Ah the great question which every person should logically ask themselves prior to spending so much money on a product categorically calling itself ‘special’. It's also an extremely difficult one to answer without sounding pompous and pretentious, nonetheless I will do my best..
The answer is simple. All one really needs to know is that the word 'Specialty' in "Specialty Coffee" sits in place as a contradistinction to the so called 'commodity' in "Commodity Coffee”.
Now, as far as commodity coffee’s meaning, I’ll just show by example. It’s the McDonalds magma water and the bottomless Denny's pot. Think of the horrors of those sterile office space coffee-vending machines from the 90s that shoot out a squirt of brown water into your paper cup after you've put your four quarters in. Heck, I’d even bundle in there the various overpriced Starbucks Frappes™®© and other possibly alien genetically modified bean derivative sourced and farmed by who knows who and where. Now, this perhaps to a newcomer might seem just so arrogant, even with the disclaimer! But the degrees of quality in all things is ultimately self evident, coffee is of course no different. I could go on and give my ramblings about the intricacies of a quality coffee as compared to grocery store commodity coffee. But since all coffee is essentially a food product and lies within the art of cookery, all one needs to basically know is that specialty coffee is by definition produced and refined with an art to bring about the ideal cup of coffee.
