this episode is brought to you by Communications training for coffee teams a new map of forward Workshop tailored to get your team communicating more confidently to improve General mental health as well as business profitability click the link in the show notes for further details welcome to the Daily coffee Pro by map of forward friends I'm your host Lee Safar and today I have the great honor of welcoming back Peter Giuliano to the podcast after a very long time Peter thank you for doing that thank you for having me Lee it's great to see you uh likewise sir I I there's a special thing that happens when I have a conversation with you I feel like I get off the podcast and I'm lighter for days and it's and and I've spoken to people about that and they're like oh that's just what happens when you have a conversation with Peter oh that's nice so I hope that everyone that's listening ends up feeling the same kind of lightness that I feel every time that I get off a conversation with you so um especially because we're going to explore a very interesting and poignant subject right now through this series we're going to talk about what is specialty coffee today because we all know that the idea of specialty coffee has changed uh dramatically over the last couple of decades and I feel that it's somewhat a little bit ambiguous today people are confused by what it means and they have their own ideas of what it means and what they'd like it to mean but we're going to explore that and the business models and a whole bunch of stuff around specialty coffee in this series so for people who don't know what you do Peter do you want to just remind people of Who You Are sure I'm the I'm the chief research officer for the specialty coffee Association and I'm also the executive director for the coffee Science Foundation which is a institution that supports and conducts scientific research in coffee um what I when I tell people that though I usually try to point out that um that because I work in coffee science does not mean I'm a scientist I'm a coffee person um who loves uh science and research and so you know I started my career as a barista almost 35 years ago and so my my my path has been through coffee but it has brought me to this Nexus between scientific research and and the coffee sort of tradition and trade and so my job winds up being a little bit of a go-between between these two worlds academic research and science on one side and the coffee trade on another so that's really what I do it sounds really interesting because you're at kind of this intersection between the two um and so it seems giving your love for for understanding the reality behind things like exploring ideas it seems really poignant that we should have a discussion today about what is specialty coffee so what is specialty coffee yeah well that's I mean that's a critically important question for me in my life I mean you know I've been I've been involved and embraced um by this specially coffee idea for a long time and you know there are some times in my life that I've seen it's just seemed very obvious like oh well obviously I know what especially coffee that's quality you know it's about quality it's about you know obviously we know equality is and other times it has seemed less so but there was this time a few years ago but for a long time the especially coffee Association who naturally should have a very uh very sharply defined idea of what it is we for a long time didn't we we for a long time would sort of avoid the question a little bit we'd talk about you know we had these like long essays it's say what especially coffee then we'd have a long essay about all the people that do specialty coffee and how they craft it and stuff like that we didn't have a succinct definition and instead we told a story which is useful too but but um there was this one moment though that was really important is that for me I so I do research and we were starting some research about um labor on coffee farms uh and the researchers that were involved from zamarano University in Honduras and Texas Tech University these are agricultural economists um uh and and uh and anthropologists and and and they said okay well we're setting up a theory help us distinguish between a specialty coffee farm and a not specially coffee Farm and so what we realized at that point was you know we really need to be able to get clear about this because because the re This research isn't possible without being able to distinguish especially coffee Farm yeah from a from a non-special coffee farm and um and it's not that obvious you know and you know because you know as many people know Farms often sell will sell specialty coffee and they'll sell non-specially coffee too you know so what how do you define the difference and you know and that led us on a journey where my colleagues and I said set out to really understand this and and we went to the literature you know um to see how other Industries Define specialty coffee what the what the researchers think about this what the researchers tell us and we discovered a lot of really interesting resources um and one that really stuck with me is there was a chocolate researcher named Allison Brown um and uh and she she was doing um research on fine chocolates and what she did was she talked to Consumers and we've done that too we've talked to Consumers and and and their ideas about what made chocolate interesting were very diverse and and very um and very uh uh varied you know and and very personal often to them and okay so that was interesting and then also we against all this is the backdrop of oftentimes coffee producers particularly are faced with economic hardship or economic inequity as part of their their thing so we know that that that economic there's an economic issue too so at the end of all this what we came down to and I I'm summarizing a very a little bit of a long argument in a short little bit but but really the the the place that we came to is to recognize coffee and coffee experiences for their attributes and these attributes are the things that make coffee special to us it's a special flavor it's a special feeling it's a special