Balancing the value of brand and origin in specialty coffee
Unsurprisingly to many, I have a longstanding love of (read: addiction to) coffee. As ordering coffee from different roasters and origins has become a form of travel for me in recent months, I’ve been thinking quite a bit about the way that specialty coffee brands are evolving even when we can’t all go into an actual cafe. Any of us who pick up a bag of coffee (or are lucky enough to be able to go into a coffee shop) can recognize that the coffee branding design is changing all the time and, perhaps more subtly, presenting information about coffee to us in new ways. Amidst all these beautiful designs and fun packaging I think there is an interesting ‘debate’ happening about what role a coffee brand should play in the experience each of us as individuals have with our daily cup (or cups) of coffee.
Back in 2014 I wrote my MA thesis on how the specialty coffee industry - Third Wave coffee, to be precise - was guiding and engaging in discourse about coffee and the way it should be worked with and experienced. In particular, I was interested in the focus on hyper-specific origins, including named growers, detailed data about specific locations of origin, and an increased discussion on how these factors influence taste that is the coffee version of terroir (a concept perhaps more familiar from wine). A part of my argument then was that Third Wave coffee culture was effectively acting to address the problem of goods whose origins are invisible to the consumer. Coffee is especially interesting given the frequently long distances it travels before it reaches our espresso cups. While a broad sense of origin has long been important to specialty coffee (anyone who has been to a Starbucks must have some familiarity with a Colombian Blend), the real process behind coffee growing, processing, trade, and roasting, and how those steps connect to the final consumer experience was for a long time quite mysterious even to many coffee lovers. For big specialty coffee brands, “good coffee” came from their special knowledge and expertise, and consumers bought into a relationship with that brand rather than necessarily with the coffee beans that made their drink. (1)
In Third Wave coffee, however, there is something particularly important about the identification of coffee’s value as coming from the origin and the material qualities of the bean itself, rather than simply through the expertise of the brand who roasts and sells it. I remember one barista, too, describing their job as being a “storyteller” about the coffee, rather than necessarily the person who crafts the drink. This, I think, was due specifically to the very personal sensory nature of coffees materiality and how this sensory experience relates to what one Anthropologist has referred to with some sense of mystique as “underlying presences” (2) - including growing elevation, plant varietals, the names and stories of farmers, the surrounding environment and climate, the processing method - which constitutes a special relationship between the materiality of the coffee, the process of production, and the consumer. Ultimately recognizing the materiality of the coffee, and how it is created, produces an tangible, experiential relationship between the person who tastes and works with the final product, the roasters, the coffee producers, the coffee beans, and the literal geography where the plants are grown.
Hearteningly for me it seems that this was not simply a brief trend and has remained relevant in the specialty coffee industry. Even if some might argue there is a ‘fourth wave’ of coffee, small brands continue to provide transparent information into the origins of their green coffee and how that impacts the ultimate sensory experience of the product. (Mainstream brands have also followed on, with Starbucks Reserve for example using similar language, if not real detailed transparency.) Revisiting the topic, however, I think it poses an interesting question, about how (or if) brands can in fact play a role in this kind of re-thinking how commodities are valued, where value is created, and how it is compensated. There have been plenty of contemporary critiques considering brands operate in the market today, for example Mark Paterson discussing that “things” sold are less important than what they represent in the global cultural economy, that logos and brands have displaced actual goods in value (3), as “the materiality of production…are all obscured and become immaterial as the brand becomes more prominent”. (4) In other words, the material qualities of something - be that its taste or its usefulness - are less important than the social or cultural benefit we feel from buying the image provided by a brand.
It is something of a truism that in many cases people “are just paying for branding”, but at least in the case of specialty coffee, and many food products, this isn’t quite as straightforward as a Supreme brick reselling for £1000. Even serious enthusiasts would be hard-pressed to find ways of directly sourcing any raw ingredient that is involved in a global supply chain - coffee, chocolate, tea, etc. - and the brands who ultimately sell the finished, drinkable product play an important role for consumers. While the existence of brands is certainly not going to be the full answer to Marxist desires or erase global inequality (5), there is some potential for greater awareness and an increasing appreciation of the ‘real’ value, and price, of a product. In this context, what was, and still is, particularly interesting is how specialty coffee brands navigate their own role and value while recognizing the value inherently in the material object, and added by the people and relationships involved in the supply chain.
