Assembly's tenth anniversary is more than a birthday – it signals a shift. A decade spent building foundations with producers, partners and researchers gives way to a sharper question: what must specialty coffee become next?

This piece forms part of a series of reflections from our team and peers across the industry – looking honestly at the last ten years, and more importantly, at the work required for the next ten.

In this opening essay, Assembly Co-founder Nick Mabey examines our understanding of ethics in coffee buying, and questions whether intent is too often mistaken for impact.

Ethics without economics is just theatre

In previous writing, I’ve explored why profitability remains elusive for many independent coffee businesses and why so much of specialty coffee’s self-image collapses under even light financial scrutiny. This article picks up from that same fault line – but turns its attention towards something more specific: commercial competence in coffee buying.

The problem isn’t as simple as bad margins or naive operators. It’s that we’ve collectively elevated a coffee buying culture that mistakes intent for outcome, and ethics for economics.

Specialty coffee has developed a damaging moral hierarchy: the buyer as ethical arbiter, storyteller-in-chief, and unofficial development economist. In this narrative, fluency in the language of impact is treated as evidence of impact itself. The industry rewards those who can describe procurement convincingly, not those who can design it effectively.

"The industry rewards those who can describe procurement convincingly, not those who can design it effectively."

We confuse proximity to origin with understanding of it, and storytelling with structural change. We also treat the way we buy coffee as proof that our businesses are sound, confusing good marketing stories with actual value creation – as if speaking the language of specialty somehow frees us from the same global coffee market we claim to transcend.

Phrases like “working with our partners for fair prices” have become the only explanation needed to label a supply chain sustainable, without ever questioning how those prices were formed, or whether they can endure.

The origin story: the ideological valley

Between 2010 and 2020, coffee prices sat so low for so long that the industry drifted into what I think of as the ideological valley. When the market is structurally depressed, anything above it can be framed as better. Paying “more” feels progressive regardless of whether it reflects producers’ real costs, their reinvestment needs, or the long-term viability of their businesses.

A key feature of ‘the valley’ was that it gave specialty coffee permission to ignore a fundamental reality: the coffee market is, first and foremost, a futures exchange – a system designed to manage price risk, not reflect moral value. It exists to transfer that risk, allowing producers, importers, and roasters to lock in prices for physical coffee, while speculators take on the uncertainty. It’s complex, imperfect, and often uncomfortable – but it’s not optional.

Many in the specialty coffee movement framed low market prices as a distorted, one-dimensional measure of coffee’s true value – something they believed they could transcend through direct trade and narratives around quality. In hindsight, that assumption was not just naive – it was structurally dangerous.

During this period, the cost of producing coffee entered the conversation as a moral reference point rather than an operational one. But instead of using that insight to redesign the way we buy coffee – through long-term contracts, pre-finance, or investment in producer capacity – the industry used it as insulation. Cheap coffee masked fragile businesses. Low prices delayed the need to confront whether business models actually worked.

When the market eventually moved, those weaknesses were exposed. What had been mistaken for ethical maturity was revealed to be contextual luck. Roasters discovered they lacked both the margins and the mechanisms to behave differently when conditions changed. The problem was never simply low prices. It was a decade spent failing to build resilience while prices were low.

"The problem was never simply low prices. It was a decade spent failing to build resilience while prices were low."

The clearest expression of this confusion is the positioning of direct trade as an ethical destination rather than a structural outcome. It is treated as the end goal of “good” coffee buying, while quietly ignoring the prerequisite it depends on: scale. You cannot bypass the market without first building the demand that allows you to operate outside it. And building demand is a commercial problem, not a moral one.

For all its limitations, spot buying (purchasing green coffee ‘on the spot’ instead of in advance, usually from an importer) has always played a necessary role in that process. It is how young roasters test products, learn logistics, and build an audience. Crucially, it has been enabled – often at considerable risk – by importers who finance producers, carry inventory, and absorb volatility on behalf of buyers who cannot. These importer businesses are often ideologically aligned with specialty’s values, even if they are commercially fragile and poorly rewarded for the role they play.

