Building new specialty coffee benchmarks to secure better prices, supplies

Buyers and sellers of specialty coffee, increasingly worried about future supplies of high quality beans, are finding new ways to price their coffee after benchmark U.S. futures hit a 13-year-low in late 2018.

Specialty coffees are usually priced at a premium to the benchmark, leaving specialty growers vulnerable to volatility in futures. And in the rare cases when specialty prices are not directly linked to futures, contracts are negotiated privately, so can be opaque and subject to the whims of producers or traders.