- Specialty coffee wants to be ethical – and exclusive: 73% of reported purchases are now labelled “sustainable”
- But producer success still makes specialty coffee uncomfortable
- The implicit assumption is that roasters should favour those with the most to gain
IN an industry that markets itself as both luxurious and moral, the success of the producer can feel awkward — even threatening.
Specialty coffee occupies an unusual position in global markets. It is a luxury good — rare beans like Panama Gesha routinely fetch hundreds of dollars per pound — yet it is often sold with a moral overlay that insists consumers are doing good by buying it.
The Global Coffee Platform, in its Sustainable Coffee Purchases Report 2023, cites increases in sustainable coffee purchases – 1,391,796 MT in 2023, which represents over 73% of the overall reported coffee purchases. A recent study from the International Institute for Sustainable Development found that 43% of coffee consumers say they are influenced by “ethical, environmentally friendly, or socially responsible coffee options”. Yet A 2021 analysis by Columbia University found that in 8 out of 10 coffee-producing countries, the average income from coffee is at or below the poverty line.
Around the world, consumers are told that higher prices mean better outcomes for the environment and the people who grow the beans. In the Specialty Coffee Association’s (SCA) 12th issue of its 25 publication, Ever Meister explored the ethical considerations behind specialty coffee’s “do good” storytelling, looking, for example, at concepts of marketing, commodification, “upselling,” story ownership, extraction, and exploitation.
This combination of high price and superiority – moral or other – is common in luxury sectors: rare Hermès bags, limited-edition Rolexes, and Frank Gehry furniture all signal exclusivity. But those markets do not embed explicit claims of social uplift into their marketing. Specialty coffee does.
It asks the buyer to believe that paying more is simultaneously a sign of taste and a contribution to global justice – a hollow promise, according to some.
That dual promise contains its own tension. The industry’s narrative is rooted in the idea that producers are poor, vulnerable and deserving – and that roasters and consumers share moral responsibility for their welfare. Yet the objects of this sympathy are also commodities in highly competitive markets. When a producer succeeds – as many have with Gesha or experimental microlots – their success can disrupt that narrative. Does this make them less attractive to roasters?
“What worked against us wasn’t success, it was my own lack of discipline,” says Felipe Sardi, Co-founder of La Palma & El Tucán. “We built something that worked: a model where neighbouring farmers get paid roughly three times the highest prices available in the region, where we return compost for every kilo of cherry we buy, where we take care of the harvest logistics so elderly farmers don’t have to. That model never stopped being valuable to buyers or to us.”
“What happened is that I got distracted. We incubated over ten companies inspired by what we were doing at the farm. These aren’t side projects – they’re solving real problems on the origin side of the industry. But building them pulled my focus from the core. I stopped maintaining the conversations with clients that had defined us. I didn’t keep up with the pace of innovation that our own industry demanded. I failed to communicate what we were doing daily at the farm, not just the results. So I wouldn’t say success worked against us. I’d say we worked against us – by not staying close to the core.”
In recent years, high-profile farms have achieved “investor-class” status, with lots selling for thousands of dollars – the rise of Panama’s Gesha beans is a case in point. They are celebrated in auction results and specialty coffee rankings, and producers earn incomes that dwarf local averages. In some cases, the price premiums have enabled investments in education, mechanisation and diversification. Yet the reality of “who benefits” in specialty coffee is narrower than its moral language suggests.
Despite its rhetoric of uplifting marginal producers, a large share of specialty volumes in each producing country is sourced from a remarkably small circle of highly visible, competition-winning farms. Ted Fischer touched on this at SCA’s Re:co Symposium 2019, contrasting Cup of Excellence winners’ pricing and affluence and those of small producers in the surrounding region, offering the same quality and similar profile of coffee. Roasters frequently find themselves bidding over the same handful of celebrated names – the same estates, the same families, the same auction stars – while marketing their offerings in a way that often suggests they are uncovering hidden gems and spreading opportunity more widely.
The result is a concentration of attention and capital at the very top of the specialty pyramid.
In practice, specialty coffee behaves less like a decentralised aid system and more like a prestige market: a few producers become brand assets in their own right, while thousands of others remain structurally invisible. The industry’s language is about helping “the many”, but its purchasing behaviour often resembles that of luxury fashion, where 20% of global fashion companies contribute to the largest part of market profit share – concentrated, reputational, and fiercely competitive at the apex.
The moral economy and its discontents
Specialty coffee’s moral narrative depends on a tension between “producers in need” and “generous consumers.” It is a story that makes buyers feel good and roasters feel purposeful. But it can produce odd incentives.
There is an implicit assumption that buyers should favour those with the most to gain – a logic paved with good intentions. But just as a Rolex that everyone can afford ceases to be a Rolex, a coffee farmer who “makes it” can lose sympathy points in an industry that wants to “help.”
