Aug 6, 2026 · 51 min · 10 segments
Is the specialty coffee industry going through an identity crisis, or just growing pains. We zoom in and out on the industry at different parts of the value chain to better understand what is…
Rob StephenGuest
Andrew TolleyHost
Who are we actually? What is special about our coffee? What is the special thing that our customers are really valuing? How can we deliver a product to them which they still are willing to pay a premium price for, and they still believe in us as a brand, because if you devalue your brand, then people will look elsewhere, right? So it's a bit of an identity crisis in that way for specialty.
But, you know, if you ask me, is the industry going through an identity crisis or having growing pains? I would say neither.
I would say that especially the coffee industry has succeeded as a whole beyond its wildest dreams when it was started.
to you know uh 1960s and pete's coffee in berkeley california and you go into um you know sort of some of the pioneering work that was done in in europe for for coffee these are these are highly passionate people who were really sort of counter culture revolutionaries of what was going on right and so for years the industry was super exciting because you were basically in a room with fired up rebels.
You know, but eventually the rebels move into, move into the palace and, uh, realize that it's pretty nice there.
And, you know, it's, it's become a global, uh, business that has extreme sort of financial implications and people who are playing now, um, uh, most of them don't have any resemblance to the people who started the industry.
It brings in sophisticated players who have very different ideas about what specialty is and they get to define it because they're the ones talking to the most consumers.
And so, you know, you're, you're in a, if you're, uh, you know, one of these sort of originally minded specialty players i would imagine that it's extremely uh difficult you know i consider myself one of those people it's you know you you watch yourself you watch the industry become something that you didn't expect it to become but it's also wildly successful right yeah you know and so what do we do i mean it is what it is yeah
yeah yeah and when you say wildly successful do you think it's wildly successful across the value chain
But I do think that there is a there is, you know, so the four dollar market that we experienced, the four dollar plus market that we experienced exposed the fundamental tension that is often buried deep beneath the surface, which is that in my view, and this is strictly Rob's view, no one I'm affiliated with or anybody else.
Who are we actually? What is special about our coffee? What is the special thing that our customers are really valuing? How can we deliver a product to them which they still are willing to pay a premium price for, and they still believe in us as a brand, because if you devalue your brand, then people will look elsewhere, right? So it's a bit of an identity crisis in that way for specialty.
But, you know, if you ask me, is the industry going through an identity crisis or having growing pains? I would say neither.
I would say that especially the coffee industry has succeeded as a whole beyond its wildest dreams when it was started.
to you know uh 1960s and pete's coffee in berkeley california and you go into um you know sort of some of the pioneering work that was done in in europe for for coffee these are these are highly passionate people who were really sort of counter culture revolutionaries of what was going on right and so for years the industry was super exciting because you were basically in a room with fired up rebels.
You know, but eventually the rebels move into, move into the palace and, uh, realize that it's pretty nice there.
And, you know, it's, it's become a global, uh, business that has extreme sort of financial implications and people who are playing now, um, uh, most of them don't have any resemblance to the people who started the industry.
It brings in sophisticated players who have very different ideas about what specialty is and they get to define it because they're the ones talking to the most consumers.
And so, you know, you're, you're in a, if you're, uh, you know, one of these sort of originally minded specialty players i would imagine that it's extremely uh difficult you know i consider myself one of those people it's you know you you watch yourself you watch the industry become something that you didn't expect it to become but it's also wildly successful right yeah you know and so what do we do i mean it is what it is yeah
yeah yeah and when you say wildly successful do you think it's wildly successful across the value chain
But I do think that there is a there is, you know, so the four dollar market that we experienced, the four dollar plus market that we experienced exposed the fundamental tension that is often buried deep beneath the surface, which is that in my view, and this is strictly Rob's view, no one I'm affiliated with or anybody else.
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