According to a UK report by Allegra World Coffee Portal entitled The Future of Coffee, the specialty coffee market sector is set to rise at 13 percent year-on-year, which is three percent more than the standard UK coffee market. The data was collated via 16,839 responses from online consumer surveys and almost 70 interviews with senior industry leaders in various areas of the coffee industry. The report predicts that the UK coffee market as a whole will continue to grow, but the strongest growth is in the specialty coffee sector.
What does ‘specialty coffee’ actually mean? It’s not referring to drinks such as latte, cappuccino or mocha, but rather to the beans themselves. The report was based on the definition laid out by the Specialty Coffee Association of America, which defines ‘coffee with a distinctive character and no primary defects, scoring 80 or higher in the SCAA cupping protocol’. That’s a definition that’s not aimed at consumers, so we’d add our own definition as ‘a coffee that’s produced in small quantities with a focus on quality and consistency. The UK report refers to a ‘radically transforming’ coffee market in Britain, due to the increase in independent coffee companies working to improve service and quality.
The UK market for green coffee beans was estimated at around 47,000 tons a year in 2015, growing at the rate of around ten percent annually. The UK market for roasted specialty coffee beans was around 6,000 tons in 2015, growing at a rate of 17 per cent, and could be worth almost £170 million by 2020.
Here at the Wholesale Coffee Company, we’re proud to be independent. We’ve been supplying the UK commercial coffee industry for over 20 years, and we have our own factory in Valencia where we roast, pack and carry out our stringent quality control. If you’re looking for high quality roasted coffee beans from a small producer, why not try our Indonesian Blue Dragon beans – just visit our main website to take a closer look.