“I’m a believer in good business as the engine of transformation – not charity, not donations, not the pity-driven narrative that sometimes dominates this industry,” says Felipe. “The framing of coffee farmers as fragile, dependent, or in need of rescue has never felt empowering to me. It hasn’t made our neighbours wealthier. It hasn’t made producing countries stronger. And it hasn’t improved the structural conditions of coffee farming.”
“What has worked is building something valuable – quality that speaks for itself, innovation that creates real differentiation, relationships based on mutual benefit rather than sympathy. The size of La Palma hasn’t fundamentally changed. What changed was our attention. And I think that distinction matters: the market didn’t punish us for growing, it punished us for not staying disciplined in what made us valuable in the first place.”
There is also a broader cultural paradox. Specialty coffee’s moral brand overlaps awkwardly with its aspiration to rank and judge. Listing the world’s best restaurants, the Michelin Guide does not exclude chefs who become rich. They are celebrated for excellence, not pitied for their struggles.
Yet in coffee, there often seems to be a subtext that engaging with success undermines solidarity. Underlying these dynamics is a paternalistic assumption that is never admitted, much less touted, but nevertheless persists: that the producer must stay small and dependent to justify the industry’s benevolence.
“The first year of finding a great producer with great coffee feels like striking gold,” says an anonymous green coffee importer. “But that same producer, three years down the line isn’t as attractive to buyers, who lose their competitive asset – uniqueness and novelty.”
“I remember roasters would shy away from some well-established or emerging producers, working from the logic that ‘if Onyx is already buying from them, what’s my added value?’ This can be the flipside of success for producers in the specialty industry.”
This also exposes a gap between marketing and mechanics. Roasters publicly position themselves as champions of the poor and marginal, yet commercially they often cluster around the safest, most famous suppliers — those with competition trophies, consistent cup scores and established export infrastructure. It is easier, and less risky, to buy from known stars than from unknown smallholders.
The contradiction is stark: the industry talks about expanding opportunity, but structurally it reinforces hierarchy. Moral language obscures what is, in effect, a prestige-based sourcing economy.
Bigger isn’t inherently bad
Success at the producer level need not contradict broader uplift.
Development research shows that productivity and income gains among farmers can have ripple effects. GDP growth originating in agriculture induces income growth among the 40% poorest, which is on the order of three times larger than growth originating in the rest of the economy. In other words, when producers thrive, others around them can benefit — precisely the outcome that specialty coffee professes to support.
There is also a practical business case for embracing success. Roasters who invest in long-term partnerships with high-performing farms secure reliability, quality and consistency. Treating success as a betrayal of moral purpose undermines incentives for farmers to improve quality and invest in their operations.
“Stop romanticising struggle,” says Felipe. “Stop rewarding narratives of poverty over narratives of innovation. Genuine support looks like treating producers as business partners, not beneficiaries. It looks like paying for quality – consistently, fairly, without needing a ‘story of hardship’ to justify the price. It looks like long-term commitments, not one-time transactions dressed up as solidarity.”
“It also looks like honesty. We’re building a series called The Error Library, where we share – publicly – the mistakes that shaped us. Not because we want sympathy. Because we believe the industry needs more transparency about what actually works, what fails, and what we learn along the way. The specialty sector talks a lot about partnership. But real partnership means respecting independence, celebrating profitability at origin, and understanding that a thriving, self-sufficient producer is more valuable to everyone than a struggling one who makes for a better marketing story.”
Other industries offer lessons. In wine, highly rated vintages command premiums – but the celebrated estates also support local labour, tourism and ancillary businesses. Their success enhances the region’s reputation, bringing value to lesser-known producers. Specialty coffee could learn from this model, recognising that aspirational success and broad uplift are not mutually exclusive. The recent SCA Equitable Value Distribution Survey Findings Report highlights that the last 30 years have seen a decrease in the share of coffee value received by coffee farming families, suggesting a regression rather than a progression towards improving farmers’ livelihoods – one of specialty coffee’s core promises.
Gesha coffees are the exception – and in many ways, the most honest expression of specialty coffee’s economics. They are marketed explicitly as rare, famous and expensive. Their buyers are not told they are “helping farmers”; they are told they are buying the best. These coffees tap into an entirely different consumer psychology: one driven by status, scarcity and bragging rights rather than benevolence.
In that sense, Gesha may be the only segment of specialty coffee that does not pretend to be something else. It behaves like fine wine or luxury fashion – and admits it. The rest of specialty coffee, by contrast, often tries to speak the language of solidarity while operating in the logic of prestige.
The paradox reflects a deeper tension between identity and economics. Consumers often want both authenticity and aspiration, moral victories and bragging rights. They want the feel-good story of helping the underdog and the bragging point of sipping rare lots. The industry’s challenge is to reconcile these impulses without sacrificing coherence, or ethics.
Coffee Intelligence
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