What strikes me as interesting from a branding perspective, quite a few years on from when I was initially thinking about this, is how this framing of the production and materiality of coffee has continued to be relevant, but how the visual styles of third wave coffee brands have evolved, and what this means about the role of roasters and coffee shops in the value chain. In my previous research I did not focus heavily on visual representations or the brand identities present in third wave coffee. But while I don’t have any statistics to back this up, if memory serves back in 2013 there was a visual style communicating these values that was fairly widespread: craft paper packaging, minimalist use of imagery, hand-stamped graphics, and coffee shops filled with wooden surfaces in cafes, all paired with detailed data on coffee origins. (Some of the key brands I can think of were Monmouth Coffee, Climpson & Sons, and Ozone Coffee Roasters, among many others.) These rough, craftsmanship cues also communicate a kind of utopian nostalgia for a pre-industrial “as it was” more connected to hands-on processes and by extension to sustainability and nature. Ultimately these brands were communicating themselves as caring for and protecting the work done in nature to bring about unique coffee beans, which would ultimately be packaged and served to customers far away from where the beans were grown. The value added by roasters, then, was their craftsman-like stewardship of a raw material, and a sense of ‘natural’ traditionality, while highlighting the preciousness of the material itself and a need for the consumer to learn to identify that value as well.
In many cases these values of transparency and the importance of origin haven’t changed, but there has been a big shift in how small roasters brand themselves and the kinds of things they are communicating. One of the key themes I’ve noticed is an increased level of accessibility to everyday consumers; flavor profiles are front and center on many packs, before any information about the source of that flavor is revealed. Talormade, for example, names and lists it’s coffee online with nearly unbelievable flavor descriptors like “chocolate covered licorice” and “cheese and crackers.” A Hard Lines coffee I recently had said simply “Piña Colada!” on the front alongside a brief origin description, with the detailed sourcing indicators available on the back side of the pack. Ultimately this seems to reflect a shift from a value on opaque connoisseurship, to a more approachable and easily comprehensible way of talking to coffee consumers. But this simplicity has not come at the cost of transparency or potential for further understanding of how and why those flavors appear.
Talormade’s webshop
While not an exhaustive explanation of all that is happening across the coffee industry at the moment, there seems to be to be two key branches to highlight in how brands position themselves in relation to origin, before a consumer can even choose coffee based on its flavor: for simplicity I’m grouping them into two broad camps as the ‘minimalists’ and the ‘maximalists’. Where minimalist brands are eschewing color and ornament, more maximalist brands are embracing bright, abstract, multicolored packaging that ranges from modernist geometry to psychedelic. What is interesting in the context of my previous understanding of Third Wave coffee is that both these stylistic choices are ultimately achieving a similar end and carrying forward this value of transparency, but negotiating different roles for the roasters within the value chain.
Among the minimalists, Sey in Brooklyn is an interesting example of very elegantly conveying this sense of producer to cup process. The white box with nothing more than the sans-serif brand name in the corner conveys that the roastery itself intervenes with an expert hand, but only as much as necessary. Meanwhile the cutaway corner and pop of colour leads the eye to the paper that peeks from behind a sleeve and gives simple information about the origin of the coffee. When removed, the coloured sheet reveals in-depth information about the coffee beans, the producers, and how the coffee is sourced; a tactile and visual representation of everything that stands behind the roastery and the coffee you are about to enjoy.
Other brands such as La Cabra and Nomad have adopted similar visual styles. La Cabra for example balances the brand with origin information on a blank white surface, hiding the brand’s logo illustration on the back of the pack and suggesting the brand as a nearly invisible force pushing forward the inherent qualities of the coffee. Notably, on some of the newest pack designs, the brand has injected some additional color and pattern, but done so with an outer band that covers the brandmark entirely with information about the coffee origin. The packaging requires physical manipulation in order to see the roaster behind the coffee, tangibly and visually communicating the primary importance of the coffee origin as the key source of the experience and value. Reading the fine print on the side of the pack, the language used supports this fairly explicitly as well, reflecting much of the same kind of language I heard when I was doing my MA research (as shown in the image a few paragraphs back).
La Cabra’s website
Likewise, the brandmark for Nomad is minimized in simple sans serif at the bottom of the bag, while the front of pack design is dominated by an abbreviated code highlighting the origin, with more details rising from the top of the label. The translucence of the white bag further serves to highlight the physical texture and shape of the beans themselves being “held” by the brand but visibly important in their own right. While minimalism is broadly popular across product categories, in the context of coffee these brands are subtly making a statement about the role of the roastery in the overall experience of the coffee. Like the white walls with information labels in a museum, these brands have become curators, more than craftspeople, and their packaging suggests that their tastes will align with the consumers’. (6)
However, there are plenty of brands taking a completely different tack. Brightly colored, abstract visual styles are en vogue across a range of categories, but in the context of Third Wave coffee I think it serves a unique purpose for brands. The aforementioned Talormade is, visually, the polar opposite to these clean monochrome brands. Their packs are covered with bright pastels covered in psychedelic holographic lettering spelling out the brand name, drawing on the winking digital nostalgia and creative incongruity of internet culture, paired with the unusual flavor descriptors mentioned above. The branding communicates a sense of wild creativity and experimentation, and prepares the consumer for an unusual sensory experience. Yet while the brand is positioned as a wild creative force, it still includes the key information on farmer, varietal, and even purchasing cost along with explanations available online of growing and processing details that create the final flavor when roasted. Luna coffee is another example playing in the more abstract, experimental space. The imagery on their packs is equally conveying a sense of mental stimulation and surreal exploration, with abstract marbled shapes floating in decontextualized space and neon, multiple-exposure prints with unclear subjects. This is a brand intending to bring you into an entirely new kind of world and sensory experience through creative interpretation. But again the only text on the front of pack highlights flavor and origin details, so that the creativity of the brand and the facts of the beans themselves work in tandem to deliver that experience. There is still a sense here that an experimental brand owes its dues to the raw materials it works with. The brands bring an artistic sensibility and a willingness to try new things, and bring value to consumers by showing them new ways of thinking about and tasting coffee, positioning themselves as perhaps more a rebellious gallery owner than a British Museum curator, to carry on the metaphor.
