Specialty coffee qualification acts: circulating through quality conventions of the “third wave” market

Abstract

From three different fieldworks, this article discusses the specialty coffee qualification’s process by mapping the way in which its quality is understood throughout the coffee marketing cycle, covering the purchase to sold moments. Seeking to understand the importance of tasting in this commercial relationship, I propose to base the quality of special coffee as a convention linked to the act of tasting coffee that got an instrumental character, in the case of the evaluation carried out when purchasing coffees; procedural technician, in the case of the baristas’ daily operational work with him; and evaluative ritual, considering the ordinary consumption of the product.