Your $5.25 latte, illuminated.
The world's largest coffee chain prints a receipt with every order. It just doesn't print this one: what the beans cost, what the baristas cost, what the company keeps, and what reaches the farmer. Hold it up to the light.
The receipt they don't print · illuminate.coffee
The benchmark price for mild arabica ran between about $1.30 and $1.65 a pound from 2016 to 2020 and above $3.50 in 2025. Drag to test other prices.
Show as table
Estimates, not leaked documents. The chain doesn't publish what each item costs, so these are built from its public menu prices and recipes, commodity prices and its own annual report. See the method.
Farmer's share of your latte
2¢
of every dollar you pay
All five, in the same light
Same assumptions for every item. Segments run from the farm to the boardroom: the red sliver is the farmer, the darkest block is profit.
Every number above is computed in the open. Read the model, or change an assumption and watch the receipt follow.
The farmer's line
12.5M
farms grow the world's coffee. Most are smaller than five hectares and sell through middlemen who set the price.
44%
of smallholder coffee-farming households live below the poverty line, by Enveritas' estimate.
$1.80
a pound is the Fairtrade minimum for washed arabica. For most of the last decade the market paid less than that.
What would paying farmers more cost you?
Coffee is such a small part of the price that even a big raise for the farmer barely moves it. Drag to try.
What treating farmers well looks like
- A price that covers the cost of growing it. Growing a pound of arabica costs most smallholders somewhere between $1.20 and $1.80. When the market pays less, as it did for most of the last decade, the shortfall comes out of food, schooling and next year's fertilizer.
- Long commitments, paid on time. Multi-year contracts and pre-financing let a farm plan, hire and invest. Spot buying at whatever the market does that week pushes every risk onto the grower.
- A published price. The most useful thing a roaster can do is print what it paid, at the farm gate and at the port, so buyers can compare. Certifications are a floor. A published price is proof.
What you can do. Buy whole bean from roasters who publish their prices and brew it at home, where far more of each dollar reaches the farm. When you do buy a latte, remember that the milk and the cup cost more than the coffee did. Asking a café what it pays its farmers is a fair question.
How we got these numbers
Every line on the receipt is computed from the assumptions below, in the open. Change one and the receipt changes with it.
Prices
Typical 2026 US prices at the chain with the green aprons, for a Grande (16 oz) unless noted. Prices vary by city; New York and airports run higher. Menu prices last checked September 2026.
The benchmark price
The default green price and the ten-year chart use the International Coffee Organization's “Other Mild Arabicas” indicator, a monthly average published by the IMF. It refreshes here automatically every week. It runs a little above the futures “C” price that news reports quote, and large buyers pay a quality differential on top of either.
The coffee
Black coffee follows the chain's own brewing standard of 10 g per 6 oz. A Grande latte uses a double shot (about 18 g), cold brew roughly 30 g, and a blended frappé a few grams of soluble coffee. Roasting drives off about 16% of the weight, so 18 g of roasted coffee started as about 21 g of green.
The farmer's share and margin
The farmer's line is 70% of the green price. Milling, inland transport, export and import take the rest, a spread in line with what transparency projects report for washed arabica sold through cooperatives. Smallholders selling cherry to intermediaries often receive much less. Growing a pound costs most smallholders $1.20 to $1.80; the receipt uses $1.50, so the farmer's margin turns into a loss whenever the benchmark drops below about $2.14. “Beans to the store” is the 30% plus about 60¢ per roasted pound for roasting, bulk packaging and delivery.
Milk, syrups, cups
Milk at $3.85 a gallon (3¢ an ounce), close to US wholesale prices. Syrups, sauces and whipped cream at typical foodservice prices: roughly 4¢ a pump of syrup, 6¢ a pump of sauce, 12¢ for whipped cream. A hot cup with lid and sleeve about 22¢, a cold cup with lid 24¢, a valve bag for whole bean 55¢.
Baristas, rent, corporate
The chain's fiscal 2024 annual report puts store operating expenses at about half of company-operated store sales. We split that as 30% of the price to baristas and 19% to rent, utilities, equipment, waste and card fees. Headquarters, marketing, technology and depreciation add about 12%. The company doesn't break these out by drink, so the same shares apply to every café item.
Profit and tax
Profit before tax is what's left. Income tax is estimated at 24%, the chain's recent effective rate. Company-wide, it reported a 15% operating margin and $3.8 billion of net earnings on $36.2 billion of revenue in fiscal 2024. Individual drinks run above that average because food, merchandise, licensing and overseas stores earn less.
Whole bean
A one-pound bag takes almost no barista time, so it carries the store-cost share typical of grocery retail, about a quarter of the price, instead of the café share of about half. Corporate overhead is the same 12% either way. Twelve-ounce grocery bags are cheaper per bag but similar per pound.
What this model can't see
The chain buys forward and hedges, so its real bean cost lags the market. It says it pays premiums above the benchmark under its own sourcing program. Licensed stores keep store-level profit themselves. None of that changes the shape of the receipt: the coffee stays the cheapest thing in the cup.
Sources
- The chain's fiscal 2024 annual report (Form 10-K), on file with the SEC: revenue, cost lines, operating margin, tax rate.
- IMF, global price of coffee, other mild arabicas (via FRED): the benchmark price and its history.
- International Coffee Organization: indicator prices and market reports.
- Specialty Coffee Transaction Guide: what roasters actually pay for green coffee.
- Fairtrade International: minimum price and premium for washed arabica, effective 2023, and cost-of-production research.
- Enveritas: number of coffee farms and smallholder poverty estimates.
- USDA Agricultural Marketing Service: wholesale dairy prices.
- The chain's own website and in-store menus: brewing standards, recipes and prices.
Illuminate Coffee is independent and not affiliated with any coffee company. The example is the world's largest café chain, chosen because it publishes audited financials and uses the same recipes everywhere. Every figure here is an estimate; if you have better data, open an issue.