um Aroma or it's a special experience that we're having a special vibe in a coffee shop you know these are all attributes that cause us to Value coffee more and when we value a coffee more we pay more for it um that's a good that's a good people aren't likely to pay more for coffee that's not um uh special to them if it's not if you can't distinguish it from a commodity coffee you would be unlikely to pay more for it there has to be something in there that's kind of making you value it more in order for you to Pony up extra money and that's the that's the uh that's the economic part so basically this definition that we came to is coffee uh especially coffee is a coffee or a coffee experience that has distinctive attributes attributes that make it distinct from other coffees it's not interchangeable with other coffees it's distinct and those attributes create value that you can measure economically or in other ways so um so it's and we call so we call it the attributes conception of specialty coffee it's about understanding either sensory attributes or another category which is extrinsic attributes which is information which we can talk about but that that was an Insight that was a uh a breakthrough for us because it allowed us to to measure um what specialty coffee is in very diverse markets and that's an important part too that we can probably talk about excuse me the the only um I do want to push back on that a little bit if you don't mind great I would love it for you too because it sounds like all of those attributes that you were talking about are quite subjective yes so therefore if it's it's if it's subjective who gets to define the parameters and the boundaries around the upper and lower limits of that subjectivity if you don't mind me asking no of course um so the attributes okay we can get very technical because they are both okay okay so um pursuant to this there's all these attributes and there's there's um intrinsic attributes and extrinsic attributes um uh to the coffee and and then there's also okay in sensory science um and you they think about sensory attributes in two specific ways one is descriptive okay so we can describe the attributes of a food or beverage right I I love to do this exercise with people where we describe a drink or a thing and humans are very good at this by the way we can we can sometimes I do this with Coca-Cola where I have a group of people and I say okay I'm not going to say what this is but everybody instantly recognizes Coca-Cola right because it's so familiar and it tastes like Cola and I say okay don't say Cola but tell me all the component flavors and we take 10 minutes and we pick it apart and then the next slide I have is a list of the ingredients of Coca-Cola and a group of 10 people can get can describe the ingredients like almost perfectly it's amazing how we can do that that's objective those are ingredients that are in the Coca-Cola those are experiences that you can train your senses to recognize the lime oil in Coca-Cola you can you can recognize the sucrose you can perceive it as sweet that's all objective that's real that's something in the in the real world that the instruments of our senses are able to detect okay that provided we have the same cultural palette well the the we we all have the same biology right so we can we can now how we interpret those signals depends on our cultural information right oh well exactly go ahead go ahead well there's actually been some study cross-cultural studies on this they've they're um uh so because they're concerned about this in in the sensory Science World a famous one is they train two uh two panels one in Kansas United States and another in Thailand and they were doing sensory analysis of soy sauce and they found that when they they agreed on Alexa con a set of terms and and they did the descriptive analysis in these two spaces places these are two different cultural groups two different you know in two different parts of the world and their results were functionally identical to each other except soy sauce is a ubiquitous product the soy sauce that you eat and the same with the Coca-Cola right Coca-Cola is quite a ubiquitous product but if I took a strawberry that was grown in Korea and a strawberry that was drawn grown in Kansas and I asked people to talk about those two products I mean these we have this problem in uh the Barista competitions the cultural palette of the way that somebody interprets a strawberry flavor versus another cultural palette of a strawberry flavor this is not ubiquitous right okay well now you might be talking about getting to the second group which is okay I've talked about descriptive right which I'm I'm gonna stick with the the objective point and we can we can discuss it more if we need to but the the second part is called effective AFF yep um yeah effective and um and that is so-called it's a psychological term it means um an effective experience is how you uh your you experience a sensory input so um so that is how what your ideas about quality are what your ideas about what you like are this is your human response right and you measure that in a different way the classic way that you measure an effective response to food is called the nine point hedonic scale it's it's uh got five in the middle which is I neither like nor dislike it and then a one is I really dislike it and a nine is I really like it and that that allow that scale name vented that in the 1940s and they use it all the time and you can you can express ideas about quality using tools like like the nine point hedonic scale and that's very informed by your personal information your personal history your beliefs about what food mean what they are what you like what your culture says you're you like what what you've been growing up to eat etc etc those are the things that are very diverse you know and it's okay that they're diverse that doesn't mean you can't measure them that doesn't mean that they're not real but they come from the um the consciousness of the person uh where and whereas the descriptive stuff is basically you're treating your senses your chemo your chemical senses which are your taste