Is coffee a plant or a tree? When I reference this Sprudge article, it’s a tree. When I browse Wikipedia, it’s a plant. I’m not a horticulturalist, nor am I a botanist. I’m just a marketing scholar of coffee. If there are all these stipulations around how to define the source of my morning brew, then what does it mean to define “coffee” as an industry?
Contents
A Bit about Philosophical Assumptions
Philosophizing on Coffee
Conclusions on Coffee
Two years ago, the Specialty Coffee Association— the lead trade organization representing a slice of the coffee industry— debuted its own definition of “specialty coffee” as “a coffee or coffee experience recognized for its distinctive attributes, and because of these attributes, has significant extra value in the marketplace.” Through its process of developing this definition, the SCA white paper discusses terms like “intrinsic and extrinsic attributes” and “measurement.” Despite the SCA’s valiant effort, my lay discussions with various actors across the coffee value chain keeps butting up repeatedly, consistently, on one definition: “specialty coffee is a coffee that scores greater than 80 points on a 100 point scale.” After four months speaking with actors in Colombia, I can’t say that I’ve seen much variance in that definition (other than, maybe, the threshold is 85 points, rather than 80), but it honestly depends whom you speak with.
As argued by Paige West, “specialty coffees are first and foremost neoliberal coffees: coffees that have a place in the market because of structural changes in the global economy, changes that in addition to many other things target individuals as the seat of economic rights and responsibilities.”
What if there is no such thing as “specialty” coffee— or at least, not in the way this neoliberal slice of the coffee industry periodically undergoes informal and formal re-definition processes? Perhaps creating a definition that is so broad and all-encompassing truly attempts to subvert a nagging market reality: specialty coffee’s use of consumption-centric ratings determines its saleability to tastemakers based on arbitrary “objective” cutoff values that are, themselves, neo-colonially produced.
I recognize this is a bold claim to make, but coffee– an industry that matches production with consumption– is at an inflection point right now, and in order for the plant/tree/shrub to survive and be kept surviving in the future, bold claims are needed to provide fresh perspective. To unpack this, I must first incorporate a brief, top-level discussion of philosophy that, while painful for some, is a necessary starting point, as it provides the assumptions behind the claim.
A Bit about Philosophical Assumptions
At its core, philosophy helps us to understand the world. This is important to coffee, as it is humans who are responsible for producing and consuming it. One branch of philosophy, ontology, is concerned with the metaphysics of reality. In other words, ontology grapples with questions of being and existence. On one hand, realist schools of ontological thought (and there are multiple) argue there is a singular version of reality that is to be defined. Accepting a singular reality assumes that the future is predictable because circumstances shape behavior. On the other, relativist schools of ontological thought (and there are also multiple) argue for the existence of multiple realities. Wrestling with these multiple realities assumes that the future is not always predictable because behaviors can shape circumstance and vice versa. Lost yet? Think of it this way: realists believe there is one singular truth out there; relativists believe there are multiple truths out there. As always, there are shades of pragmatism in the middle.
So the question is, is “specialty coffee” a universally shared reality? Or is it the construction of various, relative realities? (Hint: there is no right or wrong answer to these questions, but rather, they are indicative of our own assumptions in each of our thinkings of defining “specialty coffee.”)
A second branch of philosophy, epistemology, is concerned with our ability to study and create knowledge of reality. If you’re thinking that questions of producing existence and of knowing existence are somehow related, you’re not wrong. The positivist paradigm is where the understanding of an objective reality comes from one’s detachment from an object (in this case, coffee). Because one “separates” themselves from the object, they tend to study it in ways that are independent of the object’s context. This allows them to view absolute causes and effects and therefore, predict outcomes. For example, if I raise the price of coffee, then it will be more expensive and therefore, consumers will buy less of it. The interpretivist paradigm is where the understanding of multiple realities is constructed from one’s interaction with an object. Because one shapes (and is shaped by) the object, they tend to study it in ways that are context-dependent of the object. This allows them to understand different causes and effects. For example, If I raise the price of coffee, consumers may vary in how they perceive market signals from this new cost, and those variations in perception may change whether some consumers buy more or less of it. And the constructivist paradigm is a bit of a mix in which objective knowledge is constructed through the means of social discourse and experience.
