The Aldi Breakfast Essential That's Quickly Becoming More Expensive

More than half of Americans need one thing to get started in the morning; a breakfast staple that softens the edges of the day's first few hours. Around 66% of us begin our daily rituals with coffee. We love it so much that beverage stations were the biggest feature of kitchen design in 2024. We stock our personal coffee nooks with every kind of coffee and all the creamers we can find; and mugs that say things like "don't talk to me until I've had my coffee." But saving some cash by shopping for coffee at Aldi is getting harder on the wallet.

For years, Aldi has had shoppers entranced with organic, Fair Trade certified, whole bean coffee from Simply Nature, offered at an affordable price. But that cost has gone up a couple of dollars in the last year and those prices are expected to continue to rise. Customers on Reddit remember paying $4.35 for a 12-ounce bag of whole beans at Aldi, in 2019. Today, Aldi sells that same 12-ounce bag for about $9.15, depending on the location. Those numbers didn't change gradually, either; Aldi coffee prices climbed 13% in April 2025 alone, and throughout the summer that price just kept going up. Costs reportedly jumped from around $6 in early summer to the $7 range in June, and continued to soar from there.

There are overpriced foods at Aldi, according to customers, but coffee isn't on that list. Those whole beans have been a longtime favorite of Aldi shoppers and customers still go for their favorite grind despite the increased price. Superfans (myself included) continue to strategize how to get the most out of Aldi's "Aisle of Shame" and many of us routinely drop that bag of whole beans in our cart. If Aldi was the only outlet raising coffee prices, the story might be different — but coffee prices have gone up everywhere and Aldi appears to be along for the ride. It's mostly thanks to two events that coincided in summer 2025 to greatly impact the coffee industry.

The U.S. produces coffee in Hawai'i, California, and Puerto Rico; but imports most of its beans from places like Brazil, Columbia, and Guatemala. Drought impacted many of those coffee-producing countries in 2025, destroying crops and lowering the overall inventory. Then came the tariffs, or hikes in taxes that countries have to pay on goods imported to the U.S.; an increase that is passed on to the customer every time. Experts say those prices are likely to remain high, too, if they don't climb even further thanks to continued supply shortages, weather issues, tariff increases, and the world's ever-growing obsession with coffee.