- In the US, specialty coffee is often marketing gloss for a culture focused on speed and scale
- Starbucks built its empire on 2-minute drinks, yet third wave coffee culture thrives on time, patience, and quality
- Europe has slower rhythms – and cafes continue to experience YOY growth, even as consumer purchasing power declines
SPECIALTY coffee, with its emphasis on quality, traceability and ritual, is a curious fit for modern economies obsessed with speed and scale.
At its core, it resembles the slow food movement: beans sourced from specific farms, roasted in small batches, and prepared with patience. The archetypal pour-over, with its meticulous grinding and measured drips, stands in contrast to the mass-market promise of two-minute service and efficiency.
In countries such as the United States, this contradiction is especially stark. The cultural fixation on scale – bigger cups, faster service, exponential growth – runs against the grain of specialty, or third wave, ethos. Starbucks’ 4-minute drink preparation rule stands in sharp contrast with third wave coffee’s original dedication to craft, intentionality and precision.
Brands like Blue Bottle and Intelligentsia built their reputations on craft, traceability, and care. Yet under corporate parents – Nestlé in the case of Blue Bottle, and JAB Holding Company for Intelligentsia – their national and international expansions have required replicable systems.
Preparation risks becoming formula, and specialty coffee, once defined by resistance to scale, begins to resemble a marketing exercise more than a lived practice. To sell “artisanal” within structures optimised for replication and corporate growth is, in effect, to hollow out the idea.
“I don’t know anymore that our global economy or coffee cultures are so distinct that we can brand them nationally the way we once could,” says Jonathan Morris, Director of Research Culture and Environment at the University of Hertfordshire. “What I do see is the tension – every time I walk into a café that calls itself specialty but is really just pulling espresso shots and hoping customers take them to go.”
Contrast this with cultural environments where slowness is embedded in everyday rhythms.
In France, August is sacrosanct: the bistro terraces are full not because efficiency is maximised but because leisure is protected. In Greece, coffee is consumed as ritual, not fuel, woven into a pattern of daily life that prizes quality without rushing. When cafés are understood as public goods – subsidised by norms or policy – the economic pressure to squeeze each customer for maximum turnover diminishes.
This makes specialty coffee feel less like an indulgence and more like a natural extension of cultural priorities. Although the third wave was a slow bloom across Europe, it appears to be taking root with strong foundations cemented by shared values.
According to the European Coffee Federation, despite falling purchasing power after the pandemic, EU consumers continued to prioritise leisure, driving growth in tourism and foodservices. Coffee benefited directly: out-of-home fresh coffee consumption rose across Europe in 2024, with notable gains in France, Spain, and Poland. This “out-of-home paradox” shows that coffee remains a resilient part of cultural and social spending, even in tighter economic times.
In the US, price and convenience remain paramount. The boom in drive-thru coffee and the “dashboard dining” trend underscore how inflation has pushed consumers to favour speed and affordability over ritual or quality.
Specialty coffee thus flourishes in settings where cultural patience aligns with its economics – and strains where volume is king.
The paradox of America’s embrace
Yet paradoxically, it was in America that specialty coffee first became an industry.
In Coffee and Tea: Perceptions and Illusions, Ian Bersten credits Donald Schoenholt of Gillies 1840 as a pioneer of specialty coffee. Schoenholt denounced the Robusta-heavy blends of big roasters as the cause of America’s declining coffee quality and consumption, launching a campaign through trade magazines. In 1981, World Coffee & Tea featured specialty coffee on its cover, marking a turning point for the movement.
Peet’s Coffee & Tea and Starbucks in the 1970s and 1980s helped rebrand coffee from diner basic into aspirational culture, and the third-wave roasters of the 2000s – Intelligentsia, Stumptown, Counter Culture – turned single-origin beans into status symbols.
Why did specialty thrive in a country so obsessed with efficiency?
“What really drove the expansion of specialty coffee was the rise of espresso beverages,” says Jonathan. “But just as important was creating spaces where people wanted to spend time drinking them. In those early days, the cutting edge might have been espresso, but the real product being sold was 20 minutes of experience.”
