The only sustainable way for us to continue doing what we do — sourcing excellent coffee that often helps farmers, the environment, or the coffee community — is for us to make a small price increase on all DOMA Coffees this month.
Trust us when we say we didn’t want to do that and that we held off as long as we could. We’ve been surfing the recent volatile waves of the coffee industry and hoping they’d mellow out. But, we do like to pay our staff.
Those waves are due to a lot of industry factors that have developed over the last year and half. And the surf is just getting choppier. It’s gotten to the point where, as a business, we needed to make one of two choices: bump our pricing, or sacrifice quality. We’re not ones to cut corners.
This price increase shows that we remain committed to the quality coffee and sourcing methods that make DOMA, DOMA. We have already taken a fine-toothed comb to streamline our own cost efficiencies in things like packaging and shipping.
In the effort of being transparent, we want to share what's been causing all those industry waves here.
1. Climate change is real. And it’s having a real effect on the coffee-growing regions we source from. Coffee farms along the equator have seen weather extremes like drought and unseasonable frosts that have damaged crops in recent years, decreasing yields and creating scarcity.
2. The coffee market is volatile. If that makes you think of a third grade science project volcano about to erupt with baking soda and vinegar, that's a bit like how it feels, too. Commodity traders and the futures markets have been all over the map, and green coffee prices have skyrocketed in response.
3. Coffee is really popular. You’d think that would be a good thing, but in the last year global demand has increased at the same time that global coffee supply has suffered (see point #1).
4. Dude, Tariffs. Every small business we know is getting hit by the American tariffs put into place earlier this year, and we’re no exception. We source over 25% of our coffee from Brazil, which equals to a 50% increase on imported coffee. When you do the math, that's a problem.
If you look around at other coffee roasters, you'll realize we're all facing the same tough decisions.
On November 14, that price increase on DOMA Coffee will take place across the board.
Just know that when you continue to buy and drink DOMA Coffee, you’re not just choosing great coffee: you’re supporting things in the world that we think matter, like small coffee farmers who are facing these big waves in the environmental and coffee industry too. Your support allows us to support them. Which is another way of saying that your support helps us to keep doing it right.
We appreciate you!