So the question is, is “specialty coffee” merely a commodity, as Marx defines it in Das Kapital as some object that has use-value and exchange-value as a detached “coagulation of labor?” Or does it have additional value functions where the social character of the labor is embedded in the product? (Hint: there is no right or wrong answer to these questions either.)
A third branch of philosophy, axiology, helps us approach the nature of value/s in reality. Ethics helps foster an understanding of what conduct is preferable. Aesthetics help foster an understanding of beauty and taste. Finally, logic, a fourth branch, helps to formalize sound reasoning in a systematic, structured manner.
On Positivism
The different branches of philosophy— along with the schools of thought they contain— are important to understanding coffee because these branches also inform the different methodological tools that are used to understand the world of coffee. For example, in the positivist paradigm, where reality exists independent of the subject, the methods used to understand causality and generate objective knowledge are often (but not strictly) quantitative in nature. This paradigm is exemplified in an 1883 address by Lord Kelvin:
“When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind: it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of science, whatever the matter may be.”
Methods of positivist understanding may include experiments that are independent of context in the interest of understanding and isolating a phenomenon. For example, does coffee sipped out of a pink mug taste better than coffee sipped out of an orange mug? Does adding a fermentation medium increase perceived sweetness? And if so, by how much? Positivist methodologies may also include primary or secondary data surveys that could be cross-sectional or longitudinal. For example, the SCA may collect survey data and use an agglomerative clustering technique to develop a new flavor wheel (that contributes to its objective understanding of coffee tastes). The methods used here are traditionally designed to be objective; in doing so, they also attempt to remove biases from the industry so that various stakeholders can objectively exchange value. However, even the construction of objectivity is subjective in measure and assessment. I’ll return to this in a bit.
On Intepretivism
In the interpretivist paradigm where reality is contextualized with the subject, more naturalistic methods used to understand how multiple realities are constructed and shape an explanation of knowledge are often (but not strictly) qualitative in nature.
Methods of interpretivist understanding may include observations where research looks at observing behaviors in their contexts. For example, an ethnography of coffee shops would help deepen an understanding of coffee brewing practices. Or participant-observations may help provide richer contexts to the experience of working as a picker on a farm through an entire harvest season. Interviews allow informants to explain and elaborate in an open-ended manner. And though it may sound problematic to some that the researcher is an integral part of data creation analysis— therefore biasing knowledge— it is important to acknowledge that the researcher-as-tool is no less systematic, structured, or rigorous.
So how does understanding fit with understanding coffee? In the next section, I’ll connect some of these dots.
Philosophizing on Coffee
The past 15 years have seen tremendous growth in the specialty coffee market. Consider year-over-year growth in the U.S. alone is nearly 20%, YOY growth in the Asia-Pacific region is 15.3%, and YOY growth in Europe is 9%. The industry has pushed for a renewed focus on improving the quality of coffee and growing a consumer market based on these high-end coffees.
Embedded in this focus is an emphasis on quantifying, measuring, testing—and ultimately, assuming the objectivity of a realist view— of quality. The idea here is that reality is fixed and therefore, once there’s a determination of how it’s fixed, everything can be assessed relative to rules and guidelines. In other words, realism presumes a universal, predetermined truth that ripples resonates around the industry. There are folks who’ve put significant emphasis on quantification of coffee. The idea that quality is largely determined on a 100 point scale (with 80 points being a threshold cutoff assisting to define “specialty”) is only part of this.
However, sensory summits help with reinforcing how external stimuli affect taste perceptions. Having sensory wheels and palate trainings help reinforce objective tastes qualities. Cuppings according to well-specified protocols ensure that standards are consistently met, whereby tasters can triangulate with each other on a single, objective reality. These objectifications of coffee are institutionally codified by rigorous standards of CQI’s Q Grader certification, seen as the professional “gold standard” of coffee cupping. Nonetheless, the standards— largely informed by net consumption-dominant (NCD) countries1— inject themselves into markets that start their formation at production. The majority of these “objective” standards are designed by consumers, for consumers, and passed along to producers through either direct or indirect market mechanisms.

