Why We’re Temporarily Reducing Our Coffee Drink Prices 

We’ve long maintained that tariffs were not just a tax on U.S. businesses, but on the American people. We’re finding creative ways to try and pay back that debt to our customers at The Crown.

What?  

Starting on July 1, 2026, we’ll be reducing our menu prices by 25 cents on every coffee drink for 60 days. 

Why? 

We’re passing the refund for the full amount of The Crown’s tariffed inventory along to our customers, in the form of discounted drinks. 

Why Temporary? 

The raw cost of importing coffee—including volatility in the oil market due to ongoing conflict in the Strait of Hormuz and the wider Southwest Asia and North Africa (SWANA) region—continue to put enormous pressure on coffee prices. We cannot afford to sustain our business with a permanent discount on retail prices. 

Background and Context 

In April of 2025, The Crown raised the price of all of our coffee drinks by 50 cents (except our $2/cup dark roast, which we kept priced as-is due to its position as an entry-point for coffee drinkers unfamiliar with specialty coffee). 

We did this in response to unprecedented volatility and high prices in the global coffee futures market, the benchmark against which prices for coffee are set worldwide. Further price pressure was added as the Trump administration announced blanket import tariffs on products from all countries, and reciprocal tariffs against certain nations (many of which are major coffee export sources, such as Brazil, India, and Vietnam). 

As the retail brand of a coffee importer (Royal Coffee, Inc.), we paid tariffs directly to the U.S. government from April until November of 2025 on all coffee (except Mexican-grown beans, which were exempt).  

In February of 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, (or IEEPA) does not authorize the President of the United States to impose tariffs. The Court of International Trade subsequently ordered Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to refund the duties paid. In April of 2026, the CBP portal went live, and the first tariff refunds are being returned. 

The Court of International Trade ordered refunds of approximately $165 billion to more than 330,000 U.S. importers. A consortium of state fiscal leaders recently requested public disclosure of refund applicants from the office of the president, arguing that “a refund process absent pass-through costs risks directing public relief to parties unharmed.” While shipping companies like FedEx, UPS, and DHL have published their intent to pass savings along, none have provided methodologies. And the retail warehouse company Costco is now arguing for the dismissal of a class action lawsuit on the grounds that it does not owe refunds for higher prices due to tariffs. The stakes for transparency for the average American consumer are high; we will soon find out which importing businesses will make good on their promises. 

Royal Coffee maintained extensive and detailed bookkeeping of tariffed amounts and used an immensely complex system to sustain our operations and raise prices to cover the charges we were required to pay. As the possibility of relief from the federal government to Royal Coffee for at least part of the amount we paid in duties becomes a reality, we are working through our records, with plans to pass along credits to our roasting customers for the tariff amount, which was built into the original price of their green coffee. 

As in other cafés around the country, the coffee roasted and served at The Crown was sold to customers, in the form of drip coffee and espresso drinks, as well as in our whole bean Tasting Collection packages. We felt the most effective way to ease the burden of the tariffed expense on our everyday coffee-drinking customers would be to temporarily reduce the price of our coffee menu items, until the full amount of the tariffs we paid is exhausted. That number is approximately $2,500. 

How Did We Calculate the Expected Refund? 

Our intent here is twofold. In addition to offering a de facto rebate for consumers, we’re also hoping to showcase a sustainable option for roasters and cafes to follow suit. So, for the sake of transparency, here’s how we calculated our tariff amount. 

We did a line-item audit of all coffee stored and served at The Crown from April 5 until November 12, calculated the value of those coffees (FOB price) and the amount that each lot was tariffed.  Royal Coffee’s green coffee customers can find the tariffed amount (cents/lb) on their tariff recovery credit notes.  

We also recognize that coffee loses weight when roasted, and that this fixed “loss” should be accounted for as a cost of doing business as a roaster/retailer. We multiplied our unroasted weight by 85%, a standard shrinkage for lighter roasted coffee. 

Then, we calculated our daily coffee drink sales, and averaged data from recent months, concluding that if we discounted coffee menu items by $0.25 each, we’d run through the allocation of approximately $2,500 in about fifty days. We decided to round that number up to sixty, for ease of implementation and as a gesture of good faith to our customers. 

Lastly, we recognize that there are additional costs of running a coffee business that aren’t accounted for in these calculations. For Royal, the millions of dollars we paid in tariffs on our entire import inventory between April and November of 2025 further increased other costs, including administrative fees to our customs broker, fees to consulting firms to ensure we remained GAAP compliant in our tariff bookkeeping, and higher insurance rates, not to mention the untold additional hours of labor undertaken by our trading, inbound traffic, and accounting teams to track and calculate data. 

Final Thoughts  

As we endeavor to remain trustworthy and reliable partners in a complex and often convoluted supply chain, we promise to continue navigating the unknown with grace and empathy. For now, we’ve decided the best way to responsibly handle our anticipated tariff recovery is to pass that savings along in ways we hope are both meaningful for our customers and sustainable for our business. 

We’re grateful for your patronage and support, and while we work together to make things better for everyone—coffee drinkers and growers and roasters alike—we also appreciate your feedback and would be happy to open a deeper conversation with you about the value of your daily cup.