Green prices are falling: should you cut wholesale prices?

Short answer. Not yet, and not across the board. The market price is what your next lot will cost, not what the coffee in your warehouse cost, and the gap between the two is usually months wide. Work out your cost per roasted kilo from green you have actually paid for, and if a cut is affordable, start it the week the cheaper green does. When a café asks, a volume break, a price fixed in writing for six months or a temporary promotional origin usually answers the question better than a lower price list — and a café that asks at all is a café that has been quoted by somebody else.

What the market actually did

The fall is real, and it is not a trend line. ICE arabica peaked at 440.85 cents a pound in February 2025, the level most current wholesale price lists were written against. It then fell to 260.60 cents on 1 June 2026, its lowest close since November 2024, after Brazil brought in a record crop. It bounced to about 342 cents in mid-August on very low certified stocks, and closed at 283.65 cents on 15 September 2026, down 30.7% on the year, according to Trading Economics.

Figures on this page were last checked 16 September 2026: ICE arabica from Trading Economics, monthly averages from the International Coffee Organization. Every one of them is a snapshot of a market that moves daily. Check the current number before you quote an account or send either of the letters below.

A 31% fall on the year and a 31% rise inside ten weeks are both in that table. Analysts' forecasts for the rest of 2026 mostly sit between $2.50 and $3.00 a pound, and some see $2.00 or lower, but ICE certified stocks are near a 27-year low and El Niño is a live risk to Brazil's 2027 crop: NOAA put the odds of a very strong event through the 2026/27 northern autumn and winter above 90%. Neither the fall nor the bounce is safe to price against. What you can price against is the invoice from your importer.

The monthly averages lag all of that and smooth it, and an average is much nearer to what you actually buy against than a daily close is. The ICO composite indicator rose 15.4% from June to July 2026 and then stopped dead: 287.26 US cents a pound in July, 287.29 in August, a difference of three hundredths of a cent. The daily contract's run off the June low reached the monthly average as one 15% step and then nothing at all. August had a rally too, from the 17th to the 25th on El Niño worries and low certified arabica stocks, and it was given back in two trading sessions on the 26th and 27th when rain arrived in Brazil, according to the ICO's August report as reported by the Tea & Coffee Trade Journal. Your cafés read the swing. You pay something much closer to the average.

If you are reading this because green went the other way, the companion guide is how to raise wholesale coffee prices without losing cafés. Almost everything below assumes you have already read it, and it is not repeated here.

Why the market price is not your cost

The C price is the cost of coffee you have not bought yet. The coffee going through your roaster this month was contracted months ago, often at the top of the market, and you have already paid for it. A roaster who cuts on today's headline is paying the discount out of margin on stock bought at last year's price.

This lag runs in both directions and it is well documented. The FAO has found that as much as 80% of a green price spike reaches EU consumers, but that the pass-through takes as long as eleven months. The same lag is why a fall does not show up on a shelf for the best part of a year: in the first quarter of 2026, specialty retail prices rose 3.9% while the ICO composite indicator fell 7.2%. Your cafés are reading about the second number while you are still paying the first.

Two more things have not fallen. Freight into Europe rose during 2026 — StoneX reported Shanghai–Rotterdam container rates up 23% in a single week — and flexible packaging is more than 30% dearer than it was in 2022. A landed green price is green plus freight plus import costs, and the bag, valve, label and box sit on top of that before you have paid anyone to roast it. A 30% fall in the C price is not a 30% fall in the cost of a bag on a café's shelf.

Specialty green does not track the C price closely either. Coffee Collective in Copenhagen publishes what it pays FOB, and its average green cost went from $5.20 a pound in 2024 to $6.03 in 2025 — up, through a period when the market was doing something else entirely. If you buy long relationships and fixed FOB prices rather than differentials against the C, your cost curve is your own.

Working out whether you can afford a cut

The arithmetic is the one from the price list template, run backwards, and the honest version has two columns: what the coffee in the warehouse cost, and what the next lot costs. Use the wholesale coffee price calculator to do it per coffee.

