Transparent Trade Coffee

Did specialty coffee prices go down or up? César from Cultivar Peru notes that the overall median price for green specialty coffees fell from $2.75 per pound in 2018/2019 to $2.60 per pound in 2019/2020. However, within every quality band, 2019/2020 median prices went up: from $1.51 to $1.69 (80-81.9 coffees); from $1.79 to $1.90 (82-83.9 coffees); from $2.25 to $2.30 (84-84.9 coffees); from $2.75 to $2.80 (85-85.9 coffees); from $3.40 to $3.50 (86-87.9 coffees); and rom $4.9...5 to $5.40 (88+ coffees). To make sense of this, we look behind the numbers reported in Table 5. In 17 quality/quantity buckets where the 2019/2020 median price was below $2.75, there were 768 fewer contracts in 2019/2020. However, in 18 quality/quantity buckets where the 2019/2020 median price was above $2.75, the drop in the number of contracts was 2,282 roughly three times greater! Therefore, while prices within each quality band shifted upward, the COVID-19 pandemic delivered a troubling shift toward lower-priced specialty coffees. This is why we report that the overall decline in the median price in 2019/2020 was due to a shift away from higher-quality ‘fancy’ coffees and toward higher-volume ‘regular’ specialty coffees. Thanks, César, for making sure we keep looking closely at the numbers in the 2020 Specialty Coffee Transaction Guide: www.transactionguide.coffee #keeplooking #specialtycoffeetransactionguide #sctgp #talkingsctg #thefutureisworthpayingfor #differentiatespecialtycoffee #coffeepricecrisis #cultivarperu

In the fourth quarter of 2020, the SCRPI fell 1.5%. The average price for roasted specialty coffees at the end of December 2020 was $23.86 per pound. This breaks down into an average of $17.57 per pound for the lowest-priced coffees (-0.3%), and $30.14 for the highest-priced coffees (-2.1%) sold on the websites of the SCRPI roasters. En el cuarto trimestre de 2020, el IPMCE cayó un 1.5%. El precio promedio de los cafés especiales tostados a finales de diciembre de 2020 era de... $23.86 por libra. Esto se desglosa en un promedio de $17. 57 por libra para los cafés especiales de menor precio (-0.3%), y $30.14 para los cafés de mayor precio (-2.1%) que se venden en los sitios web de los tostadores IPMCE. In addition to the Specialty Coffee Transaction Guide and the Grounds for Empowerment Business Tools Workshops, Transparent Trade Coffee (Emory University) produces the quarterly Specialty Coffee Retail Price Index (SCRPI). The SCRPI allows individuals in the global specialty coffee industry to track retail prices at the upper and lower end of the North American market by pulling retail price data from the online stores of a stable group of specialty coffee roasters. Go to www.transparenttradecoffee.org for more information.

Read about another program - Grounds for Empowerment - that leverages the pricing information reported in the Specialty Coffee Transaction Guide. We look forward to sharing and discussing the 2020 Transaction Guide in our spring program in Guatemala! Asociación Nacional del Café Guatemala IWCA ~ International Women's Coffee Alliance

Thanks to Mercanta The Coffee Hunters for helping to get the 2020 Specialty Coffee Transaction Guide into as many hands (and heads) as possible!

A comprehensive overview of an important project. Please read!