As an example of this, take the above picture from a sensory analysis lab at a university in Colombia. On the wall (upper right center) is a picture of the SCA flavor wheel. If we look at this wheel, there is no mention of the local, ubiquitous Colombian fruit, lulo. Lulo is extremely fragile and therefore, is difficult to export for folks in NCD countries to understand. It has a flavor I would describe as the tartness of cranberry combined with the acidity of lime. Yet if this flavor does not exist on the wheel, whose “objective” reality is the wheel representing? Why are the tastes of folks from net production-dominant (NPD) countries often overlooked in making these “objective” assessments?
New techniques developed in and through partnerships with NCD countries encourage different ideas about coffee growing and coffee processing under pretenses of “market innovation.” The objective skills, measures, and assessments used in NCD countries are then applied in NPD countries. For example, the Cup of Excellence program leverages the same SCA cupping protocols in rigorous judging, which is ostensibly used to help farmers command a higher price for their coffee through aligning objective scoring with objective scarcity (as with most competitions though, objectivity can be a blinder to behind-the-scenes politicking). This also aligns producers with consumers, who have been given tools such as refractometers to measure TDS, sifter screens to make uniform grind distributions, electric kettles for water temperature precision. Even roasters have sophisticated software and tools to ensure consistent roasts. Since most NCD countries cannot grow and produce coffee, the majority of the value chain holds objectivity in the abstract in order to make markets because objectivity allows consistency, replicability, and uniformity in the ability to standardize all facets of a market for all stakeholders in the market.
Two reasons may explain why consumption-dominant countries drive these objective standards. First, “Western” philosophy, in pursuit of “rational thought,” has placed an outsized emphasis on an objective reality. Given the majority of coffee is consumed outside of NPD countries, it reasons that there is a paradigmatic hegemony in the way coffee is approached by those responsible for bringing it out of origin. In other words, an overlooked part of the colonialist history of coffee consumption, has been paradigmatic hegemony.
Second, the complexity of modern markets and value chains has eroded two fundamental elements of the relationship that build these chains: trust and commitment. Since the farming, production, export, import, roasting, and retailing of coffee is itself complex, consumers— especially in NCD countries— often lack the tools to build trust with different stakeholders and boost loyalty that develops over time and space. Objectivism allows everyone in the value chain to evaluate each other using standardized measures and transact in a market without needing to build and reinforce relationships. In other words, objective standards allow a consumer to purchase a coffee under the assumption that the retailer has purchased from a roaster who has evaluated an importer’s inventory, which was developed by Q Graders cupping at origin according to SCA protocols, based on coffees that were presented by several producers who hire transitory labor to pick the cherries. The consumer does not need to have a relationship with the retailer; they just need to objectively know purported facts about the coffee.
However, this striving for an objective truth about coffee belies a paradigmatic rigidity that otherwise undermines alternative ways of thinking. Further, it undermines axiological elements such as the ethics and aesthetics that may be important to consumers. For example, we can look at part of coffee’s value residing in how a coffee was harvested and picked by farmworkers. It is important to various stakeholders to develop relationships to ensure the product itself is sold at a fair price that is commensurate with the labors and risks involved in farming and production. Farmworkers and producers who recognize that building relationships with roasters and committing to multi-year purchase contracts can be more sustainable is not necessarily an objective outcome and can be difficult to quantify. In other words, there is a social reality that operates outside quantifiable measures and is no less important to coffee’s long-term sustainability.
In an Instagram post, Melodrip founder Ray Murakawa effectively dared consumers to discern the difference in taste between 0.10% TDS in their cup of coffee. He suggested brewing a sample cup, portioning out two 50-gram samples, adding 5 grams to one sample, and then tasting difference. His point was that, for most consumers, the difference in strength is not significantly discernable. While this is not necessarily a controlled or highly-rigorous experiment across all coffees, it highlights a flaw in paradigmatic rigidity: which consumers does it appeal to and why? Moreover, how does this objective “precision” on the consumption side of value exchange benefit those on the production side? In other words, I would ask what’s the line between objective precision and equity, such that precision is discernible to a reasonable proportion of consumers that consume coffees that yield equitable returns to growers?
