy pods cost R193 per 100g, compared to R73 per 100g for the company’s filter coffee – a markup of 168%.
Other pods have significantly higher markups. Vida e, Bootlegger and Terbodore pods cost between 274% and 329% more than the identical filter coffee.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the most expensive commercial pods in South Africa come directly from Nespresso. Though the company sells some pods via supermarkets at competitive prices, usually with Starbucks co-branding, its direct-to-customer stores are much pricier.
Nespresso’s Cape Town Lungo capsules cost R12 each in sleeves of 10, which equates to R218 per 100g. At the time of writing, Nespresso was selling an “Unforgettable Espresso” for the festive season at R16.30 per pod, or R307.55 per 100g.
The case for premium filter coffee
If you’re happy with supermarket-bought beans, you could comfortably make a full mug of decent filter coffee for less than the 100ml of pod espresso.
If you have a taste for quality, you can easily make a mug of filter coffee using a French press, V60 pour-over or AeroPress for the same price as Nespresso’s pricey capsules.
Specialist Cape Town coffee roastery Rosetta sells Luzia Collective beans from Brazil for R72 per 100g. Brewed according to their recommended French press, Aeropress or V-60 ratio of 1:13, a full mug of coffee costs roughly R13. At that ratio, Joburg’s Father coffee shop’s signature Heirloom Blend costs approximately R11 per mug, while Truth sells its Resurrection Blend in bags of 225g, which equates to about R12 a mug.
Though these are about double the price of a standard mass-market capsule machine espresso, you’re getting fresher coffee, likely a better taste experience, and double the volume. More than anything, though, the next time you stare despondently into that thimble’s worth of tepid capsule coffee languishing in the bottom of a mug, at least you’ll know there are some cheaper and likely better alternatives.
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