Global briefings

Cafes & coffee shops

All owner-operated businesses

Cafes & coffee shops · 2026-09-17

Coffee went into surplus for the first time in five years. It is worth half a cent a cup to you

Short answer, because it is the question everyone in the trade is being asked right now: the world coffee price averaged 287.29 US cents a pound in August 2026, which is 3.3% below where it was a year earlier. That is the whole dividend from a record Brazilian crop and the first global surplus in five years, and in a double shot it comes to about half a cent. The number worth your attention sits three pages further into the same report, and it is not a price at all.

All owner-operated businesses · 2026-09-10

Prices rose 4.1%. Energy rose 11.6%. Guess which one your price list followed

Two numbers came out of the same OECD release on 8 September. Consumer prices across the OECD are up 4.1% on the year. Energy is up 11.6%. If you set your prices once a year against the inflation figure on the news, you have been recovering roughly a third of what your electricity actually did, and the difference has been coming straight off your profit since April.

All owner-operated businesses · 2026-07-06

AI is widening the gap between businesses that run on systems and businesses that run on the owner

This one is not tied to any single country. AI tools are now cheap and everywhere, and there is a quiet pattern in who they actually help. It is not the businesses with the newest tools. It is the businesses that had already written down how they run.