The myth of community in specialty coffee

During World of Coffee, several people said the same thing to me.

What a great community specialty coffee has.

They meant it sincerely, as praise and as evidence that this industry is different, more generous, more collaborative, and more human than most.

That language creates a warm and fuzzy feeling. It’s also misleading.

Because when you stop listening to how specialty coffee describes itself and start paying attention to how it behaves, a different picture emerges. Not of bad people. Not of malice. But of a system that rewards waiting, proximity, and extraction far more than commitment.

And people routinely mistake that system for community.

What happens in the industry today

Ideas don’t materialise on goodwill. They materialise because someone pays.

Someone books flights, covers hotels, agrees professional fees, negotiates contracts and rearranges schedules. Someone absorbs the risk long before anything appears on a stage or a feed.

That decision is rarely collective. In my experience, it’s never collective.

One party commits, carries the cost, and takes the risk.

And only after that commitment becomes visible do others step in.

They weren’t part of the decision, didn’t underwrite the cost, and didn’t absorb the downside. They didn’t make the thing possible.

But they benefit from it anyway.

They host side events, create content, and leverage access, speaking with the authority of proximity rather than contribution.

Why this behaviour persists

Bad intentions don’t drive this pattern. Economics do.

Waiting is cheaper than deciding. Observing is cheaper than leading. Letting someone else test an idea costs nothing.

Why commit money when you can benefit later anyway. Why absorb risk when someone else has already done it for you.

At scale, this behaviour becomes rational. And once it becomes rational, it becomes normal. It has become normal.

There are no new ideas

I can already see the comments section.

People will insist there are no new ideas left and that everything has already been done.

Those aren’t observations. They’re justifications.

Originality is not about inventing something new. It’s about choosing a direction and committing to it without a guaranteed outcome.

Most people aren’t short on ideas. They’re short on appetite for risk.

So they wait. Watch. Replicate. Borrow momentum from those who went first. And describe that as participation.

Cost vs benefit

When the same few businesses keep paying to move things forward while others repeatedly benefit without contributing, there is only one outcome.

Eventually, those businesses stop.

Not loudly. Not dramatically. They simply decide the imbalance no longer makes sense. That the cost of carrying the industry outweighs the return.

What actually happens in the industry today

For years, specialty coffee focused on craft. Technique. Origin. Equipment. Process.

That work was important. And much of that work is now complete. The industry now broadly understands craft.

What determines the future of this industry now isn’t discourse. It’s funding.

Progress will come from people willing to spend money, take risk, and move first without knowing whether it will work.

Right now, that burden sits with very few. Everyone else waits for validation and steps in once the outcome feels safe.

That dynamic does produce activity. It produces content. And it produces the appearance of momentum.

Where responsibility really sits

A system where risk concentrates and rewards diffuse is not the root problem. It is a symptom.

The deeper issue is that responsibility for moving the industry forward has been outsourced to a small number of actors, while most engage only when progress already aligns with their own interests.

An industry grows when people feel accountable for its direction, not just its opportunities. When ideas are treated as something to contribute, not something to react to.

Progress driven only by self interest does not compound. It stalls.