SPECIALTY COFFEE

Specialty coffee was a term devised to mean higher levels of green coffee quality than average “industrial coffee” or “commercial coffee”. At this point, the term is of limited use, since every multi-national coffee broker opened a “specialty division” and because, under the same term, coffees of highly varying quality, high to low, are imported. Some say Erna Knutsen, the San Francisco coffee broker, coined this term. Some say it was Rod Lazar’s grandfather, Frenchie Lazar. At the time the SCAA was formed, it certainly meant something more than now.