Worked example, continuing the one in the raise guide. Your house espresso is priced at €19.97 a kilo ex VAT, on green bought at €9.50 landed, 15% roast loss, €0.60 packaging and €0.90 labour a bag. That is a cost of €12.68 and a gross profit of €7.29 a kilo. Your importer now offers the next lot at €8.60.

Green per roasted kilo = landed green ÷ (1 − roast loss). Cost = that + packaging + labour. The middle column holds the same €7.29 cash margin a kilo as the price list was built on, which gives a cut of €1.06 a kilo, or 5.3%.

The third column is the whole problem. Cutting to €18.91 on stock that cost €12.68 takes €1.06 out of every kilo of gross profit, about 15% of it, because the coffee did not get cheaper — only the market did. Size it before you decide: if you are holding 800 kg of green bought at €9.50, that is 680 roasted kilos, and cutting €1.06 a kilo now costs you about €721 before the cheaper coffee reaches a single café.

So the first question is not "should I cut" but "when does the cheap green land". Ask your importer for the arrival week of the next contract, count the roasted kilos of old stock in front of it, and you have a date. A cut dated to that week costs nothing.

The second question is what the cut is worth to the café, and the answer is usually less than they expect. At an 18 g dose, €1.06 a kilo is 1.9 cents a double espresso. A café taking 16 kg a week saves about €17 a week, €74 a month. That is real money to a café owner and almost invisible on a menu, which is the tension in the whole conversation. The per-drink table in the raise guide works in both directions, and the cost per cup calculator shows where the rest of the café's price goes.

When a café asks for a lower price

A café asking for a cut is information, and the answer is not automatically no. Two things are true at once: the request is reasonable, because they have read that coffee got cheaper, and it is also an early warning. Cafés rarely ask cold. They ask after a competitor's rep has been in with a price sheet, or after a bad month, and the request is often the last signal before the orders start getting later and smaller.

Four questions before you answer anything:

1. What are you comparing us with? A named roastery and a number tells you whether this is a real quote or a negotiating position. If it is a real quote, ask what is in the bag and at what size.
2. What would the price need to be? Let them say the number. It is often smaller than the one you were about to offer.
3. What is this account worth at that number? Kilos a week × gross profit a kilo. Do this before the call ends, not after.
4. Has anything else changed? Volume down, a second site, a new owner, a manager who left. The price question is sometimes standing in for a different problem, and a discount will not fix that one.

Then answer within a day, either way. The silence after the ask is what loses the account, not the answer. US survey evidence says the risk of holding firm is lower than it feels: in Fresh Cup's March 2026 survey of 13 US roasters, increases ran from none to 40% with a median around 15%, and nine of the thirteen lost no accounts at all.

Four alternatives to a straight cut

A list price is the hardest thing to move back up, so spend something else first. In rough order of what they cost you:

Hold the price and add something

A staff training morning, a bag of the current single origin for the team, a recipe card rewritten for their grinder, brew kit at your cost. A half-day of training is worth more to a café's turnover than €74 a month off the invoice, and it does not reset your price list.

A volume break

The best answer to most requests. €1.06 a kilo off above 15 kg an order gives the café a number it can see, gives you the kilos that pay for it, and expires by itself if the volume does not arrive. One break, not three, or nobody can work out what they will pay.

A temporary promotional origin

A cheaper lot, named and dated, at a lower price, alongside the house espresso at its normal price. The café gets a lower line on the invoice; your house coffee keeps its price. When the lot runs out, the price goes with it, and nobody has to negotiate anything.

A price fixed for six months, in writing

Worth more than it costs when the market is moving 30% in ten weeks. The café gets certainty for its own budgeting, you get the account off the market for two quarters, and you have not given away a cent today. Make it six months rather than twelve while green is this volatile — the roasteries that committed to twelve-month holds in 2025 spent the year regretting it.

If none of these work and the café only buys on price, price is what will move them again next year. That decision belongs with how much of your book one account should be, not with this month's C price.

How to announce a cut without sounding guilty

The risk in a cut is not the money. It is that the café hears "we were overcharging you and got caught". Three rules stop that.