Of course, with any rule there is an exception (or multiple). Following on the highlighting of coffee flavor notes as primary, Hard Lines coffee has managed to simultaneously give each coffee its own visible personality whilst communicating the brand identity as playful and experimental. Retaining the key information about sourcing and origin, the front of packages are reserved for expressive cartoon faces, with each coffee given its very own mood. This is another creative way of communicating the brand as inherently linked to highlighting the unique characteristics of coffee beans themselves and continuing to evolve how transparency and less “fetishised” commodities (to use the term from Marx) can be uniquely branded.
Ultimately there doesn’t seem to be one ideal answer to the balance of brand vs raw material. In the case of coffee it’s clear that the brands, and the people behind them who source and roast the coffee, remain important in highlighting and curating what might otherwise be a simple commodity and highlighting the uniqueness and variety available. As in any category, all of these companies are choosing visual styles and brand identities to communicate other ideas and values aside from their relationship to the source commodity. But looking across specialty coffee branding there appears to be an ongoing negotiation about how value is added to coffee, and what role brands have to play. Beyond consumers choosing what pack looks best on their shelf, there is also the underlying question of what type of curation and intervention they want from the last link in the coffee chain: between a brand that streamlines and minimises its own presence as a curator to visually suggest an even level between itself and the coffee origins, or one that is purposefully bringing play and exploration through the coffee it chooses to roast and how the brand presents the product. Both styles are engaging with the question of how to develop a unique, meaningful brand while remaining dedicated to valuing the raw material, and the people who grow agricultural products that a brand ultimately works with. It’s a very tricky tightrope to walk, but one that I think is important for brands in all industries to deliberately consider as they choose how to communicate about themselves and the products or services they provide.
Notes:
(1) For the more theoretical background to this, this idea is rooted to the concept of “commodity fetishism” as it connects to contemporary brands and products. As Marx explains it in Capital, “the commodity form, and the value-relation of the products of labor within which it appears, have absolutely no connection with the physical nature of the commodity and the material relations arising out of this. It is nothing but the definite social relation between men themselves, which assumes here, for them, the fantastic form of a relation between things” and “the fetishism which attaches itself to the products of labor as soon as they are produced” is rooted in the reification and commodification of labor-power and social relationships by ascribing the object monetary value, and the material object, the manufacturing process, and the product’s history is erased.” Commodities are detached from their own real history by ascribing them anonymous monetary value. (see: Marx, Karl. 1990. Capital: Vol 1. London: Penguin Books. P 165)
(2) As explained by the Anthropologist Daniel Miller, in which we “assume that a material form makes manifest some underlying presence which accounts for that which is apparent” (Miller, Daniel. 2005. Materiality. London: Duke University Press. P. 29).
(3) Paterson, Mark. 2006. Consumption and Everyday Life. London: Routledge. P 197
(4) As above, P 214
(5) The actual movement of bodies, through international travel, illustrates a lopsided development of relationships: as baristas and roasters talk of “going to origin” and sourcers travel to fincas, coffee farmers rarely find the opportunity to visit the roasters and coffee shops in coffee consuming countries, or to taste the coffee after it has been roasted and brewed. The storytelling, in effect, only happens in one direction. This problem appears to be based in the economic and political realities of the coffee industry and coffee producing countries, yet it highlights the limitations of to effect change within a system that requires adding value at each stage in order to produce profit.
(6) There is another discussion to be had here, perhaps another time, about the acquisition of taste and who acts as the gatekeepers of knowledge and expertise. If I may quote myself, “There is a difference between recognizing a trend and buying the “right” coffee to appear ‘in the know,’ and being able to discern flavors and aromas amongst different coffees and contextualize that sensory information. The former, perhaps relevant among everyday coffee consumers, relates back to Bourdieu’s analysis of taste and social class, while the latter remains the core of third wave barista culture and is based more in continual practice and acquired knowledge.” A brand positioning itself as a curator is, in a way, reinforcing the importance of this acquired knowledge in the same way that a certified Sommelier is distinguished from a knowledgeable enthusiast at Noble Rot.
