You take a sip of coffee and something stops you. The cup is extraordinary. There is a brightness to it, a sweetness you did not add, a finish that lingers like something familiar and new at the same time. You assume it is the roast. Maybe the brewing method. You replay what you did differently this morning.
The real answer starts long before the cup. It starts in the soil, in the altitude, in the hands that picked each cherry, and in a scoring process that most coffee on grocery store shelves will never come close to passing.
The global coffee world operates on two completely separate tracks. The first track is commodity coffee. It is anonymous, blended, and produced at scale. Volume drives every decision. The second track is specialty grade coffee. It is traced, scored by certified professionals, and held to measurable standards from the first cherry picked to the last gram weighed into your grinder.
Specialty grade coffee is not a marketing term. It is not a vibe, an aesthetic, or a price point that roasters invented to charge more. It is a defined technical standard with measurable criteria, a specific scoring threshold, traceability requirements, and a supply chain built around quality over volume. This article explains exactly what that standard is, why commodity coffee cannot meet it, and how that difference shows up in your cup every single morning.
At Buddha's Cup, we farm on the slopes of Hualalai in Holualoa, Hawaii, sitting at roughly 1,400 feet elevation in the heart of the Kona coffee belt. Everything we grow, process, and roast is built around specialty grade outcomes. We will reference our own experience throughout this article because we believe the best way to explain what specialty grade means is to show you what it looks like in practice, on a real farm, in a real place with real soil under your feet.
If you have ever wondered what makes Kona coffee special, the answer is inseparable from what makes specialty grade coffee special. Let us walk through it together.
What "Specialty Grade" Actually Means: The Technical Definition
Before we can compare specialty grade coffee to commodity coffee, we need to establish exactly what specialty grade means. This is where a lot of coffee conversations go sideways. People use the word "specialty" loosely, as if it means "good" or "artisan" or "expensive." It means none of those things by itself. It means something precise, measurable, and verifiable. Here is the technical definition.
The 80-Point Threshold and the SCA Cupping Scale
The Specialty Coffee Association uses a standardized 100-point cupping scale to evaluate green coffee lots. A coffee earns the designation "specialty grade" when it scores 80 points or above on that scale. That threshold is not arbitrary. It represents a cup that is free of significant defects, that expresses clear and positive flavor attributes, and that meets minimum standards across every evaluated category.
The SCA cupping protocol evaluates ten distinct attributes. Each one is scored separately and each one contributes to the final number.
- Aroma: The dry fragrance of ground coffee and the wet aroma after hot water is added
- Flavor: The overall taste impression, including the full range of sensations in the mouth
- Aftertaste: The duration and quality of positive flavor that lingers after swallowing
- Acidity: The brightness and liveliness that contributes to perceived sweetness and complexity
- Body: The weight and texture of the liquid on the palate
- Balance: How well aroma, flavor, aftertaste, and acidity complement rather than interfere with each other
- Sweetness: The presence of a pleasing fullness that comes from natural sugars
- Uniformity: Consistency across five cups from the same lot
- Clean cup: The absence of negative flavor impressions from start to finish
- Overall: The holistic impression and the cupper's personal assessment of the lot's quality
Scores between 80 and 84.99 are classified as "very good." Scores between 85 and 89.99 are "excellent." Scores of 90 and above are "outstanding" and represent some of the rarest, most sought-after coffees in the world. The difference between an 82 and an 88 is not slight. Those six points represent a meaningful leap in flavor complexity, consistency, and origin character.
One attribute worth pausing on is coffee acidity. Many people associate acidity with something unpleasant, something that upsets the stomach or tastes sour. In the specialty grade context, acidity is a positive attribute. It is the bright, vibrant quality that makes a coffee taste alive rather than flat. High-altitude growing conditions, like those in the Kona belt, naturally produce coffees with beautiful acidity. That brightness is a marker of quality, not a flaw.
The Role of the Q Grader: Who Actually Decides?
The score is only as meaningful as the person assigning it. Specialty grade scores are determined by Q Graders, licensed sensory professionals certified by the Coffee Quality Institute. Becoming a Q Grader requires passing a rigorous series of examinations covering sensory acuity, calibration, and cupping protocol. It is not something a roaster or a farm can self-certify. It requires demonstrated proficiency evaluated by external examiners.
