How the price of a cup of English breakfast tea is soaring above £4 in some fancy chains including Joe and the Juice

A cup of tea has become the latest victim of soaring inflation rates in the UK, with some upmarket cafes now charging more than £4 for a brew. 

While a good old cup of tea is a staple of the nation, with Brits enjoying around 100 million cups daily, the price is getting increasingly less affordable to have outside the house.

Danish juice and coffee brand Joe & the Juice, which has more than 50 branches in London alone, and outlets across the UK including Liverpool, Brighton, Birmingham and Oxford, currently charges £4.10 for a cup of English breakfast when ordered via UberEats.

Meanwhile,  Starbucks customers pay £3.05 and Caffe Concerto sells the drink for £3.95.

This is a massive mark-up from making it at home. The cost of a teabag from a leading brand cost less than 3p at most supermarkets. 

Currently Tesco offers 210 PG Tips or Yorkshire Tea bags for £5.49, which works our at just 2.6p a cup.

Most chains now sell a cup of tea for more than £3. 

Londoners’s favourites Gails and Pret A Manger sell for £3.40 and £3.30 respectively, while Costa charge £3.15 and Black Sheep Coffee sells brew for £3.09.

The only major coffee chain to come in under the £3 mark is Caffe Nero, who sells their tea for £2.95 and Greggs where it cost £1.55.

Many shops charge even more for herbal and iced teas, while prices can vary across the UK in some chains.

The most expensive cup of tea is believed to be  The Rubens Golden Tips £500 for a pot of three serves.

It is served at the Rubens hotel, next to Buckingham Palace, and is a very rare tea blend produced in the highlands of Sri Lanka.      

Tea costs jumped by 34 per cent in March alone due to rising industry costs and the Red Sea crisis affecting container ship movements, making them 50 per cent higher than a year ago.  

The main factor is said to be disruption to shipping from the world’s biggest producers and exporters – China, India, Kenya and Sri Lanka – resulting from attacks on vessels in the Red Sea.

With shortages looming, Marco Forgione, of the Institute of Export and International Trade, said: ‘The tranquillity of our tea supply and demand has been disrupted by recent upheavals, which has resulted in a surge in prices.

‘These disruptions have rippled throughout the global supply chain, adding to price pressures, shrinkflation and availability issues, all of which put further pressure on consumers’ already stretched purses and complicating businesses’ supply chains.’

Meanwhile, the cost of a latte is being pushed towards £5 or more by High Street coffee shops and cafés.

At Starbucks, the price of a large latte is £5.20 when ordered for collection on Uber Eats in London, while Queens of Mayfair, in one of the British capital’s swankiest postcodes, charges an eye-watering £13 for its latte.

 Joe & the Juice currently charges £4.70 for a large (16oz) latte with regular milk. 

Add in a syrup, say vanilla, and you’ll get charged an additional 50 pence, although unlike many other outlets, you won’t be charged extra for an additional milk. 

It comes after it emerged that Britain’s most expensive coffee using topica beans shipped in from Japan‘s ‘island of eternal youth’ is being sold for a whopping £265 a cup. 

Coffee lovers who have a few hundred pounds to spare can find the pricey brew at Shot – a darkly-lit coffee shop based in Mayfair and Marylebone in London.

The coffee is made from typica beans, a higher quality version of the arabica beans, and have been shipped in from the Nakayama estate based on the Okinawa Island in Japan.

At Shot, the high priced beverage can be made into any form of coffee that would be found in a high street coffee shop. It is available as an espresso, macchiato, flat white, americano, cappuccino or latte. 

But while the price of the drink has raised eyebrows, even the modest latte is seemingly becoming more expensive, with many coffee lovers saying they’re already paying more than £5 by adding extra shots, dairy alternatives and flavoured syrups.

High-end fashion label Prada’s London coffee shop in Harrods department store, launched in 2023, charges £6.50 for a latte.

Caffe Nero’s is priced at £4.40 for a large latte, the same as Costa Coffee. Pret A Manger and Patisserie Valerie come in slightly cheaper at £4.05. 

But this is before any additions are made – for instance, adding coconut and oat milk to your Caffe Nero beverage will set you back up to 50p. 

Syrups such as caramel, vanilla and hazelnut at Costa Coffee, meanwhile, will cost up to 55p.

At trendy Black Sheep Coffee, which has more than 80 branches across the UK and is expanding fast both here and overseas, a regular Black Hoof coffee will set you back £5.29.

Add an extra shot (69p), a syrup (69p) and make it almond milk (59p) and your pimped up coffee is a whopping £7.26.

MailOnline ordered the coffee above in Aberdeen, and it would have cost the same in London’s West End – but the cost of your coffee can depend where you live.

While most major coffee chains have regional pricing, some, including Black Sheep and Pret, don’t, charging the same prices in almost all of their stores.

If you’re on the road, then a service station outlet is likely to charge you more for your coffee than the same brand in your local town.

Likewise an airport café might also charge you more for the privilege of a decent brew while you wait for your flight.

A large latte with a caramel shot at Costa Coffee Birmingham airport costs £4.95. The same drink at Freshney Place in the North East Lincolnshire town of Grimsby costs 20 pence less.

The price of a cup of coffee has been driven up by a third in the last three years, according to recent research.

A standard medium latte from a high street chain is now likely to set you back £3.70. In 2021, the same drink at the same café – a branch of Pret in Buckinghamshire – would have cost 30 per cent less at £2.75,  according to a study carried out by manufacturer UCC Coffee.

Unsurprisingly, some of the only retail units that aren’t floundering on the UK’s high streets are coffee shops – with many selling a raft of associated drinks, some of which have little to do with caffeine. 

There is also the growing elite coffee market, where the world’s most bougie beans are filtered – using a variety of techniques – and menus are presented like wine lists, with baristas on hand to tell you all about your expensive brew. 

A cup brewed using Jamaican Blue Mountain Anaerobic Natural beans – which have notes of ‘chocolate’ and ‘zesty orange’ and boasts ‘bright acidity’ – are served up at Queens of Mayfair for no less than £10.50, and that’s for an espresso shot. A latte costs an eye-watering £13, with a mocha at £15. 

And should you want the Bollinger of the coffee world, then look to Asia‘s civet cats, who are behind the sought-after Kopi Luwak beans. 

In Indonesia and the Philippines, locals pick beans from the faeces of the cats, who eat the ripe coffee berries as part of their diet. They’re then cleaned, roasted and sold to coffee connoisseurs.

A cup, which boasts a ‘deep, mellow flavour, not acidic’ can cost in excess of £60 in restaurants.

However, fears over cruel farming practices – Harrods stopped selling the beans a decade ago – has seen only organically sourced beans now sold, sending the prices spiralling even further. 

Meanwhile, Britain’s most expensive coffee using topica beans shipped in from Japan’s ‘island of eternal youth’ is being sold for a whopping £265 a cup.

According to baristas working in the influencer-haven of Shot, the coffee is reportedly ordered ‘two to three times a week’ and is most often ordered by ‘true coffee lovers’.

Maxwell Colonna-Dashwood, a UK barista champion and founder of Colonna Coffee, told the Telegraph that ‘hardly anyone grows coffee in Japan’ because of the difficult climate. He speculated that this may be the reason for the extreme cost of the beans.

Mr Colonna-Dashwood said: ‘Rarity is obviously sought-after in coffee, and most of the “fancy” coffee people drink is all arabica. 

‘Typica, which is what is used here, is not the most sought-after variety of arabica – I’ve never seen a typica that expensive before – which suggests the value is coming from the fact that it’s grown in Japan.’ He added that it was the most expensive coffee he had ever seen.