Part of the answer also lies in marketing. Specialty coffee in the US often functions less as slow ritual and more as cultural signal: authenticity packaged for quick consumption. The third wave movement allows consumers to participate in the aura of craftsmanship even if the drink was prepared in haste. The product, in effect, is not just the coffee but the story – ethical sourcing, “exotic” origin or flavours, latte art – that can be consumed as quickly as the beverage itself.
Another factor is wealth. The US middle class has long been conditioned to pay premiums for lifestyle markers, from organic food to boutique fitness. Specialty coffee slotted into this pattern, becoming one more token of taste and distinction. Now, as they struggle with inflation, American consumers are rethinking their spending habits. A recent USB survey found that 70% of them blamed higher prices for why they planned to visit Starbucks less in the next 12 months – a chain that reportedly struggles most with people making under $100,000 annually.
In practice, using premiums as lifestyle markers reduces specialty to another tier in a price-stratified market rather than a transformation of cultural values. Chains have capitalised by offering “premiumised” versions of their staples: light roasts, single-origin offerings, and fancy equipment. The specialty veneer allows efficiency-driven models to claim artisanal credentials without altering their structure.
Where many Europeans embrace specialty as part of their slower cultural rhythm, Americans often treat it as a class upgrade.
Can specialty stay true?
The challenge for specialty coffee is not only cultural but structural.
Small roasteries or coffee shops cannot promise exponential growth without diluting their identity. Scaling inevitably leads to some compromises – whether on quality, personal connection, risk-taking, or agility. In cafés, preparation takes time, equipment costs are high, and customers must be willing to pay more and wait longer. In an industry where margins are thin and consumer budgets fragile, this model is precarious.
“The specialty coffee movement has shifted,” says Jonathan. “Today, people are drawn to independent spaces that suit their personality – those places are hard to scale or automate. That also ties to how work and time have evolved. It’s now easier to spend part of the day in a coffee shop because we either work there, or we have more autonomy over when and where we work. A digitally mobile society has made that possible.”
In cultures less obsessed with scale, specialty may find firmer footing. The “slow” economies of southern Europe, for example, integrate coffee into broader values of leisure, locality and quality. Specialty cafés can root themselves in these rhythms without apology.
In France, growth is, reportedly, typically steady and intentional, grounded in work–life balance and social protections, with ambition channelled into quality and community rather than fast-paced expansion. In Spain, specialty coffee is increasingly embraced as a cultural marker, according to a local source. Cafés are quickly gaining ground and even appearing in gyms, yoga studios, bookstores, and flower shops – showing that people want to pair their hobbies with quality coffee.
The larger question is whether specialty coffee can survive in a global market that prizes speed. If specialty compromises on slowness, it risks becoming indistinguishable from mass-market coffee – another tier of branding rather than a distinct practice. In Romania, where specialty coffee has bloomed in recent years, some say that too much scaling has caused quality to erode.
Yet there is also opportunity. As consumers grow weary of overstimulation and seek “authentic” experiences, slow rituals gain appeal.
“Do you think those historic coffee houses – the Middle Eastern cafés, the European salons, the Viennese traditions – were really selling coffee?” says Jonathan. “They were selling time and an experience.”
“That, of course, requires people with both the time and the desire to linger. It’s a marriage: good time, good environment. The specialty coffee movement adds good coffee into that equation. But does the coffee itself have to be ‘specialty’ to create that experience?”
Specialty coffee – or any coffee consumed intentionally – can position itself as the antithesis of efficiency culture. The risk is that it will be absorbed back into the very system it resists, marketed as an “experience” but delivered in a way that is quick and mainstreamed.
The staying power of specialty coffee may depend less on marketing and gimmicks than on cultural settings that allow it to breathe. In economies that subsidise leisure, that protect small rituals, and that resist the pressures of speed and productivity, specialty aligns naturally. In those that worship scale, it quickly tends to become performance.
Coffee Intelligence
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