Q Graders evaluate lots blind. They do not know the farm, the price, or the roaster's expectations when they cup a sample. They are evaluating the coffee on its merits, attribute by attribute, using standardized methodology. That independence is what gives the score credibility across the global specialty supply chain.
The specialty coffee world is not static. The Coffee Value Assessment framework, a newer approach being developed to build on SCA foundations, reflects ongoing conversation about how best to evaluate and communicate coffee quality. But through all of that evolution, the 80-point threshold remains the common and recognized shorthand for specialty grade. It is the number buyers, importers, roasters, and farmers all understand and reference.
What the Q Grader's score ultimately determines is economic. It decides which roasters will purchase a given lot. It decides what price premium a farm or cooperative can command. It decides whether a coffee enters the specialty supply chain or the commodity supply chain. That single number, earned through a blind, standardized, certified evaluation, creates the fork in the road that separates everything we are discussing in this article.
Zero Defect Tolerance and Lot Traceability Requirements
The cupping score is one pillar of specialty grade classification. The physical inspection of the green coffee is another, and it is equally non-negotiable.
Specialty grade coffee requires zero primary defects in a 350-gram sample. Primary defects include black beans, fully sour beans, dried cherry fragments, fungus damage, foreign matter, and severe insect damage. Zero means zero. Not "almost zero." Not "just one." A single primary defect in a 350-gram sample disqualifies the lot from specialty classification regardless of how well it cupped.
Secondary defects are permitted, but only up to five. Secondary defects include partial blacks, partial sours, parchment, floaters, immature or unripe beans, withered beans, shells, broken or chipped beans, and slight insect damage. Five is the ceiling, not the target. The goal in specialty production is to get as close to zero across both categories as possible.
What does defect control require at the farm level? It requires selective harvesting, careful processing, thorough drying, and hand sorting. All of those are labor-intensive steps that commodity production typically skips or shortcuts in the interest of volume and speed.
The third pillar is traceability. Specialty grade coffee must be traceable to a named farm, cooperative, or clearly defined region. Not "South America." Not "East Africa blend." A named, identifiable source that can be verified and revisited. This requirement creates accountability across the entire supply chain. If a lot cups well, buyers know exactly where to source again next harvest. If a lot has a problem, the source can be identified and addressed.
Commodity coffee carries no such obligation. It is blended from multiple origins, often multiple harvest years, with no requirement to disclose the source or allow any verification of quality at the farm level. We explore coffee grading in much more detail in our guide to Kona's grading system, and the connection between physical inspection standards and what ends up in your cup is a thread that runs through all of it.
How Commodity Coffee Is Produced and Traded (And Why It Operates Differently)
Understanding specialty grade coffee more fully means understanding commodity coffee fairly and accurately. Commodity coffee is not necessarily bad coffee. It is structurally different coffee, produced within an economic framework that prioritizes volume, price stability, and logistical efficiency over cup quality or traceability. Those priorities shape every decision made from seed to shelf.
The C Market, Futures Trading, and Price Floors That Ignore Quality
Commodity coffee is traded on the "C market," the global coffee futures exchange based in New York. The C market sets the price for coffee based on global supply and demand dynamics: weather events, crop yields, currency fluctuations, geopolitical shifts, and speculative trading. What the C market does not factor in is the flavor in the cup.
A farmer growing commodity-grade Arabica receives the C market price, plus or minus a differential based on their country of origin. That price is set by forces entirely outside their control and entirely disconnected from the quality of what they produced. A beautiful, carefully grown lot and a carelessly produced lot from the same country may receive essentially the same price on the commodity market.
This is the structural incentive problem at the heart of commodity coffee production. If quality does not command a premium, why invest in selective harvesting, careful processing, or additional labor? The economic logic of the C market pushes toward volume. Plant more. Harvest faster. Process cheaper. Move more weight per season.
The price difference between the two systems is significant. The average price per pound for specialty-grade green coffee runs two to four times higher than commodity-grade beans. That gap exists because specialty buyers are paying for verified quality, documented traceability, and the farm-level investments required to produce a consistent, defect-free, high-scoring lot. The C market cannot and does not capture any of that value. The specialty supply chain is built specifically to do so.
