Good morning. It’s Wednesday. Today we’ll look at how coffee shops are coping with President Trump’s tariffs. We’ll also find out where the city is opening a new front in its war on rats.
Last week the Consumer Price Index had troubling news for coffee drinkers: Coffee prices climbed nearly 21 percent in August, compared with August 2024. That was the largest jump since the 1990s and reflected concerns about President Trump’s tariffs on Brazil and Vietnam, the world’s largest coffee exporters. Some coffee shops have resisted raising the price of a single cup, making do with smaller profit margins. But they have raised what they charge for bags of coffee — or plan to do so. “The price of green coffee” — raw, unroasted beans — “is going up industrywide, and roasters and retailers are having to adjust,” said James Veltri, who owns Solid State Coffee, a shop on the Upper West Side. “I just don’t want to squeeze people any more than we have to.” So a latte with milk still costs $5.50 at Solid State. But the 12-ounce bags of coffee that line the wide shelves between the front door and the counter cost more than they used to — and the prices are written in chalk and can be changed on the fly. “At the beginning of the year, the cheapest coffee we had was, like, $19 a bag,” said Nathanael Curtis, the roaster at Solid State. Now it is priced at $21 a bag. Two other varieties, one from Ethiopia and the other from Honduras, are $25 now. And Veltri said that Solid State “will necessarily have to raise prices on the bagged coffee because of the tariffs.” Stefan Tomic, a co-owner of Radiant Cafe in Greenwich Village, said he was “terrified” by the tariffs. “Some distributors are raising the price just to make it safe for them. We’re in the middle, between the roasters and the customers.” Radiant boosted its prices on coffee by the cup in the spring, bringing a latte to $5.75. “I’m pretty sure by the end of the year, it will be $6,” he said. Tariffs are not the only reason that coffee costs more: The price per pound was already at a record high as the year began. Droughts in coffee-growing regions of the world have led to shortages, which pushed up prices, and unforeseen events disrupted supply chains. Curtis said an order of Ethiopian coffee bound for Solid State was on a ship that was struck by a missile in the Red Sea, where the Iranian-backed Houthi militia has attacked commercial and naval vessels in support of Palestinians in Gaza. The tariffs heightened the economic waves. Trump announced tariffs of 50 percent on imports from Brazil, citing a “witch hunt” against the country’s former president, Jair Bolsonaro. The administration’s tariffs on other coffee-producing nations — 20 percent for Vietnam and 19 percent for Indonesia — added to the pressure. “It’s a situation no one wants to be in,” said Sam Klein, the green coffee buyer for Partners, a roastery and cafe in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn. “What we’re seeing is a lot of people waiting to raise prices. Everyone is trying to be the last one to do it.” Partners just raised its prices for wholesale customers — coffee shops like Solid State — “because there are no positive signs of a return to normalcy soon,” Klein said. Veltri said that Solid State had resisted “shrinkflation,” reducing the amount in the bag without changing the price. “We’d rather just charge more for the same amount of coffee,” Veltri said. “My main problem with the tariffs is the lack of clarity,” Veltri said. “The administration has gone back and forth so many times that you can’t prepare. There’s a 100 percent tariff. There’s a 10 percent tariff. There’s no tariff. There’s a 50 percent tariff.” Solid State is waiting for delivery of 2,500 pounds of coffee from Brazil to use in its blends. “It might be that by the time it lands, which is when the bill becomes due, the tariff might have gone away or it gets reduced or it gets doubled,” Veltri said. “We don’t know.” It was already going to be more expensive than a year ago. Solid State paid $3 a pound a year ago. The price had climbed to $4.75 a pound when Curtis placed an order in early summer. The tariff will push the price past $7 a pound. WEATHER For today, cloudy with a chance of showers and a possible thunderstorm. Temperatures in the low 70s. For tonight, cloudy with a chance of showers and temperatures in the low 60s. ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING In effect until Sept. 23 and 24 (Rosh Hashana). The latest New York news
We hope you’ve enjoyed this newsletter, which is made possible through subscriber support. Subscribe to The New York Times. Trash containerization moves to Brooklyn
The city is opening a new front in its war on rats, putting new trash containers in a district in Brooklyn that includes the Fort Greene and Clinton Hill neighborhoods. The idea is to do what officials say a pilot project in Harlem has done: get trash off sidewalks and, in the process, get rid of rats. The sidewalks have long been home to messy, oozing garbage bags that pile up and provide food for rats. The containers are large, chunky and — the city says — inaccessible to rats. The Sanitation Department will install them at schools in Fort Greene and Clinton Hill soon and will expand containerization to large residential buildings in the district next year. The department will assign its bins to buildings with more than 30 apartments. It will give medium-size buildings a choice to have a city bin or “wheelie bins” similar to those that buildings with one to nine apartments are already required to use. Officials said the campaign against trash had made a difference, judging by a decline in 311 calls. In August, the most recent month for which figures are available, calls about rats were down 19 percent compared with August 2024, officials said. Taking trash containerization to Brooklyn is the latest step in what officials call a “trash revolution,” which has included changing when residential and commercial waste could be put out; requiring trash containerization for restaurants and delis in 2023 and other businesses in 2024; and designing side-loading garbage trucks to empty the new bins. “Every step was met with cynics who said they loved the idea but it just couldn’t work here,” the acting sanitation commissioner, Javier Lojan, said at a briefing in Brooklyn. “New Yorkers adjusted their habits, they changed their decades-long way of doing things, and we have a cleaner city, with 70 percent of trash in containers and fewer rats as a result.” METROPOLITAN DIARY Singer Bowl
Dear Diary: My friend Billy and I went to Flushing Meadow Park on a hot summer day in 1968. I was not quite 16. We had heard that the Chambers Brothers would be performing a concert at the Singer Bowl. Having no tickets, we approached a security guard at one of the doors and asked if we could get in. “Two dollars each,” he said. We handed him the money, and he told us to just go up to the front near the stage and stand at the railing. We got to see Janis Joplin perform a set and drink a bottle of Southern Comfort and Jimi Hendrix set his guitar on fire. The Chambers Brothers were great too. — David Kaplow Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here. Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B. P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here. Francis Mateo and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox.
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