Most commodity coffee is priced off the “C-price” — the benchmark set by Arabica futures traded on the Intercontinental Exchange in New York. It is a real, useful number, but it was built to price interchangeable commodity coffee, not a specific farm’s specialty lot.
The C-Price Is a Floor, Not a Fair Price
On top of the C-price, buyers pay a differential — an added amount that reflects quality, origin reputation, processing, and lot size. A coffee sold purely at the C-price, with no differential, is being priced as an undifferentiated commodity, which rarely reflects what went into growing a specialty lot at altitude.
Why This Is Part of Why We Sell Direct
When coffee passes through several intermediaries before it reaches a roaster, each one prices against the C-market and adds a margin on top. Selling directly from our farm in Dota, Tarrazu removes layers of that chain — what you pay reflects our coffee specifically, not a commodity benchmark plus markup.
See our wholesale page for how we price and sell direct, from 1kg up to 45kg.