Blending, Anonymity, and What "100% Coffee" on a Label Actually Tells You
Walk through the coffee aisle of any supermarket and pick up a standard can or bag. It likely says "100% Coffee" or "100% Arabica" on the label. What it probably does not say is where those beans came from, when they were harvested, or what their quality score was. That is not an accident. It is a feature of commodity coffee production, not a bug.
Commodity coffee is routinely blended from beans sourced across multiple countries, multiple harvests, and multiple quality tiers. Blending serves a commercial purpose: it allows roasters to maintain a consistent flavor profile regardless of seasonal variation in any single origin. If the Brazilian crop underperforms one year, the blend absorbs the impact by increasing the proportion of Colombian or Vietnamese beans. The consumer does not notice the adjustment. The flavor stays in the same general range.
But that consistency comes at a cost to transparency. Specialty coffee more often comes from a clearly defined origin, making its source easier to trace. That traceability is not just an ethical preference. It is a quality assurance mechanism. When you know exactly where a coffee came from and can verify what standards were applied at the farm level, you have a foundation for consistent quality. When the source is anonymous and blended, quality verification becomes impossible.
This traceability gap is especially relevant in Hawaii, where coffee labeling laws have been a persistent source of controversy. Products sold as "Kona blend" may legally contain as little as 10% actual Kona coffee under current regulations, with the remaining 90% sourced from commodity origins around the world. The difference between Kona coffee and blends is not subtle. It is the difference between a traceable, geographically specific, farm-grown product and an anonymous commodity blend with a Hawaiian-sounding name on the front.
Acceptable Defect Counts and What That Means in the Cup
Commercial grade coffee, the tier just below specialty on the SCA scale, permits significantly more defects than specialty grade. The further down the quality ladder a coffee falls, the more defects are acceptable per sample. And those defects are not just numbers on an inspection sheet. They are flavors in your cup.
Black beans produce a harsh, phenolic, medicinal character. Sour beans produce a fermented, vinegary note that cuts through any roast profile. Immature beans produce a flat, grassy, astringent quality that makes a cup taste thin and bitter at the same time. Fungus-damaged beans can introduce musty, earthy, or moldy notes that no roast can fully eliminate.
When defects are present in a coffee lot, the cup is inconsistent by nature. One sip tastes acceptable. The next tastes flat or sour or strangely harsh. You cannot isolate the problem because it is distributed invisibly through the entire batch. Blending multiple lots together can soften the most extreme defect impacts, but it cannot eliminate them. It simply diffuses them across a larger volume, making them harder to identify while keeping them present in the cup.
Specialty grade's near-zero defect tolerance means that when you brew a specialty lot correctly, you can expect the same flavor experience cup after cup, batch after batch. The consistency is built into the green coffee before the roaster ever applies heat.
The Farm and Processing Decisions That Create Specialty Grade Outcomes
Specialty grade coffee is not rescued at the roastery. It is built at the farm level through a series of deliberate, labor-intensive decisions that commodity production cannot afford to make at scale. The roaster's skill matters, but no amount of roasting expertise can transform a commodity lot into a specialty lot. The quality ceiling is set at the farm. Everything downstream works within that ceiling.
Selective Hand Picking vs. Strip Picking and Mechanical Harvesting
Coffee cherries do not ripen all at once. On a single branch, you will find cherries at four or five different stages of ripeness at any given moment during harvest season. Ripe cherries are sweet, fully developed, and ready to process. Underripe cherries are dense, starchy, and astringent. Overripe cherries have begun to ferment on the tree and will carry that fermented character into the cup.
Selective hand picking means sending trained pickers through the rows of coffee trees multiple times across a harvest season, taking only the cherries that have reached optimal ripeness on each pass. A single picker might return to the same tree four or five times across a harvest season, taking a few cherries on each visit. It is slow. It is expensive in labor. And it is the only way to ensure that only ripe cherries enter the processing stream.
Strip picking is exactly what it sounds like: a harvester strips every cherry off a branch in a single pass, regardless of ripeness. Mechanical harvesting uses machines that shake or strip trees with similar disregard for the ripeness of individual cherries. Both methods are faster and cheaper. Both produce lots that contain a mixture of ripe, underripe, and overripe fruit.
That mixture is the first source of defects. Underripe cherries become immature green beans after processing. Overripe cherries contribute sour or fermented notes. Mixed ripeness means mixed quality, and mixed quality means a lot that cannot pass specialty grade inspection regardless of what happens afterward.
