When asked about his four- to five-cup-per-day coffee habit, Paul Beatrice pulled from his wallet a shiny gold card that did much of the explaining for him.

It was the Starbucks Gold Card, the highest level of the coffee company’s customer rewards program. He held it up and smiled after sipping iced coffee during a business meeting at York City’s Green Bean Roasting Company.

For loyal coffee drinkers like Beatrice, it’ll take more than a price increase to break a caffeine habit.

Coffee price increases have outpaced even the hike in gasoline prices over the past year.

A one-pound can of ground coffee sold for $5.10 in April, up 40 percent from $3.64 the year before, according to the Department of Labor.

Major exporters, including Indonesia, have seen smaller crops because of inclement weather, just as economic growth and an upwardly mobile work force in China are fueling demand.

But coffee-loving consumers like Beatrice don’t seem to care about shelling out more for joe.

Recession proof: Unlike many other discretionary items, coffee usually emerges from a recession relatively unscathed, economists say.

That’s because when money is tight, people may buy cheaper brands of coffee, but they won’t give it up completely.

Americans consumed 21.7 million 60-kilogram bags of coffee in 2008, during the depths of the recession, up from 21 million the year before, according to the International Coffee Organization.

Beatrice, who was visiting from Pittsburgh on business, said he might consider cutting back to only three or four cups per day or switch to a more robust brew if prices continue to climb.

Coffee customer Delores Schumacker of Springettsbury Township said she sometimes stretches expensive Starbucks coffee with less costly blends from Folgers, but she’d “pay whatever it takes” to make sure she gets her daily pick-me-up.

“I get a headache when I go without,” she said. “It’s like medicine.”

Prices on rise: The increased cost of the commodity is translating to a price bump at the grocery store and coffee shops.

J.M. Smucker Co., the maker of grocery store stalwart Folgers and of packaged varieties of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee, said last week that it is raising prices of most of its U.S. coffee products by 11 percent, its fourth increase in a year.

Starbucks Corp. also said it will raise prices on packaged coffee in its stores by an average of 17 percent in the U.S. and 6 percent in Canada. The company also raised prices in March for its packaged coffee sold in grocery stores and at other retailers.

Kraft, which sells Maxwell House coffee, cited rising coffee prices in a broad price hike it levied this winter.

York County: Local roasting company owner Jenn Anderson said she’s hoping to avoid a cost increase because it might interrupt the momentum of her fledgling business, New Grounds Roasting Co., also in York City.

She said she’s paying more for the beans she roasts, and she might have to increase the price of beans by about 10 percent.

She doesn’t plan to increase the price of coffee beverages, which start at $1.50 for a 12-ounce coffee and $3 for a latte of the same size.

“The goal for the coffee shop is to bring the community together,” she said. “I like that we have the same people coming in and getting the same thing every day.

“I feel like we’ve built relationship on top of relationship through this coffee house, and I’m going to do everything I can to make sure we can keep prices where they are,” Anderson added.

She said she’s looking to suppliers to sell her less-expensive beans that taste the same as those with a heftier price tag.