[cwkoss]

I'm saying that supply of highest-quality coffee may be less elastic than demand.

Certainly we could grow more coffee, and that would likely increase net output of high quality coffee. However, if a company is buying the 'best 10%' of coffee and need to double their output, it is more likely that they buy 80th-90th percentile coffee than reinvest their profits into increase the quality that tranche of coffee to meet that of the top 10%. Even if a company chose to do this, the amount of time it takes to deploy capital in agriculture (~1yr+) is likely much less than the amount of time it takes to deploy capital in manufacturing (months), which effectively would cap growth rate.

[ovao]

An interesting argument I hadn't considered. I wonder, though, how genuinely impactful bean quality is for the end product. It's well understood that it's impactful to some degree, but do premium roasters need the top 10%, or is, say, the better half of arabica produced sufficient to yield effectively the same brewed product?

Said another way, is the slope of quality distribution that severe?

[cwkoss]

Good question, I'd also be interested in the answer.

I'd guess its a long-tailed distribution something like this (https://qph.ec.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-3b21f991d3f0446ce30b9b...) (quality on x axis, volume on y-axis) However, I know little about the complexities of coffee agricultural and manufacturing process, mostly just speaking in abstract armchair economics terms.