Tie the cut to the lot, not to the market. "The Brazilian we are shipping in October costs us less than the one it replaces, so your price comes down on 1 November." That is a fact about your coffee. "Coffee prices have fallen" is a fact about a futures market, and it invites the reply "so why is it only coming down €1?"

Give the same number in both directions. If you raised by €1.77 a kilo and the cost has come back €1.06, say both figures. A roaster who shows the arithmetic falling is a roaster whose arithmetic will be believed next time it rises. Perfect Daily Grind's reporting on roasters explaining price changes makes the same point about increases: buyers judge a price fairer when they are told how it was worked out.

Say what would change it. A cut with no conditions reads as a permanent new floor. A cut with "this holds until 30 April; if the next contract costs more we will tell you before that date" reads as a policy, and a policy can move twice.

Some roasteries make this automatic. Torque Coffees moves its wholesale prices with the FOB price it pays, up and down, as soon as it changes, and tells customers straight away. Coffee Collective adds a fixed cash margin to its coffee cost and publishes what it paid FOB. Both remove the argument entirely — at the cost of the café seeing every movement, including the ones you would rather have absorbed quietly.

The ratchet, and how to avoid it

Prices are not symmetrical. An increase takes a letter, a phone call and a month of notice. A cut takes one email — and then the next increase has to argue with the cut. Roasters who moved fast in 2026 found the same thing: it is far easier to give €1.06 away than to get it back.

Three habits keep the ratchet open:

• Date everything. A price with an end date on it is not a concession, it is a term. "€18.91 until 30 April" can go back to €19.97 on 1 May without a negotiation, because the café agreed to the date.
• Cut per lot, not per list. The promotional origin and the volume break both expire on their own. A new list price does not.
• Keep the cash margin, not the percentage. When costs fall, holding the same euro margin a kilo passes the whole fall on and quietly widens your percentage margin. When costs rise, holding the same euro margin gives you the smaller increase to announce. Using the same rule in both directions is what makes it defensible; switching to whichever is more flattering is what makes cafés stop believing you.

The wider context argues for caution. In Fresh Cup's August 2026 survey of 30 US roasters, 52% said they plan to raise prices in 2027 and 41% said they are already absorbing too many rising costs. That is not a trade about to pass a windfall on. If you cut to the floor now, you are likely to be the roastery writing an increase letter in six months.

If you hedged or bought forward

Most small roasteries do not hedge, but many buy forward, which has the same effect: a known price for a known quantity, and no benefit from a fall until that quantity is gone. If that is you:

• Count the roasted kilos, not the sacks. Green ÷ (1 − roast loss) is the roasted weight you still have to sell at the old cost. That number, times the cut you are considering, is the bill for cutting early.
• Do not average the old and new cost into one price. Blending them gives a price that is wrong for both and impossible to explain. Price the current cost, and move on the date the cost moves.
• Ask the importer before you assume. Some will let you roll or reprice part of a forward contract, or split a delivery. It is a phone call, and it can move the date of your cut by a month.
• Do not buy long just because it looks cheap. Certified stocks near a 27-year low and a weather risk over Brazil's 2027 crop are exactly the conditions in which a cheap market bounces 31% in ten weeks, as this one did between June and August. Buy to a plan you can store, finance and roast.

Two letters to copy

One for a cut you have decided on, one for a café that asked and is getting a no with something in it. Replace the brackets, send one per café with that café's own numbers, and keep both this short.

Letter 1: announcing a price cut

Subject: Your prices are coming down from [1 November]

Hi [first name],

Good news for once. The [Brazilian] we ship in [October] costs us less than the lot it replaces, so from [1 November] your prices come down:

[House espresso], 1 kg: €19.97 → €18.91
[Seasonal filter], 1 kg: €26.60 → €25.40

For context: we put these prices up by [€1.77] a kilo in [March], when the green we were buying cost [19]% more. About [€1.06] of that has now come back, and we are passing it on in full. At your [18 g] dose that is about [2] cents a double, or roughly [€17] a week at your volume.

Nothing else changes: same coffee, same roast, same delivery days.

