by Kosta Kallivrousis for Age of Coffee

US volume is falling and European volume is flat, but the two markets are moving in opposite directions on quality. European consumers are drinking fewer cups of coffee and paying for better ones, out of home. American consumers are migrating to drive-thrus and iced drinks built on 80-83 point coffee. The divergence is structural, and it has direct implications for where producers should strategically be pointing their best lots. 

Two markets, same narrative, different chapters

The headline numbers tell half of it. US green imports are at 23.1 million bags in 2025/26, down 1.1%. Consumption is 25.6 million bags, down 2.3%. In Europe, green imports are at 47.75 million bags, down 1.7%, but consumption has nudged up 0.8% to 41.6 million bags. Both markets are shrinking in volume, but only one of them is trading up in quality.

In the US, the café habit has not recovered from COVID. 

According to the National Coffee Association (NCA) and Specialty Coffee Association (SCA)’s 2022 Specialty Coffee Report, out-of-home coffee dropped from 46% in 2019 to 35% in 2022, and four years on it has gained only three points back. According to the Specialty Coffee Transaction Guide, as early as 2019-2020, contracts for 84+ coffees fell by 9.8 million lb (72,575 60kg bags), while 80-83 point contracts grew by 31 million lb (234,356 60kg bags).

The growth channel is not the café. Americans have slowly been spending more time at home since 2003. When the pandemic struck, that time jumped from 30 minutes to two hours. Three years later Americans spend about 100 minutes at home, according to Princeton sociologist Patrick Sharkey’s analysis of the American Time Use Survey. Where growth has come is the drive-thru: 55% of out-of-home buyers now order at one, rising to 68% of under-25s. Cold coffee has reached 21% of daily coffee drinkers, up from 16% in 2022. The format is winning, but the quality is not necessarily following.

The NCA’s headline this autumn is that specialty coffee hit a record 48% of American adults. That number counts espresso drinks, cold brew, and frozen blended beverages as specialty, whatever is in the cup. It measures the format, and that format is where 80-83 point coffee sells.

The data from producers confirms what the retail numbers suggest. Caravela’s CEO reported in August 2026 that 86+ coffees were once 70% of what the company bought and sold. Today they are below 25%.

In Europe, the picture is different. Foodservice took 22% of all EU coffee volume in 2025, up from 16% in 2020 – a 46% increase in absolute terms, to 427,000 tonnes. 

According to the European Coffee Federation’s (ECF) European Coffee Report 2024/2025, out-of-home fresh coffee consumption grew in every major EU market: 

Poland up 6%, France up 5.2%, Spain up 4%, the Netherlands up 3.6%, Germany up 2.8%, Italy up 1.7%. The ECF calls this the “out-of-home paradox:” purchasing power fell after COVID, yet consumers chose leisure over long-term spending. The café, in Europe, is not a convenience as it is in the U.S. It is, instead, a cultural institution, which is much harder for inflation to close.

The ECF sees the same dynamic spreading to the home. Retail volumes are slipping and instant coffee is falling fastest, as consumers opt for quality fresh coffee even when they cannot consume higher volumes due to budget restrictions. I have seen the same thing on the ground since I began visiting European markets in 2022.

This is not new

The divergence between the two markets is not a post-COVID development. 

Europe has been the quality buyer for more than a century, while the United States has been the price buyer. 

Roseberry, Gudmundson and Samper Kutschbach put it plainly: “European consumers have preferred the ‘quality’… The United States, on the other hand, has served as a market for the harsher, less expensive coffees.” That was written in 1995. The pattern held through the Cold War – the CIA’s attempt to pressure Guatemala through its coffee trade in the 1950s failed in part because the targeted estates sold their best maragogype to Germany, while the US was not willing to pay and took what was left.

The US specialty coffee segment was built later, and deliberately. In the 1980s, the ICO-funded Office Coffee Development Group set out to reverse two decades of falling US consumption. By 1989, it had helped open 72 coffee houses on 58 college campuses. Gourmet coffee houses grew from roughly 450 in 1991 to nearly 10,000 a decade later. 

When prices rise, Americans trade down and drink less. 

Harvard professor Robert Bates estimated that a 10% price increase leads to a 2-4% decrease in quantity demanded. The US specialty moment was built on office coffee promotion and cheap capital. Neither condition holds today.

What producers can do with this

There is a growing and entrenching divergence between the two largest coffee-consuming regions. America has historically been driven by cheap coffee, and only recently adopted specialty as an answer to office coffee culture and slumping volume. When Americans face inflationary pressure, they downgrade or substitute. Europeans, meanwhile, value leisure differently. The café is an established cultural institution, and when Europeans feel the squeeze, they double down on the one small luxury that still feels affordable.

This divergence matters most for producers deciding where to place their best lots and how to invest their next increment of effort. It determines what to grow, how to process it, and where to sell it. Right now, Europe is where quality gets paid for, but the US is where volume moves. The next increment of specialty effort belongs in Europe.

Three implications follow from the data:

Point the best lots at Europe. Coffees at 84 points and above belong with European roasters supplying cafés, the one channel still growing in a flat market. That is where out-of-home volume is expanding and where consumers have shown they will pay through an inflation cycle rather than trade down.

Treat the US as the 80-83 point market. It remains large. But it rewards consistency and price. It valued top-end specialty when investor returns were high and credit was cheap. Those conditions have changed. 

Go where out-of-home is growing fastest. France, Spain and Poland led in 2024. These are still markets in formation, and producers who build relationships with roasters there now will be better positioned as the channel matures.

Today, the market that (arguably) invented the third wave is now its most ambivalent customer. Meanwhile, the market that has been buying quality for a century is staying on that trajectory, and some might even say upping its game.