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The way Australians drink coffee is changing, with more and more switching to home brews while cafes are 'running on a shoestring'.
October 1 is International Coffee Day, which celebrates the global significance of the popular beverage. Cost-of-living pressures are forcing more coffee lovers to change their spending habits amid rising cafe prices.
At a Queensland coffee-processing factory, 10 people are employed to ensure every batch tastes exactly as it should. Each day they gather in groups of three or four around a rotating table, which has a few sinks on the side so they can spit out the samples as they go.
"We do sample up to 100 cups per day, so you don't want to be drinking that much coffee on a standard day," quality assurance manager or "chief taste-tester" for Nestlé Glenn Jones said. The factory in Gympie, about two hours' drive north of Brisbane, has been producing instant coffee since 1997. Mr Jones said even though drinking the beverage was part of his job description, he also enjoyed it when he was off duty.
"I need coffee before I come to work in the morning, then I taste it all day, and I'll have coffee on the weekends — I love coffee," he said. Mr Jones is not alone in his obsession, with an estimated three-quarters of Australians consuming coffee regularly. But Martin Brown, general manager of Nestlé's coffee and dairy business, said the company's sales figures showed a shift back to home consumption.
" one of the most sophisticated coffee cultures in the world, but we also have a cost-of-living challenge at the moment," Mr Brown said. He said cappuccino sachets had been the "fastest-growing part of the market" in the past five years, but there was also a shift back to more "traditional" soluble instant coffee.
The latest Australian Bureau of Statistics data showed food and non-alcoholic beverage prices rose by 3 per cent in the 12 months leading up to August this year, with meals out and takeaway prices up 4.5 per cent. On Queensland's Sunshine Coast, university student Charlotte Cairns said it was even more expensive to buy a cold coffee.
"Whereas when it's like $9 dollars just for an iced latte it's like, 'OK, this is strictly a treat, I can't be doing this tomorrow as well'. ""It's very expensive. We have one special coffee a day, so we try not to double up," Ms Mayfield said. While green bean prices have dropped in 2026, they remain three times higher than in 2021.
Australian Specialty Coffee Association president Bruno Maiolo said the drop had not offset the increase in "all of the other costs", including rent, electricity, milk and wages.
"People are going broke, not because they're necessarily bad operators; it's because they cannot keep the margins that are required to stay in business. He said consumers in Australia had much cheaper coffee than in European countries, despite the fact that it was more expensive to make here.
"We have a phobia of putting the price up because we're all scared that everyone will stop drinking coffee and they'll go somewhere else," he said. Simon O'Brien runs a coffee shop by the beach at Alexandra Headland and said he was able to still charge $5 for a cup due to the regular foot traffic.
"We've got coffee that people keep coming back for, and it's not so much about making a massive profit on each cup," Mr O'Brien said. ABC Sunshine — local news in your inbox
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