Welcome to the SCA’s Green Coffee Summit, a home for coffee market resources.
Spotlight: Consuming Markets
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Featured Video
Coffee's Essential Worker Community: An Action Oriented Path to Building Back Better with Living Wage and Living Income
Living wage and income have long been gaining steam among the media, global governments, sustainability standards, businesses, and a wealth of other actors, including consumers. But the necessity of ensuring a basic but decent living is more stark than ever in an age where vulnerability abounds.
NEW Market Research
Five Key Takeaways from the National Coffee Data Trends Study: Specialty Coffee Breakout Report
The National Coffee Data Trends Study is packed with information: conducted twice a year, the report tracks coffee consumer trends, attitudes, and behavior. What are five key things that the specialty coffee industry should pay attention to specifically? Learn more from the SCA’s Research Manager, Katie von der Lieth →
Explore the Latest Resources
From Underdog to Frontrunner: The Opportunities of Specialty Robusta
While the use of wild coffees is still years away from commercialization, another coffee species already makes up 40% of coffee's global production: Coffea robusta. Lower global demand and limited recognition of robusta's quality potential has stifled investment in exploring the opportunities of specialty robusta, but in the face of climate change, it feels as if its time has come. Emi-Beth Aku Quantson makes the case for reframing robusta as a specialty product across impacts from farmer livelihoods to consumer preferences.
Israel's Booming Specialty Market
Make a quick list of the countries you know are experiencing exponential growth of coffee consumption and a blossoming specialty coffee scene: does it include Israel? If not, it should. Using her experience studying specialty coffee in France (a traditional market) and Brazil (a domestic market), Noa Berger shares more about an exciting intersection of cultural identity and specialty coffee driving the growth of the Israeli specialty coffee market.
Opportunities for Added Value Under the Attributes-Based Definition of Specialty
Do we really understand the impact of the attributes-based definition of specialty coffee on what is now "specialty"? Jenn Rugolo, the SCA's Curatorial Director, examines the impact categorization has on our perception of the world and explains why the new definition of specialty coffee released by the SCA in 2021 gives us more opportunities to deliver on specialty's promise.
Not Just Fresh: Expanding Our Concept of Functional Packaging
Coffee's interest in understanding multimodal perception on coffee experiences has most recently focused on cup shape, size, and weight or environmental ambiance like color, music, and texture. As home coffee consumption continues to increase even as pandemic restrictions ease, so too has our interest in understanding packaging (an element of the coffee experience making its way consistently into the home) through a multimodal lens. Dr. Fabiana Carvalho introduces an ongoing study, conducted in collaboration with the Coffee Science Foundation, exploring the effect of packaging on the perception of specialty coffee and explains why we need to expand our concept of "functional" packaging beyond simply keeping coffee fresh.
On Redefining Sustainable Coffee
As the word "sustainable" continues to grow in importance to consumers, it is being used in many different ways. While we're shifting our definition to encompass concepts like living income, argues Catalina Eikenberg, we're still under-utilizing tools and leverage points to help us move forward.
The Evolution of Business: Understanding the B Corp Model
Jessica Yinka Thomas shares a new model of business designed to maximize wellbeing, interdependence, and drive change.
The Changing Definition of Fine Wine
As we grapple with our own definition of “specialty,” Pauline Vicard shares ARENI’s journey of defining “fine wine” and explores opportunities for mutual learnings between industries.
In Conversation with Darrin Daniel
What impact does the Alliance for Coffee Excellence and the associated Cup of Excellence competition have on coffee farmers and roasters?
A New Framework for Defining Specialty Coffee
Peter Giuliano introduces the Specialty Coffee Association's new way to define specialty coffee through the attributes conception.
From Procurement to Cobranding: A Path to Better Value Distribution
Explore how traditional transaction concepts, centered only on quality and delivery, limit the capacity of our industry to generate and better distribute value.
Creating Shared Value for Companies and Smallholders
Melissa Schweisguth shares examples of the work done by United States Agency for International Development in the coffee sector.
What is Quality? Implications for New Variety Development
Hanna Neuschwander of World Coffee Research shares an update on WCR’s 2015 F1 Hybrid candidates through the specific lens of quality.
Innovations with Liberica Coffee
A conversation between Emi-Beth Quantson and Sangai Brisbane of Brisco Natural Coffee.
Beneficios Y Oportunidades Para la Industria de Cafés Especiales en Colombia
Elena Lokteva del equipo de liderazgo de CRG conversa con Viviana Navarez del Parque tecnológico de Innovación de Café - Tecnicafe en Cauca, para conocer su modelo y propuesta de valor para el desarrollo de la industria de cafés especiales en Colombia.
Appraising Specialty Coffee Attributes
Dr. Mario R. Fernández-Alduenda offers thoughts on how we can integrate avances in sensory and coffee science into our new understanding of specialty coffee.
Verified Living Income: Transforming Procurement for Improved Farmer Livelihoods
How can we know we’re paying an equitable price for coffee? Grayson Caldwell explores the idea of verified living income.
Critical Collaboration: It's Not Enough to Just Pay Farmers More
Jeanine Niyonzima-Aroian shares a business model to help build more sustainable communities.
Sustainability Toolkit: Data
Take a look at the first results from The Sustainability Toolkit, and learning about the answers most commonly-submitted by roasters and other coffee professionals on their sustainability journey.
Understanding Consumer Perception and Desirable Product Attributes in ChocolateA New Framework for Defining Specialty Coffee
Dr. Allison Brown conducted a mixed-methods study using focus groups and projective mapping, creating a Desirable Chocolate Attribute Concept Map.
Climate Change, Adaptation, and Coffee Quality
Dr. Selena Ahmed shares the findings of a recent meta-analysis, the first of its kind, exploring the impact of climate change on coffee quality.
Aprender
Un caso de negocio para incrementar el consumo de café especial en países productores
Las oportunidades adicionales para crear y capturar más valor son clave para que los productores reduzcan el riesgo. Por lo tanto, es vital comprometerse con estrategias que les permitan a los productores crear (más) valor y obtener un mayor y mejor parte del precio al consumidor →