National Coffee Association 2025 Recap: Everything’s Bigger in Texas 

The lobby provided a meeting place of chance, while other floors contained halls featuring boardroom-style conference setups. Within, teams from the green coffee side sat down with roaster groups in orderly, hour-long meetings. Tacked on were similar, slightly more casual breakfast/lunch meetups and happy hours beginning in the early evening that grew ever less formal and louder, as coffee events tend to do.  

One-on-one discussions ranged in topics from importer performance scores, supply and demand questions and avenues for exploring new business. A few themes emerged: 

Volatility is here to stay – for now 

The central theme was one of acceptance of record futures prices and record backwardation as a non-transient phenomenon. In any other year, having the market fall 20 cents during the first day of the conference would form the central feature of conversations, but now nobody blinks an eye. It is clear that volatility is here to stay, and volatility fatigue has set on in full.  

Prices will rise 

While green coffee costs have been climbing to record levels, many agreed that retail coffee prices have yet to reflect these increases fully.  There was much International consensus on this matter; for example, in the UK, shelf price inflation for coffee was lower than 2% in the latest year.  However, the ability of brands and retailers to hold back inflationary pressures, supply constraints, and rising production costs is rapidly running out.  Most people agree shelf prices are bound to rise in the year ahead.  As consumers feel the strain of a challenging economy, the outlook for instant coffee is actually pretty good.  Mature markets are seeing a rebound in demand for instant, because it is economical.

Will people still drink coffee? 

The biggest fear seemed to be the loss of coffee consumers altogether. Particular worry emerged regarding Gen Z consumers, who are not adopting ‘traditional’ coffee as their caffeinated beverage of choice, preferring Ready to Drink (RTD) and energy drinks instead. Specialty roasters tailoring their business to millennial coffee-obsessed consumers risk missing the boat on Gen Z without further innovation and appeal development. In all, it was difficult to find someone who saw the US demand for coffee as even stable for 2025. A ‘winner’ will be someone who does not shrink. 

Tariff turmoil(s) and Logistics Woes 

Tariffs were a central theme of roaster discussions, even as the diversion and substitution of Mexican shipments on the water seemed to get a reprieve with yet another postponement of US tariffs on Mexico. Everyone agreed that now there is enough lead time to avoid most issues stemming from a Mexican tariff, but the greater risk of looming trade wars created a larger problem. Any tariff fight with Brazil would be very damaging to the US market and currently remains the largest risk. On similar notes, logistics delays plaguing the market were another painful note, with some roasters mentioning that the average time from PSS arrival to final product entering the plant increased 50% this year, compounding the already stressed financial system around coffee.  

Counterparty Risk 

Lastly, the theme of counterparty risk was central to the discussion. Were there new cases of defaults at origin? What do people hear regarding roaster bankruptcies? Is every green supplier doing ok financially? The need for flexibility in blends, origins and suppliers has become centerstage of most discussions.  

While the overall outlook was one of concern, the silver lining was an acknowledgement that we are all in this together. The scope of comradery and appreciation for making the difficult possible was kindly felt. It is the healthy spirit of cooperation that will allow us to persevere as an industry and emerge, one day, in a place where problems no longer rain down like the storm on Forrest Gump’s shrimping boat. Until then, we gotta ride it out and stick together.  

_{Ilya Byzov is the Head of Research & Quant Trading based in Sucafina North America’s New York City office. He has 14 years of experience in commodity futures markets and 11 years in coffee specifically. Previously, he held positions in Market Risk and Coffee Research. In addition to his work on market forecasting and analytics, Ilya also works with commercial and specialty customers.}

_{Ilya is extremely passionate about sustainable supply chains and believes that the coffee industry should be a leader in equitability and transparency among agricultural commodities.}