The Specialty Coffee Shift – The Growing Sophistication of Coffee Consumers in the UAE

By Ryan Godinho, Founder of Stomping Grounds and Specialty Batch Coffee Roastery

The most revealing modern-day coffee review is often four words: “It was better yesterday.”

An origin story or an expensive machine cannot answer that complaint. Someone has to understand what changed and put it right. But there is progress in that complaint; the customer remembers a standard and expects us to maintain it.

Over seventeen years in the UAE, I helped establish national-level coffee championships, delivered professional coffee education and built Specialty Batch from a training platform into a roasting and cafe support business. The value of those early competitions extended beyond the stage. They encouraged baristas to question their work and take better standards back into service.

In 2015 Stomping Grounds brought that education into a neighbourhood café in Jumeirah, alongside Specialty Batch’s micro roastery, coffee lab and training centre. In the early days, many customers arrived from the major chains expecting large, very sweet coffee drinks. Over time, we witnessed many of them become interested in balanced flat whites, long blacks and filter brews. They were starting to choose coffee for its own unique flavour.

What stayed with me was how much depended on making people comfortable enough to try. A guest who feels judged for their usual order is unlikely to ask what else they might enjoy. Our job was to encourage curiosity, not turn a coffee order into a test of taste.

The biggest shift I have seen over the past decade is from that curiosity to confidence. Customers have a clearer sense of what they like. They want flavour that reflects the description, a credible reason for the price and staff who can guide without lecturing.

‘Specialty’ on the sign is no longer much of an answer. Higher expectations are evidence of progress. We cannot spend years teaching people to recognise quality and then resent being held to it. That scrutiny should extend to provenance. If we name a coffee producer, describe a processing method or make a claim about sourcing, the information needs to be accurate and supported. A farm name alone does not establish fair payment or a high price tag. Staff should know what they can substantiate and be comfortable acknowledging what they cannot. A compelling story should withstand a few questions.

The same customer may want to discuss a new coffee one morning and simply collect their usual order the next. Recognising that is part of hospitality. So is serving a familiar flat white with as much care as a rare filter coffee. Knowing when to stop explaining can matter as much as knowing what to say.

Today, Specialty Batch’s technical division holds active servicing arrangements with more than 600 cafés, restaurants and bars across the UAE. Alongside our roasting and education work, those relationships give us a close view of how quality holds up in daily service. It’s why we treat coffee, equipment and staff capability as a shared responsibility. The guest should not have to understand which supplier caused a problem to have it resolved.

For operators, the response cannot stop at better purchasing. Make time for staff to taste what they serve. Give them enough understanding to adjust a recipe and enough authority to remake a drink. Budget for training and maintenance beyond opening week. Sure, the price per kilogram deserves calculated scrutiny, but so do wasted coffee, remade drinks, the cost of supplier inconsistency and the eventual cost of disappointing a regular.

People we trained over the past seventeen years now work as roasters, trainers and operators, while many former Stomping Grounds customers have opened coffee businesses of their own. Some of the people shaping the UAE’s coffee culture over the last decade first crossed our path in a classroom or across the café counter. Seeing that knowledge multiply through businesses, careers and communities is perhaps the most meaningful evidence that my role in the UAE’s specialty coffee story was never simply to participate in a growing industry, but to help build the skills, standards and foundations that allowed it to grow. We spent years asking customers to recognise better coffee. The responsibility now is to make sure they can rely on it.