Coffee prices in the UAE: why they surged, and when relief will arrive

Why global coffee prices hit record highs in 2024 and 2025

Coffee prices do not surge overnight. The conditions behind the 2024–2025 crisis were building for years — and understanding them is essential context for any serious coffee buyer in the UAE or GCC.

Global coffee consumption has grown steadily for a decade, driven by café culture expansion across Asia, rapid premiumisation of the out-of-home beverage market in the Middle East, and a generational shift in consumer behaviour. The UAE specialty coffee market alone is now valued at over USD 600 million and growing at more than 10% annually. Demand was consistently outpacing supply.

The supply side then faced a sequence of compounding shocks. Brazil — which alone supplies approximately 38% of the world's coffee — experienced its worst drought in recorded history in 2024. This coincided with the natural off-year of the biennial arabica production cycle, causing Brazilian arabica output to fall sharply. Simultaneously, Vietnam, the world's largest robusta producer, was still recovering from drought-related shortfalls in its 2023/24 harvest season.

The cumulative result: five consecutive years of global supply deficit. Industry ending stocks — the buffer that absorbs disruption — fell to their thinnest levels since the early 2000s. In this environment, any additional shock to supply produces an outsized price response. Several shocks arrived at once.

US trade policy compounded the problem. The Trump administration placed a combined 50% tariff on Brazilian coffee imports into the United States — the world's largest arabica buyer. Brazilian coffee flows to the US collapsed by 53% year-on-year by September 2025. The displaced volume found new markets, distorting global trade routes and pushing prices higher for buyers everywhere — including specialty coffee buyers in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and across the Gulf.

Is the arabica price correction real — and what does it mean for UAE operators?

Yes — the correction is real and underway. Arabica futures have fallen approximately 26% from their all-time high. Global coffee production for the 2025/26 season is now forecast at a record 178.8 million bags, driven by recovery in Vietnam, a strong robusta season in Brazil, and record outputs in Ethiopia and Indonesia. Colombia has delivered its most productive arabica harvest in over thirty years, actively moderating arabica prices and improving availability of high-quality washed lots — particularly relevant for UAE specialty coffee buyers.

The World Bank projects arabica prices to decline by approximately 13% through 2026, with further moderation in 2027. Analysts at Rabobank forecast a stabilisation range of USD 2.50–3.00 per pound for arabica by late 2026 — meaningfully below the 2025 peaks, though still well above the pre-crisis norms of 2020 to 2023.

For coffee procurement teams in the UAE and GCC hospitality sector, however, there is an important distinction between market correction and operational relief.

Forward purchasing contracts and multi-month supply chains mean green coffee price movements take three to six months to reach a roaster's invoice — and longer still to reach what hotels, restaurant groups, and catering companies actually pay. A UAE operator whose coffee supplier is sourcing on 90-day contracts will not feel a price correction that occurred in Q1 until at least Q3.

A further complication is specific to the Gulf: the Strait of Hormuz disruption since late February 2026 has forced major container lines — including Maersk, CMA CGM, and Hapag-Lloyd — to reroute around the Cape of Good Hope. For UAE coffee importers, this adds 10 to 20 days to transit times and is pushing freight and insurance costs higher at precisely the moment green coffee input costs were supposed to be easing.

What hospitality operators and F&B teams in the UAE are doing differently

Across the UAE and GCC, the hotels, restaurant groups, and catering operations managing this period most effectively share three operational decisions in common. These apply whether you are reviewing your current coffee supplier, renegotiating a contract, or building a new coffee programme from scratch.

Move from commodity buying to partnership buying. Operators who treat coffee procurement purely as a price-comparison exercise have no relationship buffer when supply gets tight. The hospitality teams doing better have working relationships with coffee roasters and suppliers in Dubai and the UAE who hold local green coffee stock, communicate proactively about market conditions, and can offer credible alternatives when a specific origin becomes constrained. Local stock is a genuine differentiator in a market facing Red Sea and Hormuz disruption.

Diversify your origin programme. The 2024–2025 price surge is partly a story of concentration risk — too much of the global coffee market depending on one country in one growing cycle. Hospitality operators who had already diversified their coffee menu across two or three origins had significantly more flexibility when Brazilian arabica became scarce and expensive. Asking your specialty coffee supplier in Dubai how many producing countries they source from is now a legitimate and important procurement question.

Think in cost-per-cup, not cost-per-bag. This is the conversation most F&B and hotel procurement teams are not yet having — and it is the one with the most direct impact on the bottom line. Higher-quality beans, extracted correctly with well-maintained equipment and a trained barista team, produce better yield: fewer wasted shots, higher consistency, fewer guest complaints. Operators still benchmarking only on bag price are routinely carrying hidden costs in yield loss and service failure that dwarf the premium they are trying to avoid paying.

Coffee market outlook for UAE and GCC operators — what to plan for

The global coffee market is entering a period of gradual normalisation. Production is recovering. Arabica prices are declining from historic highs. The structural deficit conditions that drove the surge are beginning to ease.

Three risks remain live for hospitality and F&B procurement teams across the UAE and GCC. First, climate volatility is a permanent and intensifying feature of coffee agriculture — the next significant drought in Brazil or Vietnam will come, and the question is only when. Second, the Red Sea and Hormuz shipping disruption continues to add cost and time to import cycles for Gulf coffee buyers, and there is no near-term resolution in sight. Third, and most significantly for the UAE market, demand is still growing. The UAE specialty coffee market is projected to more than double in value by 2030, meaning competition for quality-sourced origins will intensify, not ease.

The twelve months ahead are the right window to do the structural work: review your roaster relationships, understand exactly where your coffee is sourced and how your supplier manages supply risk, build buffer stock into your planning cycle, and ensure your coffee programme is positioned for a market that is now structurally more complex than it was three years ago.

The era of cheap, stable, and abundant coffee is behind us. What comes next belongs to F&B operators and procurement managers who treat coffee as a strategic category — not a commodity line item to be minimised quarter by quarter.

About Mattina Artisan Roastery

Mattina Artisan Roastery is Dubai's specialty coffee roastery, established in 2014. We supply freshly roasted single-origin and blended coffee, commercial espresso equipment, SCA-certified barista training, and full coffee programme management to hotels, airlines, corporate offices, catering operations, and cafés across the UAE and GCC. Our coffee is sourced from 18 origins across four continents, and we hold ISO, HACCP, Halal, Organic, Fairtrade, and Rainforest Alliance certifications.

The Coffee Brief is our monthly series for F&B professionals, hospitality managers, procurement teams, and café operators across the region. Each issue covers one topic in depth — supply chain, origins, operations, sustainability, or market trends.

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