Italians Panic as Price of Espresso Spikes

High price of beans puts coffee bars in a bind in a nation where the drink is a ritual

- Patricia Mazzei

TURIN, Italy - Mr Andrea Consilvio did something in early 2025 that he called "a little crazy." He bought an old and well-known coffee bar in the north-western Italian city of Turin, his home town.

Brewing coffee for Italians, the people who invented espresso and the commercial machines and stovetop pots to make it, might hardly seem like a leap of faith.

Nearly three-quarters of Italians drink coffee - by which they almost always mean espresso - at least once a day. Most Italians consider their daily coffee ritual to be sacrosanct.

Yet they also expect their coffee to be cheap, available for little more than pocket change at any bar counter. And that, amid a global jump in coffee bean prices caused in part by trade disruptions and climate change, has set off simmering anxiety among Italians.

They worry that higher costs could push up retail prices and unsettle a part of the food and beverage economy that feels distinctively Italian. Among the most worried: owners of the country's ubiquitous coffee bars.

"The world of coffee is changing," Mr Consilvio said. "If prices continue to increase, it could become a serious danger" to both livelihoods and tradition.

Mr Luigi Morello, president of the Italian Espresso National Institute, which safeguards the quality of Italian espresso (it should be hazel brown to dark brown, with foam, among other things), said higher coffee prices had "rightfully alarmed" consumers.

"The whole supply chain is in a crisis," he said.

Italy once designated espresso a necessity by law. Just before World War I, the Italian government allowed municipalities to set price controls for basic needs. That included bread, but also coffee served at the bar counter.

Such price controls "protected neighbourhood bars for a long time", said Dr Jonathan Morris, a coffee historian at the University of Hertfordshire in England.