On the slopes of Hualalai in Holualoa, selective hand harvesting is standard practice at Buddha's Cup. It is the first decision that separates specialty grade outcomes from commodity ones. It is also one of the reasons we talk about what makes specialty coffee special not as a marketing claim but as a farm-level commitment with real labor and real cost behind it.
Processing Methods and Their Influence on Flavor Development
After harvesting, the coffee cherry has to be processed to extract the green bean inside. The processing method chosen at the farm level has a direct and significant influence on the flavor attributes that will be scored on the cupping table. It is one of the most consequential decisions in specialty coffee production.
Washed processing, sometimes called wet processing, removes the fruit skin and mucilage from the bean before drying begins. The result is a cup that is clean, bright, and transparent in its expression of the bean's inherent flavor. The acidity tends to be more pronounced. The fruit notes are subtle. The origin character comes through without interference from the fermentation influence of dried fruit.
Natural processing, sometimes called dry processing, dries the coffee cherry whole, with the fruit intact around the bean. As the cherry dries over several weeks, natural fermentation occurs and the fruit's sugars migrate into the bean. The result is a cup with more pronounced fruit character, often described as berry-like or wine-like, with a fuller, heavier body. The process requires careful monitoring. If drying is uneven or the cherries are not turned regularly, fermented or moldy notes can develop.
Honey processing is a middle approach where some or all of the mucilage is left on the bean during drying, producing a cup that sits somewhere between washed and natural in character. Each variation produces a predictably different flavor profile, and that predictability is part of what makes processing decisions part of the specialty grade story.
In specialty production, processing decisions are deliberate, documented, and designed to produce a specific flavor outcome. The same approach is repeated consistently across a lot to ensure uniformity. In commodity production, processing decisions are more often driven by what is fastest and cheapest. We discuss our own approach in detail in our guide to coffee processing methods, and the influence on flavor is something our visitors experience directly when they cup different lots side by side.
Terroir, Altitude, and the Conditions That Commodity Supply Chains Cannot Replicate
Terroir is a concept borrowed from wine, but it applies just as powerfully to coffee. It refers to the complete set of environmental conditions in which a crop grows: soil composition, altitude, rainfall, temperature variation, sun exposure, cloud cover, and surrounding vegetation. All of these factors influence the flavor compounds that develop inside the coffee cherry as it matures.
Altitude is one of the most significant terroir variables. Coffee grown at higher elevations experiences cooler temperatures, which slow the maturation of the cherry. That slower development allows the bean to accumulate more complex sugars and organic acids. The result is a denser, more complex bean with greater potential for high scores on the cupping scale. Most specialty coffees are grown above 1,000 meters. Many of the highest-scoring coffees in the world come from farms above 1,500 meters.
Holualoa and the broader Kona belt sit at elevations ranging from roughly 800 to 2,000 feet on the slopes of Hualalai and Mauna Loa. The climate in this zone is famous for its consistency. Mornings are sunny and warm. Afternoons bring the "Kona cloud," a natural cloud cover that filters direct sun and moderates temperature during the hottest part of the day. This natural shade effect slows cherry development in the same way altitude does in other growing regions, contributing to the density and flavor complexity that Kona coffee is known for.
The volcanic soil of the Big Island adds another dimension. Soil formed from lava breakdown is rich in minerals, porous enough for excellent drainage, and naturally structured to support deep root development. Coffee trees grown in this soil express a mineral complexity in the cup that cannot be replicated by soil amendment or farm management on less geologically distinctive land.
These terroir conditions are not something a commodity supply chain can replicate or import. They are fixed by geography. A farm on the Kona belt grows coffee in conditions that have no equivalent anywhere else on Earth. That is not marketing language. It is geology and climatology, and it is why Kona coffee is special in a way that is fundamentally tied to place.
The Price Gap: Why Specialty Grade Coffee Costs More and What You Are Paying For
The price difference between specialty grade and commodity coffee is real and consistent. Understanding what creates that gap is essential to evaluating whether specialty coffee is worth the investment. We think the answer is clearly yes, and we can show you exactly why.
The Real Cost of Specialty Production at the Farm Level
Specialty grade production is expensive at the farm level because every step that improves quality also increases labor and time. Those costs are real, they are significant, and they are built into the price of every bag of specialty coffee you purchase.
