“Specialty coffee” gets printed on everything from supermarket cans to $30 bags from small roasters, so it is fair to wonder whether it means anything at all. It does. There is a real, measurable line between specialty and regular coffee, and once you know where it is drawn, you can tell which side of it a bag sits on before you open it.
What Is Specialty Coffee?
Specialty coffee, defined
Specialty coffee is coffee that scores 80 points or more out of 100 when graded by trained tasters using the Specialty Coffee Association’s standards. To qualify, the green beans must also be almost free of defects. Regular coffee is everything below that line, usually traded as a bulk commodity.
- Graded: professionally scored for flavor, sweetness, acidity, body and balance.
- Clean: no primary defects and only a handful of minor ones in a 350 g sample.
- Traceable: you can usually name the country, region and often the farm.
- Fresh: roasted in small batches and sold with a roast date.
The scoring happens at a cupping, a standardized tasting where graders slurp the same coffee from several bowls and score it on a set form. Nearly all specialty coffee is arabica; our guide to arabica vs robusta explains why.
The 100-Point Scale
Everything comes back to one number. Here is how the scale breaks down and where the coffee you actually buy tends to land.
Specialty Coffee Association cupping score
Specialty vs Regular Coffee, Side by Side
- Beans
- Arabica from specific farms and regions
- Harvest
- Ripe cherries picked selectively, often by hand
- Roast
- Light to medium, chosen to show the bean
- On the bag
- Roast date, origin, process, tasting notes
- Flavor
- Distinct: fruit, florals, chocolate, sweetness
- Beans
- Arabica, robusta or blends from many sources
- Harvest
- Often strip-picked, ripe and unripe together
- Roast
- Usually dark, which evens out defects
- On the bag
- Best-by date and a brand name
- Flavor
- Consistent, roasty, bitter, less distinct
Roast is a big part of the difference. Dark roasting covers up defects and makes every bean taste similar, which suits a brand that wants every can to taste the same. Specialty roasters stop earlier so the origin comes through; our guide to roast levels shows how much changes along the way.
Why Specialty Coffee Costs More
The price gap is not just branding. Nearly every step from tree to bag costs more when the goal is quality rather than volume.
Pickers go over the same trees several times in a season, taking only ripe fruit. It is slow, skilled and far more expensive than stripping a branch in one pass.
The best coffee often grows high up, where cherries ripen slowly and taste better but trees produce less.
Washing, drying and fermenting are controlled closely, and defective beans are picked out by hand or machine. Methods like honey processing take extra time and attention.
Specialty buyers usually pay well above the commodity market price, often directly to farms or cooperatives, which is what makes quality worth producing.
Roasting in small lots and shipping quickly costs more per pound than roasting in bulk and warehousing for months.
How to Tell If You’re Buying Specialty Coffee
Read the bag
Specialty roasters put the details on the label because they are proud of them. The more of these you see, the more likely it is the real thing.
- A roast date, not just a best-by date, ideally within the last few weeks.
- A specific origin: country plus region, and often the farm, cooperative or producer.
- The process, such as washed, natural or honey.
- The variety, such as Bourbon, Caturra or Gesha.
- Tasting notes that describe flavors, not just “rich” or “bold”.
Buying whole beans helps too, since ground coffee loses much of what you are paying for within hours. And once you have good beans, store them properly so they stay that way.
Common Myths About Specialty Coffee
It is not a flavor or a roast. Specialty coffee can be roasted light, medium or dark; the label describes the quality of the beans, not a style. It is not the same as organic or fair trade. Those are certifications about farming practices and pricing, and a certified coffee can still score below 80, just as an uncertified one can score 88. It is not only for espresso snobs. A clean, sweet specialty coffee is often easier to drink black than a cheap dark roast, because there is less bitterness to cover up. And it is not always expensive to brew: a French press or drip machine with fresh specialty beans will beat the same machine with stale supermarket coffee every time.
Is Specialty Coffee Worth It?
If you drink coffee mainly for caffeine, or always add plenty of milk and sugar, regular coffee will do the job and the extra cost may not show up in the cup. If you drink it black and care how it tastes, specialty is one of the most affordable luxuries there is. Even an expensive bag works out to a modest price per cup at home.
The easiest way to decide is to taste the difference side by side: brew a supermarket coffee and a fresh specialty bag the same way and compare. A good local roaster or specialty coffee shop is the best place to start, and coffees like Mexican coffee offer great value. For the bigger story of how specialty coffee grew into what it is today, see the culture of specialty coffee.
Former roastery owner and coffee tour operator. Steve spent five years roasting coffee for his own shop and wholesale customers. More about Steve