Zoe Ash started Farm Loop Coffee as a hobby about five years ago, but it quickly grew into a business selling roasted beans at farmers markets and wholesale to eateries around the state. She operates out of her garage in Palmer and prides herself on carrying a variety of single-origin coffees.
To do that, she orders beans from all over the world — and lately she’s been paying a lot more for them, in part, because of the lingering impacts of tariffs.
In early February, Ash said she received a few hundred pounds of coffee from Guatemala. The cost was up 30% since 2024 and the order came with an extra 45-cent-per-pound tariff on top of that. Like other businesses, she has had to pass some of those higher costs on to her customers.
“I'm still in the aftermath of just kind of keeping this whole thing alive after increases and the tariffs,” Ash said. “We're going to keep seeing the effects of tariffs.”
Alaskans love coffee, so much so that Anchorage has one of the highest concentrations of coffee shops per capita in the nation. The United States imports a mind-boggling amount of coffee, around $9 billion worth in 2024, but only produces about 1% of it.
Damage to harvests spurred by human-caused climate change in top-producing countries, blended with President Trump’s sweeping reciprocal tariff policies, have resulted in significantly higher prices for local roasters like Ash.
“It kind of was like a double whammy in a way,” Ash said.
Farm Loop raised prices by a dollar. A 12-ounce bag now costs $23.
Small roasters aren’t the only ones getting caught in the grind.
Anchorage-based SteamDot has two cafes in the city and sells wholesale to many local businesses and retail chains, including Costco and Walmart. Owner Jonathan White said SteamDot faced hundreds of thousands of dollars in extra expenses due to tariffs.
“We'll be licking our wounds for a while,” White said. “It's going to be several months, maybe years, before we're able to find an equilibrium from the losses we incurred in a half a year.”
White’s business orders coffee months in advance. He said tariffs, especially on Brazilian coffee, were an "unexpected bomb” that went off in the industry.
“I would say that almost every espresso blend at every coffee shop in America has Brazil in it for a reason,” he said.
SteamDot raised prices in their cafes. The company also increased wholesale prices twice in the last year for a combined 11% due to overall inflating costs.
Even though the extra tariffs on coffee are gone, White said the impact on prices will linger for months. The company is currently working through beans ordered last summer.
“The amount of tariffed coffee that still exists in the world is quite high. Brokers, people who sell green coffee, want to get rid of that first before they start selling non-tariffed coffee,” White said. “High coffee prices at the grocery store and at your local drive through probably aren't going down anytime soon.”
Alaskans already sip the most expensive coffee in the nation – the average price of a latte costs $6.09. Only Hawaii is higher, where the same drink costs $6.69.
Roasters are just one example of businesses in the state still struggling under Trump’s tariffs, said Greg Wolf, president and CEO of the Alaska International Business Center. The tariff turmoil has left businesses in a haze of uncertainty, he said.
“Certainty matters, because sometimes you're investing thousands, millions, billions of dollars, and you need some level of certainty, some level of predictability,” Wolf said. “In the absence of that, it's chaos.”
In Wolf’s 40 years in the industry, he said he hasn’t seen tariffs being used like they are today – as an instrument in geopolitical and foreign policy issues.
It’s a difficult time for businesses, he said, and experts like himself.
“None of us have been in the situation where the tariff policy seems to be the tool of choice,” Wolf said.
The Supreme Court is reviewing the legality of Trump’s tariffs.
Reporting from Reuters said industry experts expect a coffee production surplus this year. That, and the removal of tariffs, will eventually cool bean prices – but it’ll take a while.
Ash, the owner of Farm Loop, said some of her vendors have begun decreasing their bean prices, but it’s still significantly higher than what she was paying when she started the roastery.
“I don't expect them to go down in a significant way anytime soon,” she said.
