Speciality vs Supermarket Coffee

Introduction

How does speciality coffee, including Bean & Dunne's coffee, differ from that you can buy in a supermarket? A good question considering you'll pay around £3-£6 for a 200/250g bag. Opposed to speciality coffee you may buy from a local cafe, order online directly from a roaster or get through a subscription service for between £7-£15 for a similar quantity. What do you get for paying more?

What is Speciality Coffee?

The first point of difference, suggested in the name, is the quality, care and dedication that is involved in speciality coffee. To be deemed speciality, a coffee must score above 80/100 within the standardised SCA (Speciality Coffee Association) scoring system. A score of 80-85 is considered a very good quality coffee, an excellent coffee falls between 85-90. Commodity grade coffee, generally found on the supermarket shelves, would score well below 80 and instant coffee wouldn't make the scale.

Mass volume vs specific roasts

Another difference between speciality and supermarket coffee is the price and volume. Supermarket coffee is mass produced to fill the shelves in thousands of stores and in turn awarded long shelf life to avoid losses, which can often be up to two years. Comparatively, speciality coffee is roasted to order, therefore ensuring the freshest beans and the fullest flavour. A series of quality checks throughout the supply chain aim to remove defects, ensure quality and retain the tasting notes. Speciality roasters spend lots of time in reviewing the origin of the coffee. Aspects such as altitude, variety, processing method all have a part to play in the end product and care is paid to these. Importantly, farmers are paid good prices and importers ensure they have good sustainable credentials and pay fair prices to pickers. This encourages higher quality resulting in a higher price per kilogram.

What is Commodity Grade Coffee

Commodity grade coffee is sold according to the 'C-Price' which is set by stock markets, despite being a valuable commodity it is only traded on this price. Therefore, farmers are at the mercy of the C-Price. When the C-price is low they receive little for their crop, sometimes not evening breaking even, pushing more rural farming communities into poverty. The industry of commodity coffee is made up of the big businesses such as Illy, Costa, Nescafe and Kenco. Despite any social projects run by these companies, the backbone of their businesses do not support farmers to improve their facilities, pay fair wages and even break free of the poverty line. Due to low quality, commodity coffee is also very darkly roasted, destroying any uniqueness and flavour.

How does Fairtrade compare?

What about Fairtrade? Despite being a fantastic thing in a lot of industries, this doesn't always equate to coffee. Fair trade standards means only farms with a specific volume and manufacturing equipment are able to be awarded the certification. Therefore, small holder farms with only a handful of acres but the best quality are excluded. Don't get me wrong in areas Fairtrade is great and a minimum price for farmers gives them great certainty. However, Fairtrade coffee reaches a ceiling that speciality coffee does not.

At B&D we buy premium speciality coffee that often falls between 85-90 on the SCA scoring chart. We buy off importers who are giving back and investing in the coffee growing communties such as Falcon Coffee and Green Coffee Collective. We sample lots of coffee before purchasing and research deeply into where that coffee comes from. Yet, we strive to make high quality coffee accessible. So go on, try some of our coffees, see what you think.