Traded volumes of high-quality specialty coffee declined as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic while volumes of lower-quality specialty coffees increased, according to a recent analysis from the authors of the Specialty Coffee Transaction Guide.
Peter W. Roberts and Chad Trewick penned the 19-page report documenting the COVID-19 pandemic’s effects on specialty coffee purchasing behaviors in the 2019-20 harvest year. The report covered thousands of contracted transactions from the dawn of the pandemic through October 2020, providing comparisons to the prior year.
The data used for the report came from 58 “data donors” who submitted their coffee contract data for anonymized analysis in the two most recent years’ harvests as part of the ongoing SCTG project.