Hi all,
I'll get straight to the point. Our prices are going up :(
You don't need us to tell you, it's a crazy time to be alive. Climate change, wars, pandemics. It's a lot to process!
One thing they have all done though, apart from wreak devastation globally, is to affect the price of every single item we buy - not just for the roastery, but in daily life.
Rising fuel costs, catastrophic frosts in Brazil, hoarding of shipping containers :\ These are a few things that have affected us as a business.
Green coffee prices have risen sharply and we’re not really sure when it will stop. Draughts and severe frosts in Brazil have led to a loss of a mind bending 10 million+ sacks of coffee, and the implications don't just affect this year. Some farms have had to replace all or most of their coffee trees, and with new trees taking around 4 years to bear fruit, you can see how this will continue to affect supply for a few years to come. This has obviously increased demand in other coffee producing countries, leading to price increases across the board.
It's not all bad though, because it hasn't just affected the price of speciality grade coffee, it's also increased the price demanded for commodity coffee (lower grade coffee, the stuff you find in supermarkets and large coffee chains) which means these farmers are potentially receiving more for their coffee than it costs for them to produce it (a wild concept I know). We have always paid fair prices - well above c market levels (where coffee is traded as a commodity, with prices based ultimately on supply and demand rather than production), taking into account the actual cost of production, living costs and the obvious bonus for quality, spreading profit across the whole supply chain.
Shipping and transport costs have increased as much as 500%, owing to (among other things) increased fuel costs, a shortage of containers and back logs from the pandemic.
These things have not just affected the price of coffee but all the inputs the business requires to function, so we’re receiving emails like this one from our suppliers daily.
Those are the doomy gloomy inescapable facts, but they dont change our buying policy. We are still firmly committed to paying these higher costs, investing in and supporting sustainable farming for people and for the planet. We prioritise coffees which are organically farmed and with positive impacts for people in the producing countries. We will not be sacrificing quality or cutting costs. We will always look to the UK first for our supplies, a case in point is our new packaging… coming soon! We want to support our fellow country folk and cut down on road and air miles.
We therefore must start to implement some changes in our pricing over the next couple of weeks.
You are the reason we get to keep doing this and we thank you for keeping Pilgrims going. We hope you can see we don't take price increases lightly, and that you feel we continue to offer value for money. We welcome any questions you may have on any subject, be it coffee or costs or coffee costs, anything really, because talk is still cheap :) but never more important.
Love and kisses.
Andrew & The Pilgrims