and smell like an instrument and I'll hear you on that except that that I mean it's well documented the relationship between our gut microbiome and our mood and and our environment and how you know the weather and all of that impacts our biology and the way that we we are able to sense that I give you an example uh from a from a story that I it actually happened in California and I think I've told this story before on the podcast so forgive me if you've heard this before I was going out for a coffee with an Australian friend and I said make me for a coffee and he said I'm not going to the places that you like to drink coffee no no no he was talking in general oh I won't go and drink coffee at specialty coffee shops oh okay and I said uh why and this is a guy who I know loves coffee and he said because you guys drink coffee that's sour and I went okay take me to a coffee shop that you like to drink coffee at um and I we went there and it was a fascinating experiment because he couldn't get enough of this very bitter very overly roasted coffee and I said to him so how do you describe this coffee he said specialty coffee I said tell me more and he said you guys have decided that the way that you like to drink coffee is specialty coffee and we're a whole community of people who like this kind of coffee and we consider this specialty coffee and we consider what you guys are doing not to be specialty coffee he's not wrong Peter it's not wrong at all and that and that's exactly what the effective part is right the the the the and I think it's really important that people that are in exactly that situation deserve our respect not us trying to convince them that they're wrong absolutely absolutely the the um and that's a that's a great example I think you know that I I came of my of coffee agent in uh in San Diego and I was working for a roaster in the in the second wave days of of especially coffee I think this is the 90s and we roast it in those days in the 90s dark was good you know dark was that dark was what specialty coffee was yeah you know it was precisely the opposite of of especially coffee is light roasted in those days commercial coffee was light roasted especially coffee was dark roasted um and even today there there are especially coffee is not one thing and I think that's the really important that's the important thing here yeah it's it it is multiple things because of course it's multiple things we're diverse in our preferences in what we think is special um and that's true globally you know that what's going to be special in Australia is not necessarily going to be the same thing in Germany we're in Thailand and that's true within cultures as well I'm here in Southern California the joy of of of the specialty coffee moment right now is that I can go to a Asian style um especially coffee place that's like Boba coffee you know I can go to a Mexican style coffee shop it's a full-on special experience that's based on you know Mexican flavors horchata lattes a rich tradition of especially coffee I can go to the what's seen as the third wave coffee shop light Rose very minimalist Decor I can go to a one of those overstuffed couch places that has darker roast coffee etc those are all specially coffee experiences right and and and people love them you know we Phyllis um Johnson um uh who who you may know about yeah um yeah she's been on the coffee fantastic thinker she we were talking about this thing once and she said a phrase that stuck with me which is we need as a special coffee Community to let go of sameness to think that that us all being the same and unified in our idea of what specialty coffee is in a very narrow flavor range is a strength it's not a strength the diversity of flavors that people can experience is where the strength is and this definition of especially coffee that I've just shared with you is about recognizing that diversity it's if people find Value in some attribute whether it's light roastedness or dark roastedness right that powerful acidity in the light roasted coffee or the Smoky chocolate nutty um flavors that your friend probably appreciated in in the dark roast coffees that he liked both of those are deserving of respect and and and should be recognized as part of the specially coffee experience which kind of takes me back to my original question which was who defines the the boundaries of where specialty coffee ends and where commercial coffee begins yeah a lot of people well a lot of people look to us at the specialty coffee Association to regulate this um uh you know what I mean oh yeah when you work here you get when you get a call every once in a while like you know my competitor is terrible they're they're they're they're they're selling not special coffee and they're telling people they're especially coffee can't you do something about this we've passed a law you know and one of the things about this definition that I've just told you is that it's descriptive not prescriptive it's it's meant to describe what exists in the world rather than tell people what should be and I got this concept from Linguistics you know there's because there's two kind of schools of linguistics the the ones that I remember from being in school with are telling you well here's grammar and here's here's the you know but and those are the prescriptivists here's what the English language should look like right but the the larger and the and the vibrant part of linguistics are the descriptivists who describe how people actually use language which doesn't necessarily follow the rules of grammar that I was taught in school but that's okay because language evolves and and people make each other understood so it's the descriptivists versus the prescriptivists I am firmly a descriptivist I am not here to make the rules about what specialty coffee is or isn't and make the judgment because you know who do really good at that individuals and and you can see their behavior this is one thing that markets are really good at right markets are good at helping consumers find the products that make them happen and sorry sorry going no no please well no no I mean I was I was giving a pitch for markets