The World Price of Coffee Crashed. Your Jar Got More Expensive Anyway

By מערכת סופרקליר · 2026-07-16 · 5 min read

−23% — How far the global price of coffee fell over the past year (the ICO combined index, May 2025 vs May 2026, per Walla and Maariv) — while over the same period Israeli retail coffee rose about 14%, and in Superclear's data the same 100g can of Elite Turkish coffee still ranges from ₪8.30 to ₪14.90 (July 2026)

In late 2024 and early 2025, Israel's coffee makers were confident they were explaining something simple: the world price of coffee beans was going wild, so your jar had to get more expensive. The argument was true at the time. But over the past year the world price of coffee did exactly the opposite — it crashed — and your jar kept climbing anyway. This is a story about what happens to a price when its excuse disappears.

In the world: coffee is crashing

After two years of Brazilian drought and a supply crunch that pushed coffee beans to a multi-decade high, the trend reversed. According to Walla Finance and Maariv, the International Coffee Organization's (ICO) combined index stood at 334.41 US cents per pound in May 2025 and fell to 256.05 cents by May 2026 — a drop of about 23.4% in a single year. June (data through the 11th) showed a decline of roughly 19.8% versus a year earlier. Robusta, the cheaper variety used mainly for instant coffee, fell about 30%; the arabica varieties fell between roughly 18% and 23%.

In other words: the core input of every jar of instant coffee and every bag of Turkish coffee got significantly cheaper. If the 2024 price hikes were driven by the surge in bean prices, logic says a fall this sharp should have fed back to the shelf, at least in part.

On your shelf: coffee is getting pricier

It didn't. In the same reporting, the Institute for Retail Research's monthly price sample found that the average observed price of coffee on the Israeli shelf actually rose about 14.4% over the year — from an average of ₪19.85 to ₪22.71. The item-level numbers are sharper: Elite Turkish coffee with cardamom at Osher Ad rose, per the survey, from ₪6.10 in June 2025 to ₪8.90 in June 2026 — a 45.9% jump; Landwer capsules at Shufersal Deal rose about 39%; Elite Brazilian coffee rose about 32.5%; and Nescafé Red Mug rose about 10.4%.

This is the picture in full reverse: the world price down about 23%, the shelf price in Israel up about 14%. The gap between the two trends — nearly 40 percentage points — is precisely the kind of gap Israel's cost of living is built from.

Two companies, one direction

Why does this happen? Per the same reporting, the Israeli coffee shelf is dominated by two companies — Strauss-Elite and Nestlé-Osem — so the competition for consumer loyalty runs less on price and more on brand. And when they raise a price, they raise it with the trend.

The hikes are well documented. According to Globes, back in January 2025 Strauss raised instant coffee by 18% and black coffee by 14%, citing bean costs that had surged by tens of percent. Half a year later came another round: per Calcalist, in June 2025 instant coffee rose a further 8%, Turkish 5% and cocoa powder 16% — again, blaming beans that had climbed by up to 49% over six months.

That reasoning was fair as long as beans were actually rising. There's also a legitimate, partial explanation for the lag in the other direction: roasters buy beans on forward contracts months in advance, so a fall on the exchange doesn't reach the shelf the same day. But as a Maariv columnist wrote back in March, what remains is a familiar asymmetry: when the input rises, the hike reaches the shelf immediately; when the input falls, the cut gets stuck on the way. So far, no wave of price cuts to match the world's 23% drop has been reported.

What our data shows

This is where our own numbers come in. We took the exact product the Institute for Retail Research flagged — Elite Turkish coffee with cardamom, 100g, the same barcode (7290000176079) — and checked what it actually costs nationwide. In Superclear's scan of July 16, 2026, it was sold in 1,329 stores across 31 chains. The median price: ₪10.90. But the range runs from ₪8.30 to ₪14.90 — a gap of nearly 80% on the identical can.

At the chain level, the cheap end is Osher Ad, at a median of ₪8.90 — almost exactly the figure the Institute flagged at Osher Ad in June, and the chain that also comes out cheapest in Israel on Superclear's overall priciness index. Rami Levy follows at ₪9.70. At the other end sits City Market at ₪14.90, alongside the "convenience" formats — AM:PM, Yellow, Dor Alon, Wolt — at around ₪12.90 for the same can, meaning up to about 45% more than Osher Ad for an identical product.

The bulk pack tells the same story: a one-kilo bag of Elite Turkish coffee (barcode 7290000176116) sells in 306 stores in a range of ₪76.20 to ₪119.90 — a gap of more than ₪43 on the very same kilo of coffee.

The bottom line for coffee buyers

So what happened to your coffee price? In the world it fell sharply; on your shelf it rose, and stayed stuck high. Some of the gap will be explained by forward contracts and local costs — but a 23% global drop is exactly the transparency test: if and when the cut reaches the shelf, we'll see it.

Until then, two practical takeaways. First: don't accept "the world price went up" as an automatic explanation for a hike — in the coffee market right now, the world price is in fact going down. Second, and more important: the gap between ₪8.30 and ₪14.90 on the same can of coffee isn't the dollar exchange rate and isn't the weather in Brazil. It's simply each chain's decision about how much to charge — and the only way to avoid paying the top of that range is to compare, can against can, before you buy.

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