Europe’s coffee houses are in trouble

There’s bad news for coffee fans: the price of your favourite beverage – which has already rocketed in recent years – is about to soar. A prolonged heatwave in Vietnam, the world’s second largest coffee producing country after Brazil, is damaging the coffee crop and sending the cost of robusta beans – used in instant coffee – soaring. In Brazil, higher end arabica beans are being hit by greater than average rainfall. Such extreme weather events are coupled with attacks on merchant shipping bringing Asian coffee to Europe through the Gulf by Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, disrupting coffee supply chains and further boosting prices.

All this will put extra pressure on Europe’s historic coffee houses – already suffering setbacks from the Covid lockdowns, as well as steeply rising rents on their premises. They also face competition from takeaway coffee chains such as Starbucks, Costa Coffee and Caffe Nero.

One of the many differences historically between Britain and our continental cousins across the Channel is our lack of a cafe culture.