From the Managing Editor's Desk
Dan Bolton,STiR managing editor
Erna Knutsen will be long remembered as the coffee trader who saw something special in coffee. It was she who coined the term “specialty coffee” in 1974. Knutsen, who passed away in June at 96, was among the first coffee traders to champion the skills of coffee growers and to recognize the benefits of processing techniques leading to the popularity of naturals, honey, and fermented coffees popular today. In her offer list, she named characteristics inherent in terroir and priced them into transactions. She calculated the value in the cup that made the coffee she traded not just defect-free, but “distinctive.”
It would be 20 more years before consumers would really appreciate what she pioneered.
The heavy lifting was done by specialty retailers, specialty roasters, and the Specialty Coffee Association, all of whom understood that gourmet—the term in use at the time, was “market-speak” and meaningless. Since 1950 respondents to the National Coffee Association’s annual National Coffee Drinking Trends survey have labeled anything that sold for more than 25-cents a cup “gourmet” because it said so, right on the label: Folger’s Gourmet Supreme; Hills Bros Premium Gourmet; Maxwell House Gourmet Roast; Eight O’Clock Gourmet Arabica. Coffee has long since replaced tins with plastic tubs, but still clings to gourmet.
During the early 1900s, Clarence E. Bickford, the green coffee buyer at Hills Bros. in San Francisco, insisted on blind tastings. He reasoned that when roasters paid a premium for coffee, it should display characteristics evident to consumers.
“Consumer perception is critical: after all, the effort put into attaining and preserving quality is meaningless if the consumer cannot perceive it,” according to SCA.
The payoff has been remarkable. Consumers have increased their per capita spending on coffee by 30% in the past 10 years, expanding sales to $300 billion globally. In the US specialty now accounts for 60% market share, up from 40% in 2010. This means that of the hundreds of millions of cups consumed daily 6 in 10 were specialty brew. Specialty coffee drinkers average three cups per day. In 1999 only 9% of adults in the US were drinking specialty coffee daily. During the past 17 years, the number of past-day drinkers who say they “occasionally” drink specialty coffee has remained steady at more than 65% of adults.
The tea industry has well-defined standards for plucking, processing, and grading tea. Tasters can describe at length the characteristics in the cup. The most gifted can discern what makes a prize-winning tea, but tea still lacks a widely accepted definition useful to consumers. So, let’s create one. The International Specialty Tea Association (www.specialtyteaassociation.org) recently posted its definition of specialty tea. Give it a read and share your thoughts in the comments section that follows.