What Makes a Coffee “Specialty” Coffee?

You’ve probably seen the term on a bag or heard it at a cafe: specialty coffee.

And maybe you’ve wondered what is specialty coffee, exactly? Is it just a nicer way of saying “expensive”? Is it about latte art? Is there a secret handshake?

Good news: no handshake required.

Let’s get into the specialty coffee meaning without making it weird.

What Specialty Coffee Actually Means

At its most official level, specialty coffee is coffee that scores 80 points or higher on a 100-point scale. That’s it. That’s the definition.

The term was first used to describe coffees grown in specific regions with distinct flavor potential. Over time, it became a measurable quality standard. Today, if a coffee is graded at 80+ by certified tasters, it qualifies as specialty.

So when someone asks, “What is specialty coffee?” the technical answer is: coffee that has been evaluated and proven to meet high-quality standards.

But the spirit of specialty coffee is bigger than a number.

It’s coffee grown with intention. Picked carefully. Processed thoughtfully. Tracked back to a specific place. It’s coffee where someone, at every stage, paid attention.

Specialty isn’t about being fancy. It’s about being deliberate.

How Coffee Is Graded

Coffee is graded through a process called cupping. Think of it as a standardized tasting method. Certified Q Graders, essentially the sommeliers of the coffee world, evaluate coffee across categories like aroma, flavor, acidity, body, balance, sweetness, and overall clarity. (Side note: if cupping is something you'd like to explore, check out our public class!)

They’re also looking for defects. Too many defects? The score drops.

A coffee that scores: 

• 80–84.99 is considered very good

• 85–89.99 is excellent

• 90+ is rare

Anything below 80 doesn’t qualify as "specialty."

Most commodity or “regular” coffee isn’t graded this way at all. It’s blended and traded at scale, often prioritizing consistency and shelf stability over distinct flavor. That’s one of the core differences in the specialty coffee vs regular coffee conversation: one is evaluated and differentiated by flavor clarity; the other is built for uniformity.

One isn’t morally superior. They’re just built with different goals.

Why Specialty Coffee Tastes Different

If you’ve ever tasted a coffee and thought, “Wait… is that blueberry?” ... you’ve experienced specialty at work.

Specialty coffee tastes different because it preserves the characteristics of where it came from. Soil, altitude, climate, and processing method all shape flavor. When those elements are handled carefully instead of averaged out in a massive blend, you get nuance.

You might taste citrus, florals, cocoa, red berries, caramel, or maple candy. Not because someone added flavoring, but because the coffee plant naturally developed those compounds, and the roasting respected them.

In the specialty coffee vs regular coffee comparison, this is the big shift: specialty coffee invites you to notice. Regular coffee often aims to be familiar and steady, the same cup every day.

Specialty coffee says, “This harvest tastes like this. Let’s celebrate that.”

It’s less about intensity and more about clarity.

And no, you don’t need a flavor wheel memorized to appreciate it. You can just think, “This is bright,” or “This is sweet,” or “This tastes kind of like that berry jam I love.” That counts.

How Stone Creek Fits Into the Specialty Space

At Stone Creek, we live in the specialty space, but we don’t treat it like a velvet rope.

For us, specialty coffee means traceability. It means building long-term relationships with producers. It means cupping constantly, adjusting roasting curves, asking “Can this be better?” and then actually testing that theory.

It also means staying curious.

We geek out on processing methods. We talk about altitude at dinner. We argue (politely) about extraction. But we never want that curiosity to feel exclusionary.

The goal isn’t to make coffee complicated. The goal is to make it remarkable and understandable.

So when you ask, “What is specialty coffee?” our answer is this:

It’s coffee that was cared for, measured, tasted, and refined from seed to cup.

The Bottom Line

The specialty coffee meaning starts with an 80+ score. But it lives in the details: in farming practices, in grading standards, in roasting decisions, and in the way it tastes when you slow down enough to notice.

Specialty coffee vs regular coffee isn’t about good vs bad. It’s about nuance vs uniformity. Exploration vs predictability.

And around here, we’ll always choose exploration.

One cup. A little more curious.