The failure is not that roasters begin here. The failure is that many never leave. What was meant to be temporary becomes permanent. Coffee continues to be bought at market, leaving producers and importers to carry the risk and volatility – while the language surrounding that buying grows ever more ethical.

The mechanics: demand is the only leverage that matters

If specialty coffee buyers are serious about reforming supply chains, the first uncomfortable admission is this: their primary responsibility is not ethical signalling nor subjective taste scores, but commercial competence. A buyer who does not protect and strengthen the roaster’s bottom line is not a steward of impact; they are a liability. Without durable demand, there is no leverage, no continuity, and no capacity to underwrite anything upstream.

What’s consistently misunderstood is the relationship between structure and impact. Long-term purchasing models are not an expression of ethical intent; they are the condition that makes meaningful change possible in the first place. Without repeatable volume, defined pricing logic, and a willingness to carry risk over time, there is no stable base from which to allocate capital upstream.

"A buyer's primary responsibility is not ethical signalling nor subjective taste scores, but commercial competence."

Pre-financing, replanting, and productivity projects only work when they sit on top of a procurement system that already functions. When that foundation is missing, a predictable pattern emerges. Roasters lean on procurement narratives as a value signal instead of building strategy. Small, visible purchases are celebrated because they support marketing and positioning, while larger volumes are quietly bought for margin under standard market logic. Ethics end up being performed at the edges of the business, not embedded within it.

This is where the gap between the buyer as celebrated expert and the business as an operating system becomes most damaging. Procurement is asked to carry meaning it cannot support, while commercial reality is left untouched. Without a solid framework, impact is not scaled – it is curated.

The other origin story

Travel to origin has become one of specialty coffee’s most sacred gestures. Buyers want to show up, to be present, to bear witness – as if physical proximity itself confers value. And while there was a time when this mattered more, we should be honest about what it represents now. Much of it is for the buyer’s benefit: education, validation, status. It is rarely decisive in shaping outcomes.

This is not to say that presence is meaningless. It can matter. But most origin trips are not operationally critical. They are observations, not interventions. Increasingly, they are also open invitations. Anyone willing to pay can attend. The language of being “invited” often masks a simple commercial reality: origin travel has become a product, and participation is not proof of necessity or impact.

There is also a growing tendency to conflate ethics with geography. Coffee moving into emerging markets, or buyers circulating through them, is frequently framed as moral progress when it is more accurately about access, growth, and status. None of this is inherently wrong. A small business choosing to operate as a lifestyle business is a valid choice. But it is a choice – not a model to be confused with structural reform.

For business owners, this distinction matters. A buyer returning from origin with stories but no mechanisms, no contracts, no capital deployment plan, and no clearer path to demand security has not delivered value. They have consumed it. Showing up is easy. Building systems that work without you being there is harder, and far more meaningful.

"Showing up is easy. Building systems that work without you being there is harder, and far more meaningful."

This is not an indictment of buyers so much as the role they are asked to perform. Buyers are rewarded for taste, relationships, and narrative fluency – not for capital discipline or risk design. They are rarely empowered, or expected, to challenge whether the business can support the commitments its language implies. Specialty becomes a moral wrapper – a set of values and language standing in for governance.

The industry’s fixation on “partnership” follows the same pattern. Relationships are elevated as proof of sustainability, as if duration alone creates resilience. But relationships without mechanisms do not absorb risk; they merely persist through it – until they don’t. When prices spike, buyers talk about commitment. When markets soften, volumes quietly disappear. This is not evidence of bad faith; it is structural weakness expressing itself.

This is a cynical piece, deliberately so. Not because I don’t respect the passion in specialty coffee – I do. What I’m tired of is an industry that rewards the wrong things: language over leverage, identity over durability, expertise over competence.

I care about specialty coffee lasting, not just feeling good about itself. And for that to happen, the business must come first. Because without owners who understand that ethics are an outcome of structure – not a substitute for it – there is no ethical supply chain. Only intention without endurance.

This piece forms part of a series of reflections to mark Assembly's 10-year milestone. Read more about it here.