God Shot blog:

I tend to think a lot about some of the challenges facing craft or artisan coffee. Over time, these challenges have changed. Whereas once upon a time simple relevancy was a huge challenge, the last three years have seen a widespread market adoption of the high end of coffee in the US.

Much of this adoption has been driven by more effective marketing by the coffee businesses themselves, but the increasing demand for “authenticity” amongst the growing hipster market (and their serious use of social media to promote their brand decisions) has also been a driving force. Hipsters are the early-adopters of this world and are creating a huge market as the followers stream in after them.