These prices hold until at least [30 April]. Green is still moving a lot — the market is down about [30]% on the year, but it rose 31% inside ten weeks this summer — so if the next contract costs us more, you will hear it from us before that date rather than from an invoice.

Thanks for pouring our coffee,
[Name]
[Roastery]

Letter 2: holding the price, after a café has asked

Subject: Your question about pricing

Hi [first name],

Thanks for asking me straight — I would rather have the conversation than not.

You are right that the coffee market has fallen: arabica is down about [31]% on the year. What has not fallen yet is our cost. The coffee we are roasting for you this month was contracted in [February] at the old price, and freight and packaging have both gone up, not down. Our price for [house espresso] is €19.97 a kilo and it costs us €12.68 to put in the bag.

So I cannot cut the list price today without selling you coffee at a loss. What I can do, starting now:

- [€1.06] a kilo off any order of [15] kg or more.
- Your current prices fixed in writing until [30 April], whatever the market does.
- [Brazil Cerrado] as a house espresso alternative at €[17.50] a kilo while the lot lasts, if you want a lower line on the invoice. Happy to bring samples [Tuesday].

Our next green contract lands in [October] at a lower price. When it does, your prices come down and I will write to you the same week with the new numbers.

If none of that works for you, tell me and we will talk properly.

[Name]
[Roastery]
[Phone]

Questions roasters ask

Should a roaster lower wholesale prices when green coffee prices fall?

Only once the cheaper green is actually in your warehouse and your cost per roasted kilo has fallen with it. The market price is the price of the next lot, not of the coffee you are roasting this week, and most roasteries are three to nine months behind the market in both directions. If you cut on the market price you pay for the discount out of your own margin until the cheap coffee lands.

How much have green coffee prices fallen in 2026?

ICE arabica closed at 283.65 cents a pound on 15 September 2026, down 30.7% on the same date a year earlier, according to Trading Economics. It is not a straight line: the same contract fell to 260.60 cents on 1 June after Brazil's record crop, then bounced to about 342 cents in mid-August on very low certified stocks before falling back again.

A café has asked me for a discount. What do I say?

Ask what they are comparing you with and what they need the price to be, then work out that account's gross profit at that number before you answer. Most of the time you can give them something that is not a lower list price: a volume break, a fixed price in writing for six months, or a cheaper origin in the blend. Answer within a day either way, because a café that asks has usually already been quoted by someone else.

If I cut wholesale prices now, can I raise them again later?

You can, but the second increase is harder than the first, because the café now has a recent memory of a lower number. That is why a cut is safer as a dated, temporary price or a volume break than as a new list price. If you do cut the list, say in the same sentence how long it holds and what would change it.

What should I do if I bought forward at high prices?

Roast through the expensive stock at the price it was bought at, and plan the cut for the week the cheaper contract lands. Work out how many roasted kilos of expensive green you are still holding: green ÷ (1 − roast loss) gives the roasted weight, and multiplying that by the cut per kilo is what an early cut costs you. If a café needs a lower number before then, a temporary promotional coffee is cheaper than repricing the whole list.

How much is a €1 a kilo price cut worth to a café?

About 1.8 cents a double espresso at an 18 g dose, and about €16 a week to a café taking 16 kg. It is small on the menu and real in the café's bank account, which is why the volume break is usually the better answer: the café gets a number it can see, and you only pay for it on the kilos that earn it.

Where Order Book fits

A price cut has the same moving parts as a price increase, and the same way of going wrong. In Order Book you write the change once — the coffees, the new prices or a percentage, the date it starts, and whether it applies to every café or only the ones you choose — and each café is told its own new prices, in its own language, when you announce it or a week before the date. Orders already placed are not repriced. A volume break or a special price for one account is set on that account rather than as another price list, so the promotional origin can expire without anyone having to remember it.

Each coffee can carry its green price and roast loss, so the insights page shows the gross margin you are actually making per coffee and per account — which is the number to look at before you decide a cut is affordable, and again a month after you make one. And the drift detection tells you which cafés are ordering later and smaller, which is usually where the request for a discount comes from next.

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