Every so often someone asks me why a bag of our coffee costs more than a bag from the supermarket. It's a fair question. The short answer is that they're not really the same product. Most supermarket coffee is commodity grade. Everything we roast is specialty grade, and the gap between the two is bigger than most people realise.

What makes coffee specialty grade?

Specialty coffee is defined by quality, and it's measured two ways: how the green beans look, and how the coffee tastes.

The taste test. Trained cuppers, often licensed Q Graders, score the coffee out of 100 using a standard protocol. They assess aroma, flavour, aftertaste, acidity, body, balance, sweetness and cleanness. A coffee that scores 80 points or more is considered specialty. The Specialty Coffee Association has recently introduced a newer assessment system, but the 80-point mark remains the industry's common shorthand.

The defect count. A 350g sample of green beans is checked by hand for defects.

  • Primary defects include fully black beans, fully sour beans, mouldy beans and foreign matter like sticks and stones. Specialty coffee must have none.
  • Secondary defects include broken, immature, shrivelled or insect-damaged beans. Specialty coffee allows only a handful.

One mouldy or black bean can spoil the flavour of a whole cup, which is why the rules are so strict.

What is commodity coffee?

Commodity coffee makes up most of the coffee traded around the world. It's bought and sold on volume and price rather than flavour. It isn't held to the same strict scoring, and it often contains more defects, unripe cherries and mixed lots.

It ends up in much of the instant coffee and supermarket coffee on the shelves. It's consistent and affordable, but it lacks the sweetness, clarity and character of specialty coffee.

Why the difference starts on the farm

Specialty coffee usually comes from high-altitude farms where cooler temperatures slow the ripening of the cherries. Slower ripening builds more sugar and flavour in the bean.

It's also picked more carefully, often by hand, choosing only ripe cherries. Commodity coffee is more often strip-picked or machine-harvested, with ripe and unripe cherries mixed together.

Then there's processing, which shapes flavour enormously:

  • Washed: the fruit is removed before drying, giving a clean, bright cup.
  • Natural: the whole cherry is dried with the bean inside, giving a sweeter, fruitier cup.
  • Honey: some of the sticky fruit is left on during drying, balancing clarity and sweetness.

Specialty producers control each step closely, because a mistake at any point shows up in the cup.

How the market sets the price

Coffee prices around the world are anchored to the "C price," the benchmark for arabica futures traded on the ICE exchange in New York. It moves with weather, harvests, stocks and demand.

Commodity coffee trades close to the C price. Specialty coffee sells at a premium above it, reflecting its quality and the extra work that goes into producing it. When the C price rises, as it did sharply in 2024 and 2025, everyone feels it. Our post on why coffee costs more right now explains the details.

Why it matters in your cup

Put a specialty coffee and a commodity coffee side by side, black, and the difference is obvious. Specialty coffee is sweeter and cleaner, with distinct flavours, whether that's berries, chocolate or florals. Commodity coffee tends to taste flat, bitter or simply "coffee."

At Mahalia, we buy specialty grade green coffee through trusted brokers. We roast it in Robe, then cup every batch about 24 hours later following the Specialty Coffee Association's protocol. We'll keep paying the premium for quality, even when the market is tough.

Curious what the difference tastes like? Our award-winning Blend 2 is a good place to start, or browse our full range.