Money Minute: Drought Leads Smucker to Boost Coffee Prices

DailyFinance Staff
Updated

You might face some sticker shock when you grab for that morning cup of joe.

Coffee prices at the wholesale level have soared by about 50 percent this year, and now a leading retailer of packaged coffee is upping prices. J.M. Smucker (SJM), which owns the Folgers and Dunkin' Donuts brands, is raising prices by an average of 9 percent. The company says it's the first increase in three years. The main reason for the big jump in wholesale prices is the horrible drought that has plagued growing areas in Brazil. We haven't yet heard from Maxwell House, the other big supermarket brand from Kraft Foods (KRFT), to see if it, too, plans to raise prices.

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-Produced by Drew Trachtenberg.

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