There are big questions facing specialty coffee sellers and buyers. According to numerous studies in different coffee-producing countries, prices paid for green specialty coffees often don’t cover the full cost of production, let alone support thriving livelihoods for farmers and their families. Moreover, unless price discovery moves beyond commodity price references, younger farmers cannot expect these prices to evolve in ways that make them excited about remaining in the industry. As such, more and more farms will struggle to find a next generation to take over. This makes buyers increasingly concerned about future supplies of the different coffees that are needed to push the industry forward. 

Today, with help from presenter Chad Trewick, you’ll learn about the inception of and future plans for the Specialty Coffee Transaction Guide, a project housed at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. The Guide uses donated contract information about industry pricing behaviors that are anonymized and aggregated to create tables to serve as a guide to help both sellers (producers) and buyers (exporters, importers, roasters) land on pricing that does not rely on the volatile commodity price as a baseline. Leaders creating the guide propose that Specialty coffees are deserving of their own pricing scale and present current industry purchasing behaviors as the basis for that scale. The team responsible for the Guide has plans to expand the pool of data donors to ensure more global representation and to formalize the tool over the next years introducing governance, an advisory board, and securing funding to support its work. Come learn about this exciting new tool for the Specialty Coffee industry.

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