The Middle East is heating up again, and this time the fallout might hit Americans right where they start their mornings — the coffee cup. With crude oil pushing past $90 per barrel following the outbreak of conflict involving Iran, the United States, and Israel, small coffee shop owners across the country are bracing for another round of rising costs that could make that daily cup harder to justify.
The Price Was Already High Before the Shooting Started
Even before the latest conflict broke out, coffee prices were sitting at elevated levels. The World Bank had been tracking the situation closely, noting that bad weather in key coffee-growing regions around the world had already cut into supply. The expectation had been that prices would soften sometime this year. That forecast, however, was made before the war started last Saturday, and now many in the industry are throwing those projections out the window.
The connection between oil prices and coffee costs might not be obvious to the average consumer standing in line waiting for their order, but vendors understand it well. When oil goes up, shipping costs go up. Coffee beans travel thousands of miles before they ever land in a roaster or hit a grinder, and every leg of that journey gets more expensive when fuel prices spike. A jump past $90 per barrel is not a minor fluctuation — it's the kind of move that adds up fast across a global supply chain.
Small Business Owners Caught in the Middle
Allison Boettcher owns Blue Mountain Coffee shop in West Palm Beach, Florida, and she knows this story better than most. She spent last year absorbing roughly $10,000 in tariff costs rather than passing them on to customers, a decision that came from a very practical place. Her coffee is already priced at a premium, and she worried that raising prices further would push people to shop elsewhere.
"Oh my God. It was immense. We lost, we had to pay $10,000 last year," Boettcher said. "But thank God the tariffs on coffee has been lifted. It would have been disastrous for us."
That relief came about six months ago when the White House removed most tariffs on coffee and other agricultural products back in November. For small operators like Boettcher, it felt like the pressure was finally starting to ease. Now, with oil surging and a new conflict reshaping global trade routes and energy markets, that breathing room might not last long.
"We're already in a very tough economic situation and so adding more and more costs to small business like myself makes it very hard to survive," she said.
She made those remarks at the Downtown West Palm Beach Coffee Fest, a community event held on Friday in honor of Employee Appreciation Day, right alongside City Hall. It was the kind of local gathering that reminds you just how much these small operations are woven into everyday life — and how exposed they are when the world gets complicated.
A Different Story, Same Problem
A few miles away in spirit if not in distance, Kimberly Truong is running her own operation. She owns Ba Cafe, a Vietnamese coffee shop she named after her father. Like Boettcher, she has been navigating tariff pressures since she opened her doors. And like Boettcher, she is now watching the news out of the Middle East with a knot in her stomach.
Truong said the uncertainty around how the war will affect her business in the coming months is difficult to plan around. She built her shop around the idea of offering something accessible and affordable, and every time costs rise, that mission gets harder to hold onto.
"Most frustrating thing about the price jump is wanting to deliver an affordable product," she said.
That tension — between keeping prices fair for customers and staying financially viable as a business — is exactly the bind that independent coffee shops find themselves in. They are not large chains with the leverage to lock in long-term supply contracts or the volume to absorb shocks without flinching. When the world shifts, they feel it almost immediately.
What Comes Next
Nobody knows exactly how this conflict will develop or how long oil will stay elevated. Wars in the Middle East have a history of creating volatility that spreads well beyond the region itself, touching everything from gasoline prices to grocery bills to the cost of shipping goods across oceans. Coffee, which moves through an international supply chain before it ever reaches a shop like Blue Mountain or Ba Cafe, sits squarely in the path of that kind of disruption.
The tariff relief that came through last November gave small vendors a moment to recover. Whether that window stays open depends heavily on what happens next — with oil markets, with the conflict itself, and with global shipping routes that are already under pressure.
For now, shop owners like Boettcher and Truong are doing what small business owners have always done. They are watching, calculating, and hoping the next wave of bad news holds off long enough for them to find their footing.
The morning cup of coffee has survived a lot over the years — recessions, droughts, pandemics, and tariff fights. Whether it can keep riding out the turbulence without hitting a price point that finally pushes everyday customers away is the question that nobody in the industry can answer just yet.
