On a menu populated by $6 pour overs and $8.50 experimental drinks, such as raspberry amaretto Italian soda with espresso, a 25 cent discount might not seem like a lot. But for the next six weeks or so, the Crown, a coffee tasting room in Oakland, is knocking a quarter off the price of its drinks — because, it says, you’ve already paid it.
The café, which is on the Chronicle’s list of best Bay Area coffee shops, is refunding customers for a portion of the duties that its parent company, Royal Coffee, paid on imported coffee last year as a result of the Trump administration’s sweeping tariffs policy. In February, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Trump-directed tariffs enacted using the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act, and in May, the federal government began paying out refunds.
The Crown figures it owes customers roughly $2,500, which it estimates will take through the end of August to pay out, one drink at a time. “It’s the right thing to do, for the refund to be passed along to everyday coffee drinkers who ended up funding the bill,” said Chris Kornman, the Crown’s director of education…