But, recently, coffee prices have been on the rise, brewing trouble for businesses, which are already struggling with bitter conditions and cost-sensitive customers. Navigating these stumbling blocks has forced coffee purveyors to learn “to be agile,” said Peter Mark Ingalls, owner of Seattle-based coffee roaster Kuma Coffee. Increased demand worldwide, combined with smaller coffee harvests in recent years, are affecting coffee prices, the National Coffee Association said. “Both the tariff environment and coffee prices continue to be dynamic,” said Chief Financial Officer Cathy Smith in the company’s latest quarterly earnings call. It’s “still expensive” to run a coffee shop in Seattle, Gultekin said.