Is the rising tide of specialty coffee lifting all boats?

Notwithstanding the size and breadth of the coffee industry, the distribution of economic outcomes along global value chains has never been equitable. Consumers pay high and rising retail prices for their coffee while the people who grow coffee receive inadequate shares of those prices. People who track the widening gap between retail (i.e., roasted) and green (i.e., unroasted) coffee prices tend to link it to industry consolidation and increased buyer power. However, this once singular commodity has evolved over several decades to incorporate differentiated market segments wherein retail prices are based on quality and a range of identity markers. The development community embraces these changes as upgrading opportunities for coffee producers, often assuming a concomitance of value creation and value capture. This assumption that the rising tide of retail specialty coffee prices lifts all boats begs the question: How is value distributed along specialty coffee value chains? We examine retail and green coffee price data and find that the upgrading by producers who grow coffees for differentiated specialty markets is mainly (but variably) appropriated by downstream actors. Our observations illuminate a pricing landscape that calls for new ways of thinking about value distribution along global value chains that end with differentiated consumer products.