markets are good there's lots of information in markets and once you see people gathering around a product um then they uh you can tell that there's something special about it but there's there's two kinds of consumers and especially coffee one is the end consumer right the people that buy customer stuff but then there's another kind of person which is the kind of the coffee expert the person who you know and that person has preferences and ideas and feelings about coffee themselves that that are important consumers will often and I was one of these people for a long time I was a director of coffee and a coffee buyer and stuff and one thing that I realized is that there were a lot of consumers out there who looked to me for hey Peter I want a great coffee experience you're a coffee Pro helped me understand what good coffee is that's okay too right they're not saying I have a preference please give it to me they're saying I'm looking to understand your preferences as a coffee expert so expert preferences and consumer preferences are also are two sort of categories of of uh of people that we should listen to and in coffee those are two different economic markets that we can look at right right um right go ahead my question is it sounds like what you're saying is that the definition of specialty coffee is more a descriptive approach yes right but you guys uh the specialty coffee Association so you're an association that exists for something that doesn't have a clear definition well I I find that to be a pretty clear definition um uh I don't think I don't think you have to be prescriptive to be clear um in most dictionaries will tell you that they're not prescriptive they're descriptive dictionaries you know the Webster's Dictionary yeah um has a descriptivist perspective they're not telling you how a word should be used they're telling you about how people actually use the word and that's what our definition is about too it's it's telling you it's it's it's not meant to enforce a rule on people and force people into what specially coffee is it's meant to describe what this phenomenon is all about it does it does give you a clear understanding of what the word means and what it's intended to mean so you don't turn around and look up the definition for dog and see uh well it it kind of feels like something that's furry uh it might not have for um and it sometimes has legs and sometimes doesn't have legs right so so I I may have unintentionally given you the impression that especially coffee is is all coffee and that's not what that that's not what the definition means right um it tends to say what it what it says is it it is a coffee that has just or coffee experience that has distinctive attributes so that's important and that's measurable so the whole point of commodity coffee is that it doesn't have distinctive attributes um because the point of like coffee that's tenderable to the sea is that you can't tell where it's from because you don't want to be able to tell where it's from if you're if you're manufacturing a big brand that just wants to be consistent all the time you don't want a coffee that you buy from Colombia this month that tastes different from a coffee that you buy in Guatemala six months from now you want to be indistinguishable from one another right that that makes more and that's right and that's a that's the definition of what a commodity coffee is it's not distinguishable um and we're saying especially coffee is distinctive it's recognizable in its attributes and that's that's that's Criterion number one Criterion number two is those um those attributes that it has that make it different are valuable to somebody right and and then and so the other thing that especially coffee can't be is coffee that you're that's that's let's say trading at the at the going rate of of commodity coffee because that is showing all the signs of being especially coffee or worse yet traded at a discount right so if if uh you know if coffee is distinguishable right it's got a distinctive attribute but this attribute that it has means that people dislike it enough that they won't pay um even the commodity price for it that's not a specially coffee no but if it's got a distinctive set of attributes and people value it more in the marketplace that's how you can recognize especially so specialty coffee as a definition by what you guys are aligning needs to be in comparison to the alternative that's where it really gets its value is by its relationship to the other yes okay I think that's true that makes sense I really appreciate that Clarity Peter yeah I do think that specialty the term specialty operates as an antonym to commodity yes and I think and and that that's how it was designed in the first place you know Erna Newton who famously coined the term as we as we use it today was using it to distinguish her passionate coffee roaster customers who were obsessing over flavors from the bulk of the customers of the of the company that she worked at who were buying indistinguishable big lots of coffee to churn out into the 1960s um you know coffee pots all over and diners and and all that kind of stuff all over America at its very beginning it was about distinguishing the special coffees from the sea of the rest of them we are going to take what we've just spoken about and lead into the next episode which we're we're asking the question what market research tells us about specialty coffee and Specialty coffee businesses and their well-being which got to tell you this is the question I'm most excited about hearing from you about uh being mostly focused on the business of specialty coffee now everybody is kind of going Lee you keep talking about this tsunami but what does specialty coffee and business look like moving forward so let's do that I hope you've enjoyed this episode everybody will be back in the next episode to talk about business and Specialty coffee peace love and peanut butter have an amazing rest of your day thanks friends if you enjoyed this video here's what you should check out next consider supporting map of forward on patreon and be sure to subscribe and hit the notification Bell before you leave