The Specialty Coffee Association is Taking Over the Q Grader Program

The U.S.- and Europe-based Specialty Coffee Association (SCA) announced it is taking over management of the Q Grader program beginning Oct. 1, 2025.

The Q program has been the flagship certification and education program of the U.S.-based nonprofit Coffee Quality Institute. Financial terms of the deal between the two organizations have not been publicly disclosed.

Often compared to sommelier certification in the wine industry, the Q Grader program has provided more than 8,000 coffee professionals with rigorous-exam-tested bona fides on arabica coffee, robusta coffee and post-harvest processing. The program has also boosted CQI’s broader efforts to promote coffee quality as a means to improve premium market access for coffee farmers and producers.

The SCA and CQI are describing the “transition” of the Q program management to the SCA as part of a “partnership.”

The SCA said that an evolved Q program will be based on its Coffee Value Assessment (CVA) program, a set of cupping forms and protocols rolled out in 2023 and designed to replace the group’s legacy cupping forms, used for professional coffee evaluation, a.k.a. “cupping.”

“Coffee is more than a score. The partnership between SCA and CQI to evolve the Q Grader program is the latest milestone towards delivering on the SCA’s purpose to make coffee better,” Yannis Apostolopoulos, CEO of the Specialty Coffee Association, said in an announcement of the Q program deal on the eve of the SCA’s flagship U.S. trade show, the SCA Expo. “Upon completion of the program, Q Graders holding the evolved, CVA-based license will set the standard for modern coffee evaluation. Through a system that takes a holistic view of value in coffee, they’ll play a key role in driving progress in the global specialty coffee industry.”

A widely used tool throughout the global specialty coffee industry, the SCA’s legacy cupping forms have historically been referenced in Q Grader training and education. In October of 2022, as the SCA sent a notice to members, signed by Apostolopoulos, that it was launching a “task force” to build a new coffee grading and cupping system (now known as the CVA) for professional cuppers.

In that announcement, Apostolopoulos described a perception of dissatisfaction with the “current administration of the Q program.”

“Over the past few months, we’ve heard from the Q Grader community — a key group of experts who use the SCA cupping and grading protocols — that they feel underserved and underrepresented in the current administration of the Q program,” Apostolopoulos wrote in 2022. “Though the SCA does not administer the Q program, we take this matter seriously and are taking necessary steps to ensure SCA’s cupping and grading protocols are serving the value chain as intended, and to support coffee cuppers and producers.”

Representatives of CQI and the SCA declined DCN’s requests to comment on the record regarding that message at the time.

In yesterday’s announcement, CQI CEO Michael Sheridan, who joined the organization in late 2023, said, “We are proud of the role we have played in the first 20 years of the Q, and honored by the way it has been embraced in the coffee industry… And we are excited to partner with the Specialty Coffee Association to evolve the Q to meet the demands of the industry today.”

CQI has set up a Q “transition” FAQ page on its website.

DCN will have more as this story develops.

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