The flat white arriving at a cafe table in Dubai this summer may look exactly the same as it always has.
But behind that familiar taste, UAE coffee businesses say they have spent months navigating shipping disruption, rising freight and insurance costs, delayed cargo and unpredictable logistics linked to the Iran war – all while trying to preserve the consistent flavour that customers expect.
“In this environment, the answer was not to change what is in the cup. The answer was to protect it,” says Ivan Kroshnyi, co-founder of Roasters Specialty Coffee House, which has 10 locations across the UAE.
For an industry built around delicate flavour profiles, even relatively small disruptions can have a major impact.
“Freshness and consistency matter a lot, so delays can affect flavour by the time coffee reaches the cafe, if they’re not managed carefully,” says Sasa Sestic, founder of Ona, an Australian speciality coffee company that recently opened its first overseas outpost in Dubai.
Coffee is big business in the UAE, which imported about $332 million worth in 2024, according to trade data from the Observatory of Economic Complexity. The UAE coffee market is forecast to grow by 8.4 per cent annually until 2029, as per market research firm 6Wresearch.
The UAE and wider Gulf’s relationship with coffee stretches back centuries, with historians tracing coffee house culture in the region to 13th century Makkah.
Today, the UAE coffee scene is globalised and heavily dependent on beans imported from producing countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia.
At Cypher Urban Roastery in Dubai, co-founder Mohamad Merhi says the recent instability around the Strait of Hormuz has not fundamentally changed where the company sources coffee from, but it has significantly altered how operators approach procurement and logistics.
“What we are seeing is longer transit times, greater uncertainty around vessel scheduling, and dramatically higher logistics costs,” says Merhi.
One shipment from Peru, he adds, was originally expected to arrive during the first week of March but only reached the UAE in May. Freight costs also rose sharply.
“A shipment that may previously have cost approximately Dh12,000 to Dh15,000 for a container has, in recent cases, risen to approximately Dh70,000 once disruption-related charges are factored in,” Merhi explains.
Those additional costs can include war-risk premiums, emergency rerouting charges, congestion surcharges, demurrage and port diversion fees.
For speciality coffee operators, logistics are not simply an operational concern.
“Small differences matter,” says Merhi. “Coffees selected for delicate florals, fruit-forward profiles, or higher clarity can be more sensitive to handling and logistics conditions than lower-grade commercial coffees.”
That challenge has forced many suppliers to rethink how they move coffee into the UAE without altering the coffees customers recognise.
Kroshnyi says Roasters Specialty Coffee House has avoided altering blends or origins despite the disruption.
“For us, flavour consistency is a matter of reputation,” he says. “We built trust with our customers by offering a stable, high-quality product, and changing a blend because of logistics would undermine that trust.
“Roasters works differently. We buy limited, premium micro lots, and we use air freight [rather than sea freight] for our coffee,” Kroshnyi says. “It is more expensive, but it gives us much better control over timing, freshness and quality.”
He says the company chose to absorb the cost pressure internally rather than pass it on to customers.
That philosophy is echoed by Ona Dubai.
“The biggest challenge over the past few months has been unpredictability around freight and lead times,” says Sestic, a former World Barista Championship winner.
That unpredictability has forced operators to become increasingly creative, he adds, and also sometimes meant taking unusually technical measures.
“In some cases, we freeze coffees at the right point of ageing to preserve flavour and freshness,” Sestic says. “It does increase costs, but for us it’s about making sure the coffee is still presented the way it’s meant to be.”
Others argue the UAE’s sophisticated logistics infrastructure has helped to cushion much of the impact.
Allan Jones, founder and chairman of Coffee Planet, which operates a large roasting facility in Jebel Ali and supplies more than 1,000 business clients, says diversified sourcing and long-term planning helped it maintain stability.
“The UAE itself is a strong global trade and logistics hub,” Jones says. “The country’s infrastructure, connectivity, and ability to adapt quickly during periods of uncertainty have played a huge role in keeping supply chains moving efficiently.”
The company says most customers would have noticed little difference in taste or availability despite the wider shipping disruption.
Commercial coffee supply chains typically rely on larger volumes, commodity pricing and slower-moving freight systems.
Speciality coffee, by contrast, often revolves around carefully sourced micro lots, seasonal beans and highly specific flavour characteristics. Keeping those coffees tasting the way roasters intended during months of regional instability has often meant suppliers absorbing higher costs as they rethink logistics.
For many operators, the real success story is that most customers have never realised a battle was taking place behind their morning coffee.
“We chose to absorb the complexity around the supply chain rather than let that complexity reach the customer,” says Kroshnyi.
