Welcome to the SCA’s Coffee Retail Summit, a home for coffee business resources.
Spotlight: Market Research
Coffee Retail Summit 2023 is proudly supported by
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Featured Video
Exploring the Growth of the “Coffee And” Segment
As a move towards the "functional" grips the beverage sector, how might this trend shape opportunities for specialty coffee products and consumers?
Jim Watson explores the current market categories and trends in the US, specifically the growth of the "coffee and" segment.
25 Feature
ESG for You and Me
For organizations striving to understand where profitability intersects with non-financial factors, the term ESG may be just as familiar as sustainability. KELLEM EMANUELE offers an ESG primer tailored for the coffee industry. →
Explore the Latest Resources
Is It Good? A Generous Exploration of Memorable Cafe Experiences
In this talk, Chad Little identifies common traits of successful cafés and explains how these traits help shop owners mitigate risk and avoid premature attrition.
What We Can Still Do with E-Commerce
Yoonseo Choi advises coffee retailers on how to succeed in e-commerce.
What Point-of-sale Data Tells Us About Coffee Shops
Payhere is a Point-of-Sale system chosen by one out of every three new coffee shops in Korea.
Can “Attractive” Linguistic Descriptions Lead to More “Attractive” Coffee for Consumers?
Cognitive psychologist BENTE KLEIN HAZEBROEK and language professor ILJA CROIJMANS explore the role and construction of coffee’s linguistic descriptions—those flavor notes and descriptions across coffee packaging and websites!—in a consumer’s willingness to pay.
Beyond Freshness: How Packaging Color Influences Consumer Behavior
Neuroscientist Dr. FABIANA CARVALHO shares the recent results of a Coffee Science Foundation study, supported by Savor Brands Inc., to understand how packaging color influences consumer behavior.
Mapping the Market: An Overview of Plant-Based Beverages’ Sensory Attributes
The market for plant-based beverages continues to grow rapidly as people look for ways to make more sustainable choices. However, it is also increasingly difficult for consumers to orientate themselves because of the wide variety of raw materials used to make plant-based drinks.
Using Sensory Analysis to Test the Claim that Cold Brew is Sweeter and Less Acidic
As cold brew coffee has grown in popularity in recent years, so too has the number of strong opinions about the brewing method’s impact (positive or negative) on the flavors in the resulting cup—but they’d never been systematically studied.
All in the Mind: How External Cues Impact Brain Activity and Preference
If we’re only able to build our opinion on a coffee’s aroma, taste, and mouthfeel as we consume it, how can we effectively communicate what’s inside the packaging—and set expectations we’ll be able to meet—while it’s still on the shelf?
How Strong is the Coffee You’re Cupping?
There are countless coffee cuppings performed by coffee professionals around the world, assessing coffee quality, every day. Lead Author JIEXIN LIANG suggests we’re more easily able to control our total dissolved solids (TDS) via brew ratio instead of our extraction yield (E).
The Color in Your Cup
What could the color of your cold brew be communicating to your customers? Lead author SARA YEAGER shares the findings of a recently published paper, “Roast Level and Brew Temperature Significantly Affect the Color of Brewed Coffee,” published in the Journal of Food Science, exploring how coffee beverage color varies with origin, roast level, and brew temperature.
New Luxury in Specialty Coffee
Just like our understanding of "specialty" has changed, so too, has our understanding of "luxury." What can specialty learn from "New Luxury" and its relationship to culture? Dr. Thomaï Serdari explains the role of cultural pioneers and some of the way luxury brands are attracting them, with recommendations for specialty brands interested in leveraging the magic of luxury.
How Hot is Hot Enough? Brew Temperature, Sensory Profile, and Consumer Acceptance of Brewed Coffee | 25, Issue 15
Brew temperature is widely considered to be one of these key variables affecting the final quality of coffee, with a temperature near 93°C believed by most to be best. And, while it is no surprise then that drip brewers that can’t reach 92°C fast enough fail their certification, it turns out there is little empirical (and even less scientific) evidence, however, to support any particular range of brew temperatures for optimal sensory quality and consumer acceptance.
Manipulating and Measuring a Key Attribute in Drip Brew Coffee | 25, Issue 15
Among all the factors that can impact coffee flavor, the brewing step specifically has been shown to impact sourness. Did you know that about half of consumers in a recent study prefer more acidity in their coffee, and about half prefer less?
When the Signs Point to Coffee | 25, Issue 15
How do we know that a coffee shop is a coffee shop? What can semiotics tell us about how we construct and identify specialty coffee spaces?
Seoul Spaces
Following Starbucks’ successful penetration of the Korean market approximately 20 years ago as a third space for people to escape from their highly standardized, cube-like apartment dwellings and offices, individual specialty cafés now lead the way with new types of spaces. SEO YOUNG YOUN brings 25 on a tour of Seoul’s most cutting-edge coffee spaces.
Designing for the Forgotten Sense - 25, Issue 8
What has the taste of your coffee got to do with acoustic design? Professor CHARLES SPENCE of Oxford University’s Crossmodal Research Laboratory explains the impact sound has on your perception of flavor.
French Coffee Refined and Redefined - 25, Issue 9
As the specialty coffee market grows to become an integral part of local culture, it also negotiates “local” and “global” in new ways. NOA BERGER traces how French cafés and roasters navigate the “glocalization” of specialty coffee.
The Home Experience: Expanding the "Slow Coffee" Segment
Due to distancing and mobility restrictions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, specialty coffee consumption has been shifted from shops to home. Which marketing tools could be relevant to influence the coffee drinking experience outside the coffee shop? Results on the latest research showing how product-extrinsic factors influence consumers’ sensory and hedonic judgments of specialty coffee will be presented.
Responsible Design Strategies for Coffee Shops
Minimizing the negative impact of our designs, specifications, and construction methods on both human and planetary health is more important than ever.
Using Science to Change the Way We Brew Coffee | Re:co 2020
New research is testing the foundations of coffee’s brewing, sensory evaluation, and measurement.
NEW Market Research
The 2019 US Coffee Market Overview
Periodically, since 2009, the SCA has published a US Coffee Market Overview, focused on the retail value of coffee in the US and the places where it is consumed →