"Specialty coffee" is on menus everywhere these days. It's on bags at the grocery store. It's in the name of cafés. It gets used so often it's almost lost meaning.
But the term has a real, specific definition — and when it's used accurately, it points to something genuinely different. Here's what specialty coffee actually means and why the distinction matters.
The Official Definition
Specialty coffee has a technical standard set by the Specialty Coffee Association (SCA). Coffee qualifies as specialty if it scores 80 points or above on a 100-point cupping scale evaluated by a certified Q Grader.
A Q Grader is a professional coffee taster trained and certified by the Coffee Quality Institute. They evaluate coffee on criteria including:
- Fragrance and aroma
- Flavor
- Aftertaste
- Acidity
- Body
- Balance
- Uniformity
- Clean cup
- Sweetness
- Overall impression
Coffees scoring 80–84 are considered "specialty." Coffees scoring 85+ are considered "excellent." Scores above 90 are rare and represent exceptional lots.
Commodity coffee — the kind that fills supermarket cans and mass-market brands — typically scores in the 60s and 70s.
What Puts Coffee Above 80?
High scores require excellent conditions at every stage of production:
Terroir. Altitude, soil composition, rainfall, and temperature affect how a coffee plant develops and what flavors it produces. The best specialty growing regions — Ethiopia's Yirgacheffe, Colombia's Huila, Guatemala's Antigua — have terroir that consistently produces high-scoring coffee.
Variety. Coffee has many varieties, like wine grapes. Some, like Gesha, are prized for their extraordinary aromatic complexity. Others, like Bourbon or Typica, are valued for their balance and sweetness.
Harvesting. Specialty coffee is typically hand-picked — selectively harvesting only ripe cherries. Mass production coffee is often strip-picked, taking ripe and unripe fruit together, which reduces cup quality.
Processing. After harvest, how the coffee seed is removed from the fruit dramatically affects flavor. Natural process coffees (dried in the fruit) tend toward fruit-forward flavors. Washed coffees (fruit removed before drying) are often cleaner and brighter.
Milling and sorting. Defects — broken, insect-damaged, or underdeveloped beans — lower scores. Specialty coffee has strict limits on defects per sample.
Roasting. Even exceptional green coffee can be ruined by poor roasting. A skilled roaster develops a profile that expresses the coffee's best qualities rather than masking them.
Specialty Coffee vs. Commodity Coffee: The Supply Chain Difference
Commodity coffee flows through anonymous supply chains. Beans from dozens of farms across multiple countries are blended and traded as an undifferentiated product. No one knows exactly where it came from or who grew it.
Specialty coffee is traceable. You can follow it back to a specific farm, cooperative, or even a specific lot from a specific harvest. This traceability is partly what enables the quality system — if you know exactly where the coffee came from, you can evaluate and improve quality at the source.
This is also what enables storytelling. "Our Ethiopia is from a small cooperative in Yirgacheffe, washed and dried on raised beds at 1,900 meters elevation" is a real, specific, verifiable story.
What Specialty Coffee Costs (and Why)
Specialty coffee costs more. That's not marketing — it reflects real economics.
Hand-picking, careful processing, smaller lots, longer supply chains with fewer intermediaries, and honest prices to farmers all add cost. A pound of green specialty coffee might cost $3–$8 or more depending on the origin and the lot. Commodity coffee trades closer to the New York Board of Trade C price — often below $2/lb.
The question isn't whether specialty costs more. It's whether the difference in what you're getting — in the cup, in the story, in the farming practices supported — justifies the premium. For people who drink coffee every day and care about what's in their cup, the answer is usually yes.
Does "Specialty" Always Mean It's Good?
Almost. The 80+ score threshold is a real filter. But two things to keep in mind:
First, specialty is a floor, not a ceiling. An 80-point coffee and a 90-point coffee are both "specialty" — they're very different experiences.
Second, roasting and brewing matter. Exceptional green coffee can be poorly roasted or poorly brewed. "Specialty" at the sourcing level doesn't automatically guarantee a great cup if execution downstream is weak.
This is why the term "specialty coffee" is most meaningful when the whole chain — sourcing, roasting, brewing — is treated with care.
Specialty Coffee in New York City
New York has one of the most developed specialty coffee cultures in the world. The city embraced the "third wave" movement early and has never looked back. Today, New York has dozens of specialty roasters and hundreds of specialty-focused cafés.
Birch Coffee has been part of that community since 2009 — not as a brand built on trends, but as a company built on the genuine belief that coffee is better when you care where it comes from and how it's prepared.
Learn about our wholesale and roasting programs →
Birch Coffee is a specialty coffee roaster based in Long Island City, NYC, with 15 locations across New York City, Seoul, and beyond.