- Many coffees are identified and matched to buyer requirements long before a buyer ever reaches origin.
- More than 90% of coffee exported from producing countries is shipped as green coffee, highlighting the importance of origin-based expertise.
- As transparency becomes a bigger part of specialty coffee, the industry may need to rethink who its real “coffee hunters” are.
In specialty coffee, the image of the “coffee hunter” has become a familiar one. Roasters and green coffee buyers are often celebrated for travelling to producing countries, building relationships with farmers, and ‘discovering’ exceptional coffees that ultimately make their way onto café menus and retail shelves.
These origin trips remain an important part of specialty coffee sourcing. However, they can also obscure a more complicated reality. Long before a buyer arrives at origin, coffees have often already been identified, evaluated, separated, processed, and prepared by exporters, producers, cuppers, and quality teams working within producing countries – often doing much of the heavy lifting for visiting buyers.
As transparency becomes an increasingly important part of specialty coffee’s value proposition, the industry may need to reconsider who actually discovers exceptional coffees – and where the expertise behind sourcing truly resides.
Origin does the heavy lifting
The idea of a green coffee buyer travelling to origin and discovering a remarkable coffee can be an appealing part of specialty coffee’s storytelling. Yet according to many origin-based professionals, exceptional coffees rarely emerge through chance encounters.
Jayson Galvis is Director of Quality and Development at Nigredo Café in Colombia. He says that much of the work involved in identifying outstanding coffees takes place long before buyers begin cupping samples.
“The likelihood of a roaster or green coffee buyer discovering an exceptional coffee during a sourcing trip at origin, within a single harvest cycle, would be almost impossible without the support of a quality selection team based at origin,” he says [translated from Spanish].
“These teams and their pre-selection of the harvest are essential for profiling and identifying the client’s needs. Without them, it would be like looking for a needle in a haystack.”
According to Jayson, around 90% of the work involved in identifying an outstanding lot is carried out by quality teams at origin. As more than 90% of coffee exported from producing countries is still shipped as green coffee, this underscores the central role origin actors continue to play in preparing coffee for international markets.
This reflects the increasingly sophisticated systems that underpin specialty coffee sourcing. Exporters, cooperatives, producer groups, and quality teams regularly evaluate hundreds or even thousands of lots before a small number are presented to buyers.
While buyers ultimately decide which coffees to purchase, many of the coffees they evaluate have already been “hunted” and passed through multiple layers of selection, quality control, and preparation.
Recognition doesn’t follow the work
The work required to bring a coffee from farm to buyer extends far beyond cupping tables and origin visits. In practice, much of the sourcing process begins with understanding what buyers are looking for and then working backwards to identify coffees capable of meeting those requirements.
Before a coffee is ever presented to a buyer, it may have already passed through multiple rounds of sampling, quality verification, lot separation, and sensory evaluation conducted by exporters, cupping teams, and quality professionals at origin.
According to Jayson, local sourcing teams are often responsible for the majority of sourcing activities – including collecting customer requests, identifying suitable regions and producers, planning purchases, verifying quality, securing inventory, preparing samples, coordinating contracts, and managing export logistics.
This is especially evident as buyers travel less regularly to producing countries, due to rising costs and tighter margins – increasing their reliance on trusted exporters and sourcing partners to identify and evaluate coffees on their behalf.
For these reasons, the concept of “coffee hunters” can oversimplify how sourcing works. While buyers and roasters may become the public face of a coffee, a large network of people often contributes to its selection long before it appears on a cupping table.
Jayson believes this imbalance is partly reinforced through marketing and storytelling.
“Buyers tend to highlight their own role in the purchasing process more than the work carried out by suppliers at origin,” he says.
“For example, if we look at the social media accounts of roasters and buyers in consuming countries, a very high percentage of the content focuses on their teams travelling to origin to buy coffee.”
What is often missing, he argues, is visibility into the work undertaken by exporters, cooperatives, and producer associations to manage harvests, maintain quality, and provide producers with sustainable market access.
“This largely stems from the fact that roasters and importers want to demonstrate to end consumers why they charge a premium price for a beverage or a bag of roasted coffee,” Jayson says.
“Highlighting origin trips helps justify that price differential.”
Expertise remains concentrated at origin
The question of recognition is ultimately linked to a broader issue: where expertise actually resides within the coffee supply chain.
While the cultivation of coffee is recognised as an origin-led activity, the common narrative of green buyers “discovering” or “hunting” coffees often implies that the key sourcing decisions are made once buyers arrive at origin. In reality, many of the systems involved in the sourcing of coffee are already in motion long before that point.
For origin-based teams, sourcing is not simply about finding good coffee. It also involves understanding harvest conditions, climate patterns, processing outcomes, and how quality evolves over time. Many exporters now employ agronomists and technical advisers at origin, reflecting the increasingly specialised expertise involved in sourcing and quality management.
“Local teams understand the behaviour of each harvest and how quality evolves according to climatic conditions and their impact on coffee-growing regions.”
This knowledge is becoming increasingly valuable as climate change introduces greater variability into coffee production. Changes in rainfall, temperature, and flowering patterns can all influence cup profiles from one harvest to the next.
This is an area where disconnects can emerge between producing and consuming countries. Jayson argues that some buyers continue to expect a level of consistency that is increasingly difficult to achieve.
“Buyers frequently do not fully understand the challenges associated with a harvest in a producing country,” he says. “Many assume harvests remain consistent over time, but in reality that is impossible.”
This can create challenges when coffees arrive in consuming countries and are evaluated against expectations formed months earlier. Small variations in acidity, sweetness, or flavour profile may reflect the realities of a particular harvest, but can still become points of contention if buyers expect complete consistency year after year.
“[T]here is often a disconnect between the knowledge of people at origin and quality teams in destination countries … Buyers frequently do not fully understand the challenges associated with a harvest in a producing country, which can create differences in quality expectations and standards,” Jayson says.
“These differences do not always contribute to a better understanding of the business and can create uncertainty around lot approval decisions, ultimately leading to economic losses in producing countries.”
The larger question is not whether buyers add value to the sourcing process – they clearly do. Rather, it is whether the coffee industry’s storytelling accurately reflects where coffees are identified, evaluated, and prepared.
If the industry is serious about recognising where value is created, it needs to look beyond the people purchasing coffee and pay greater attention to those who spend the entire harvest hunting for exceptional coffees long before they reach a buyer’s cupping table. In that sense, the real coffee hunters may have been hiding in plain sight.