Selective hand harvesting requires more pickers making more passes over a longer harvest season. A farm that strip-picks can harvest its entire crop in a fraction of the time with a fraction of the workforce. A farm committed to selective picking pays more per pound of cherry harvested because it takes more skilled labor to do it right.
Processing infrastructure for specialty grade production requires investment in pulping equipment, raised drying beds or controlled drying environments, sorting equipment, and the time and labor to manage each stage carefully. Quick-drying or machine-drying shortens the timeline but introduces inconsistency. Proper drying for specialty outcomes takes days to weeks depending on the method.
Hand sorting adds another layer of labor cost. Even after mechanical sorting for size and density, specialty lots benefit from hand sorting to identify and remove any remaining defective beans. This step alone can add hours of skilled labor per lot.
Q Grader certification and cupping fees add further cost. Having a lot evaluated by a certified Q Grader is not free. The evaluation, the sample preparation, the transport, and the communication with buyers all cost money. And once a lot is sold into the specialty supply chain, traceability documentation must be maintained at every step of the journey from farm to roaster.
All of this explains why specialty-grade green coffee averages two to four times the per-pound price of commodity green coffee, and why buyers specifically pursuing sustainably positioned specialty coffee sometimes pay 30% to 50% above standard specialty market prices. That premium flows back through the supply chain, compensating the farm for the investments made to produce quality in the first place.
The Roasting and Sourcing Premium in Specialty Supply Chains
The premium does not stop at the farm gate. Specialty roasters source, roast, and package differently from commodity roasters, and those differences add cost that is reflected in retail pricing.
Specialty roasters build direct relationships with farms or cooperatives rather than purchasing through anonymous brokers. Those relationships require travel, communication, and cupping investment on both sides. They also allow for the kind of feedback loop that improves quality over time: a roaster who visits a farm each year and communicates cupping results directly to the farmer creates a continuous improvement cycle that commodity purchasing cannot replicate.
Specialty roasters work with smaller volumes per lot, which means more frequent purchasing, more complex logistics, and less opportunity for the economies of scale that commodity roasters enjoy. Each lot may require a custom roast profile developed specifically for its density, moisture content, and flavor attributes. Developing and calibrating that profile takes time, equipment, and skilled attention.
The Q Grader score that certified the green coffee lot continues to influence decisions at the roastery. Roasters cup the finished roast repeatedly to verify that the roasting process is expressing the lot's attributes correctly. If the roast is not performing, the profile is adjusted. This kind of careful, iterative attention to quality is built into the specialty supply chain at every stage.
Understanding the coffee roasting process helps clarify why the roastery stage matters so much to the final cup, and why the choice between air roasting and drum roasting is itself a quality decision that specialty roasters make deliberately rather than by default.
What the Price Difference Delivers in the Cup
Reframe the question. Instead of asking "why is specialty coffee so expensive," ask what the extra investment actually buys you in the cup. The answer is specific and meaningful.
First, it buys flavor complexity. A commodity cup is designed to be inoffensive, recognizable, and consistent in a general way. A specialty cup is designed to express something specific: the character of a place, a harvest, a processing decision, and a farm's particular combination of terroir and practice. That specificity means the cup has layers, notes, and a story that unfolds as it cools.
Second, it buys consistency within a lot. Because specialty grade requires near-zero defects and uniform processing, every cup from a specialty lot should taste essentially the same. The batch-to-batch consistency that specialty coffee delivers is a direct result of the quality controls built into production.
Third, it buys drinkability without additives. Specialty coffee served black reveals its character. Commodity coffee served black reveals its defects. The bitter, flat, or sour qualities that many people associate with black coffee are largely the experience of defect-laden commodity lots. When a coffee is clean, well-processed, and correctly roasted, it does not need sugar or cream to be pleasant. It is pleasant on its own terms.
Learning how to brew the perfect cup of Kona coffee is worth the effort precisely because the coffee you are working with is worth expressing fully. Specialty grade coffee rewards attention to brewing. Commodity coffee tends to taste roughly the same regardless of what you do to it, because the quality ceiling was set too low for brewing nuance to matter much.
Specialty Coffee's Market Momentum: Where Consumers Are Heading
If specialty grade coffee sounds like a niche preference for deeply committed coffee nerds, the market data says otherwise. Specialty coffee has crossed from premium category into mainstream preference, and the trajectory points toward continued growth in every demographic segment.