We met with one green exporter in Colombia and watched as they went through a farmer’s green coffee sample, screened it, measured it for humidity and broca, sample roasted the coffee, and then cupped the coffee. A 1/2 point differential on the SCA cupping form or 0.25% too much broca on any given day from any given sample may not only radically shape a farmer’s income from that lot, it may cause the lot to be rejected for purchase entirely. In Colombia, a farmer’s only recourse may then be to sell to the National Coffee Federation at the benchmark c-market price.
The flipside to this type of model that has long been a feature from consumption-dominant countries has been to look at how the social construction of markets adds value to the markets. For example, as the coffee industry shifted from fairtrade as a more objective, transactional model of sustainability to the “direct trade” model first marketed by Counter Culture Coffee and Intelligentsia, more focus was given to the relationships that developed along the supply chain. As “specialty coffee” consumption started to increase, export-import intermediaries such as Café Imports or Ally started to make those markets instead. The more intermediated the market would become, the more difficult it became to ensure that the coffee itself was respected—that roasters actually nurtured farmers they procured their beans from, regardless of a given year’s harvest quality, which is often due to factors outside the farmers’ control, that the baristas would be mindful of the farmers while developing and crafting their drinks, and that consumers had genuine and authentic interest in knowing about the farmers who picked their coffee. Whereas I could speak to my local roaster, George Howell’s, 40-year relationship with The Mathagu Family that grows Mamuto, or Coffee Collective’s 13 year relationship with the Kieni cooperative, it is extremely difficult as a consumer to make the same claims about all the coffee I purchase—including namesake cooperative I named our cat after: Yukro. It is because I named my cat that that I came to understood more about that cooperative, rather than the other way around. The subjective nature of these relationships provides me value by contextualizing my coffee in ways that I cannot get, even from a Starbucks “digital collectible.”
This is important though, as coffee plants and farmers are struggling to adapt to the effects of climate change, while coffee consumers are grumbling, yet willing to pay the price increases. On the one hand consumers will pay $150 for a cup of Hartmann gesha on the other hand, what makes it $150? Is it the cupping score? The estate branding? The country-of-origin? The rarity? All of the above? And perhaps more importantly, what does that imply about NCD countries? What does it mean when the scoring of coffee largely defines the industry, more than the increased interest in NCD countries in equity and creating equitable marketplaces for farmers— all of which is objectively difficult to measure?
Actors in the industry will say the c-market price has the biggest effect on the prices farmers receive for their coffee– even in the specialty coffee market. I would argue that the SCA cupping form is equally influential in its outsized importance. And the fact that, a year after a new assessment was introduced, I found some of Bogotá’s premier roasters not knowing of this update appear to me as grossly problematic to the alleged diffusion of value co-creation with NPD countries.
Indeed, I would argue that the creation of “specialty coffee” as an industry is a paradigmatic imposition, especially on production-dominant countries. In relativist terms, “specialty” coffee becomes exclusive— and exclusionary—based on a notion that consumption that is measured as objectively good is the pinnacle of the industry. The paradigmatic rigidity forsakes tying value to other values on the production side of the exchange. It sets up a system— an industry— that neoliberally creates and perpetuates the haves/havenots.
I’ve spoken with one roaster who is a lapsed Q Grader and says that some of their best-selling, most profitable coffees are not necessarily ones with a higher cupping score. Yet their commitment to forging relationships with the producers and farmers is an important factor in building trust on both the production and the consumption sides of exchange. While they recognize the benefit of a good cupping score, they also realize that this objectivity acts in subjective tension with their network of relationships. In other words, it is difficult to say that one paradigmatic tradition is necessarily better than the other. Rather, some people operating in the objective or interpretivist paradigms don’t necessarily or sufficiently consider other ways of understanding value. This paradigmatic rigidity is a trap and it’s entrapping the future of coffee.
