DOOR COUNTY (NBC 26) — Kate Shepard has owned Kick Coffee in Sturgeon Bay for nine years.
"I see a lot of people everyday, learn about the lives, (and) learn about the whole town," Shepard said when asked about her favorite part about owning the store.
She has also learned a lot about severe weather patterns affecting her shop.
"Any change in the weather in coffee-growing regions results in an increase in coffee prices due to decrease in production," Shepard said.
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Citigroup says its economists are monitoring El Niño's impact on food prices, with effects potentially arriving early next year.
Reuters reports the weather pattern will not affect all coffee the same way.
For robusta coffee, the threat is more immediate: key growing regions, like Vietnam and Indonesia, are expected to see high temperatures and reduced rainfall.
Kick sources its coffee through Colectivo, a Milwaukee-based company which sources Arabica beans from across the globe.
For arabica coffee, nearly half of which is grown in Brazil, experts say the picture is more complicated.
In the short term, warmer temperatures could actually help some arabica crops by preventing damaging frosts. But long term, the dryness and heat El Niño brings to key arabica-growing regions could hurt output next year.
"We have to choose if we're going to ride that out, or whether we need to pass that increase onto our consumers," Shepard said.
Shepard says that she's not increasing prices yet, saying that their coffee is stored for long periods of time.
"You have to make cuts in other ways," Shepard said when asked about prices remaining the same. "So, maybe it means employing less people. Maybe it means pouring smaller cups."
