Do we like them?

Do we like Nescafé?

Instant and soluble coffee brand owned by Nestlé, the Swiss food group; one of the world's biggest coffee brands.

Our score: 5 out of 10. Mixed. A big sourcing programme is under way, but farmers say the prices they get are too low, and the progress figures are the company's own. We'd back them cautiously.

Nescafé is Nestlé's flagship instant coffee brand. In 2022 the company launched Nescafé Plan 2030, with over CHF 1 billion to be spent by 2030 on regenerative farming. It aims for 20% of coffee from regenerative methods by 2025 and 50% by 2030, and has pledged to help farmers plant 20 million trees.

Nescafé says it beat the 2025 goal, with 32% of its coffee coming from farmers using regenerative practices. It also says adopting farmers cut emissions by 20-40% per kilo of beans. That is the company talking and trade press repeating it, so we'd like independent checks.

The farmers' side is less rosy. Public Eye published a report called "High hopes, low prices", accusing Nestlé of driving Mexican coffee farmers to ruin. The farmers talked about "Plan Nescafé", and Nestlé has responded to the claims.

Nestlé's top job has been messy. Reuters-sourced reports say it fired CEO Laurent Freixe in September 2025, after an investigation found an undisclosed relationship with a subordinate. Nespresso boss Philipp Navratil replaced him. Freixe's own predecessor, Mark Schneider, had also been ousted a year earlier. We give it a middling score.