Conclusions on Coffee
At one point in my travels in Colombia, my colleague and I were looking at a pricing board at an importer buying station. After months of being in Colombia, I realized that the term “differentiated coffee” was used on the pricing boards, along with the term “conventional coffee.” To me, conventional coffee would be defined as any coffee where the production methods were conventional, whereas differentiated coffees were coffees using “advanced/sophisticated” processing techniques. As I understood it, only differentiated coffees could be considered “specialty” (so long as they cupped above 80 points).
Yet I asked my colleague what he thought the meanings of the terms were. “Conventional coffee” was varieties that were indigenously cultivated in the region.2 “Differentiated coffee” was varieties such as ombligon, papayo, pink bourbon, etc., that were recently cultivated to satisfy recent market interests. In other words he understood it that differentiated coffees were restricted to the novelty of the varieties only. Even these types of terms of varied interpretation could radically change the way a coffee finds its way to market.
As a consumer in a NCD country myself, I’d be remiss in not saying that I appreciate new methods and tools. I’m glad I’m able to have a good cup of coffee. I’m glad I can buy a 96 point Finca Cruz Loma for making tenure, but I’m also glad when I can have a nice cup from Kivu in the Congo. I’m glad I can get a Nanofoamer to make cappuccinos, but I’m also glad to just brew a pourover on my Kalita Wave. And, while I suspect many coffee consumers are like this, I suspect most coffee drinkers are even more comfortable with throwing some coffee in a Mr. Coffee and using a French press to foam some milk.
Whether it is consumers, whether it’s exporter/importers, whether it’s the roasters though, there needs to be more paradigmatic flexibility in the way we approach coffee. Ultimately, if this is a plant (or a tree or a shrub) that can otherwise be looked at as a commodity crop— which it is looked at as a commodity crop— then we have to come to terms with the fact that commodification itself is both an process in that it disentangles value using uniform, objective process, but also subjective, constructivist processes. It is objective in that is grown under certain sunny or rainy conditions, that it bears flowers, that it is roasted to drink. All of this is objective truth. And yet it is interpretive in that marketplaces are socially constructed, the crop is facilitated from origin to consumption, and it is retailed and consumed. In order for coffee to survive, paradigmatic flexibility is the only pragmatic approach.
- I’ve added this footnote to another post as well, but for the purposes here, my preference is to use a term such as “net consumption/production-dominant (NCD/NPD) countries” because it centers the product itself. An extensive critique by Khan et al. (2022) in BMJ Global Health assesses various terms used to classify countries. Some of these classifications are solely economically driven (eg, “third/first world,” “lower/higher-income countries,” “developing/developed countries), while others relate closely to colonial history (eg, “Global North/South,” “West/East,” “Old/New World”).
Coffee, though originally taken from Ethiopia through Yemen and brought elsewhere around the world through colonialism, is now grown in more than 50 countries. It is grown in India, Mexico, Burundi, China, and yes, even the United States (not just Hawai’i, but also Puerto Rico, Southern California, and attempts have even been made in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas). Is China still an emerging market? Is the US part of the Global South? No. None of these classifications seem to make sense.
Rather, it would seem appropriate to classify China and the US as net consumption-dominant countries, as the overall consumption of coffee in those countries is net greater than the coffee that is produced in those countries. Likewise, there are consumer markets in Colombia or Ethiopia, but it would seem more appropriate to classify them as net production-dominant countries as the overall production of coffee in those countries is net greater than the coffee that is consumed in those countries.
Further, centering the NCD/NPC classification around the product itself lends itself to better describing power dynamics in modern marketplace terms (production/consumption), rather than in purely economic or historical terms (though economic and historical assumptions are certainly embedded, as they continue to shape the producer/consumer power dynamics of the marketplace).
I recognize this footnote could have been a blog entry of its own… Maybe it will, yet. ↩︎ - I recognize that no non-Ethiopian/Yemeni coffee is actually “indigenous;” I apply the term here pragmatically in colloquial terms to mean varieties that, post-colonization of coffee, were not historically cultivated in the area ↩︎
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