Specialty Coffee Is Now the Majority Preference Among American Adults
The Specialty Coffee Association's research tells a clear story. Forty-seven percent of American adults reported having had a specialty coffee in the past day, surpassing past-day consumption of traditional coffee, which came in at 42%. For the first time in the history of consumer coffee research, specialty has overtaken traditional in daily consumption prevalence.
To put that in context: 66% of Americans had coffee in the past day, more than any other beverage, including tap water and bottled water. Coffee is the most consumed beverage in the country, and specialty coffee is now the most consumed type of coffee among daily drinkers. That is not a niche. That is the mainstream.
What drove this shift? A combination of factors. The proliferation of specialty roasters in mid-sized and small markets throughout the United States. The expansion of third-wave coffee shops that prioritize education and transparency alongside quality. The growth of online direct-to-consumer coffee sales that allow farms and small roasters to reach customers nationally without a retail footprint. And a steady increase in consumer awareness about where coffee comes from and what quality actually means.
The shift also reflects changing expectations. Consumers who grew up with access to specialty coffee do not experience it as a premium indulgence. They experience it as the baseline. When your first real coffee experience is a well-prepared pour-over from a single-origin lot, commodity canned coffee does not feel like coffee. It feels like something else entirely.
Global Market Growth and the Specialty Premium
The growth in specialty coffee is not limited to the United States. Globally, sustainably marketed specialty coffee has grown from roughly 10% to 15% of total market volume, representing approximately 50% volume growth over five years. European markets have been particularly strong drivers of this growth, with consumer demand for transparency and traceability accelerating purchases of certified and origin-traceable specialty coffees.
The premium that specialty buyers pay, running from 30% to 50% above commodity grade for quality-verified lots, reflects not just a preference for better flavor but a broader value proposition. Specialty coffee buyers are purchasing traceability, ethical sourcing assurance, environmental stewardship at the farm level, and the flavor reliability that comes from documented quality standards. When consumers understand what that premium pays for, the value calculation shifts from "is this worth more?" to "how could it be worth less?"
The European emphasis on supply chain transparency is influencing global sourcing standards in ways that reinforce specialty grade's traceability requirements. Regulations requiring documentation of supply chain ethics and environmental impact align naturally with the farm-to-cup traceability that specialty grade already demands. As those standards become more common in global trade, the specialty supply chain's existing infrastructure gives it a structural advantage over commodity trade.
What Drives Younger Consumers Toward Specialty Grade
Demographic research consistently shows that younger consumers are not just purchasing specialty coffee. They are engaging with it differently than previous generations engaged with coffee. Transparency is a primary purchase driver. Knowing where something came from, who grew it, and under what conditions is not a secondary consideration. It is a threshold requirement. Products that cannot answer those questions clearly face skepticism regardless of price or presentation.
Traceability resonates with younger buyers for several interconnected reasons. It speaks to environmental stewardship at the farm level. It supports the economic viability of small farms in an industry where commodity pricing has historically squeezed farmers at the bottom of the supply chain. It allows consumers to build a relationship with a product that feels personal rather than anonymous.
Farm-based experiences are another dimension of this engagement. Visiting a coffee farm, seeing the trees, understanding the harvest, and tasting the coffee in the place it grew creates a connection that no marketing campaign can replicate. It is the experience of coffee as a living, place-specific product rather than a commodity packaged for shelf appeal. At Buddha's Cup, coffee tourism is part of how we share the specialty grade story with people who are ready to understand it in full. The farms visitors see on our tours are the same farms producing the coffee they take home. That continuity matters to people who want their purchases to mean something.
Kona Coffee as a Case Study in Specialty Grade Standards
Everything we have discussed in this article comes together in a single, concrete example: Kona coffee. Few coffees in the world demonstrate so clearly how geography, regulation, farming practice, and specialty grade standards intersect to produce something genuinely exceptional. This is not regional pride speaking. It is a verifiable convergence of conditions that the specialty coffee world recognizes and that our own experience at Buddha's Cup reflects every harvest season.
How Kona Coffee's Geographic and Regulatory Framework Maps to Specialty Standards
"Kona coffee" is a legally protected geographic designation in the state of Hawaii. To use the name, a coffee must be grown in the North or South Kona district of the Big Island of Hawaii.