St. Louis’ Blueprint Coffee describes how they’re getting money back to customers following U.S. tariff refunds.
BY CHRIS RYAN
BARISTA MAGAZINE ONLINE
Photos courtesy of Blueprint Coffee
In August 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump’s new tariffs on more than 90 countries took effect, impacting businesses and industries around the country, including specialty-coffee roasters. For months, every bag of green coffee that U.S. roasters purchased came with new import tariffs, causing green coffee prices to skyrocket.
In November of that year, the Trump administration backpedaled, announcing that green coffee exports were exempt from these tariffs. And in February 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the tariffs were unconstitutional, and the U.S. government was ordered to refund the money.
This whirlwind affected specialty-coffee roasters around the country, and now that refunds have been issued, they’re deciding what action to take. For Blueprint Coffee, a specialty roaster with three coffee bars in St. Louis, it was immediately clear where the money had to go.
“When we first learned of the federal government’s obligation to initiate these widespread refunds,” said Blueprint Director of the Roastery Nora Brady in a press release, “we were one, skeptical; two, cautious; and three, already considering how to make it right by our customers.”
The return process
As a response to the initial tariffs, Blueprint raised prices with wholesale partners, on their website, and at their three cafés. Because customers were forced to foot the bill, once the refunds were announced, the company embarked on getting their money back to them.
“We wanted to be thoughtful and intelligent about how we returned the value of these refunds, just like we were thoughtful and intentional in our decisions to raise prices over the last year,” said Blueprint CFO Mike Marquard in a press release.
Because Blueprint’s wholesale partners, website customers, and retail customers were all uniquely affected by the tariffs, Blueprint created different coupons tailored to their method of purchase and tariff impact.
“We wanted to reward the regulars who frequent our shops the most with the most impactful coupon,” Nora Brady told Barista Magazine Online. “We sent out about 2,000 of this higher-tier coupon to the group of customers who spent the most at Blueprint in 2026, then we did a second tier for a group that sent the second-most with a coupon worth slightly less. These retail coupons will expire on December 31 of this year.”
For wholesale and online partners, Blueprint began by offering a 5% discount code to make up for the tariff fees, and they are now planning to increase it to a 10% discount. “Out of the gate we wanted to make sure the returns were paced and everyone got impactful returns, and now that we are a couple of weeks into it, we are ready to increase the discount percentage,” said Nora.
Making things right
Like any coffee company, Blueprint has inventory, maintenance, and other costs that the tariff refunds could have gone toward covering. But Nora said the team didn’t feel they could keep the tariff money in good conscience.
“We firmly believe that the everyday consumer took the brunt of the financial hit from the imposed tariffs,” she said. “We believe the most moral thing for us to do was to pass on the refunds. We have always been extremely transparent with our wholesale partners around pricing, with evaluations and adjustment reporting happening twice yearly. So this decision felt only natural to us.”
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