Interview: What Is Pointwashing — And How Can We Stop It?

After publishing “Pointwashing,” I was interviewed by Perfect Daily Grind. Here’s the full Q&A — five essential questions, and my answers.

Few weeks ago, I wrote an article titled “Pointwashing: Coffee Scores Are Just a Sticker” — and many of you read it, shared it, and sent messages that showed how deeply this problem resonated.

I hope the term pointwashing will find its place in the coffee vocabulary — and more importantly, that we’ll begin avoiding it in practice. That’s exactly why we created The Better Coffee Standard: to offer an alternative, a clear system that favors honesty over hype.

Not long after publishing that article, Tasmin Grant from Perfect Daily Grind sent me five excellent follow-up questions. She later published a new piece titled “Resolving Discrepancies in Coffee Cup Scores”, based on this conversation.

What follows is the full version of our exchange, now published here in full for those who want to go deeper.

Tasmin Grant: How do you define “pointwashing”?

Krzysztof: It’s a clear parallel to greenwashing. Pointwashing is the inflation or misrepresentation of coffee scores — whether intentional or accidental — to give a coffee more value than it actually has. It occurs when the score printed on a bag or used in marketing no longer (or never did) reflect the real sensory experience of tasting the coffee, especially from the consumer’s perspective.

This is a systemic issue, not just a one-time exaggeration. It often stems from a lack of calibration, a lack of transparency in the supply chain, or pressure to meet market expectations. Much like greenwashing or virtue signaling, pointwashing uses a simplified metric — in this case, the SCA/Q score — as a persuasive tool, even when that metric has lost its reliability.

TG: 2. Do you think manipulating scores is ever intentional? What problems could this cause?

Krzysztof: Yes, sometimes it is intentional. However, it often happens passively. People in the supply chain — primarily coffee roasters and baristas — take the score and use it without thinking about where it came from or how it was calibrated.

Still, there are clear cases where importers or roasters inflate scores to justify a higher price or to stand out in a competitive market. The problem is that the system allows — and even rewards — such behavior. When ratings become a tool of persuasion rather than a tool for assessing quality, the integrity of the entire value chain begins to deteriorate. It also affects the overall quality of coffee on the market.

The consequences are serious:

• Producers may feel compelled to “improve” coffees with descriptions that do not match the actual taste, as well as with processing methods — including experimentation — to “justify” defective flavors with inflated scores.

• Roasters may lose the ability (or even the desire) to independently evaluate flavor, relying instead on inherited ratings. Or their internal quality control becomes permanently affected by the error of suggestion.

• Consumers are misled. They may drink something unpleasant but praise it anyway because of the label rating and the higher (often significantly higher) price that comes with it. Over time, they develop poor sensory habits — or give up on specialty coffee altogether.

Regardless of whether pointwashing is done with good or bad intentions, the result is the same: distortion of value, breakdown of trust, and confusion about the true meaning of “quality.”

TG: 3. How can we avoid pointwashing?

Krzysztof:The key is transparency — backed by calibration, humility, better communication, and, above all, honesty.

Every participant in the supply chain should be encouraged (or ideally required — though that may not be realistic in the current global context) to document how the score was determined:

• Who tasted the coffee, when, where, and under what conditions?

• What cupping form was used?

• Was calibration performed?

• What were the results of any comparisons between the place of origin and the consumer market?

We also need to standardize multi-stage evaluation. It’s obvious that green and roasted coffee evolve — during rest, transport, roasting, and even grinding. The score given by a producer’s QC lab at origin won’t match what a consumer experiences in Washington, Paris, Tokyo, or Katowice. We should expect scores to evolve — not treat them as absolute.

Coffee scoring depends on so many factors that it cannot be considered a universal truth, as is often the case.

I would love to see this kind of transparency printed on the label of even one coffee roaster. And I also appreciate when someone, rather than risking pointwashing, chooses to use scores only for internal purposes — not for marketing.

Finally, people should feel safe without scoring. There’s no shame in admitting uncertainty or in saying: “I can’t assign a number, but here’s what I felt.”

TG: 4. How can we communicate cup evaluation results more accurately to consumers? Is it even worth communicating them to most consumers?

Krzysztof:In most cases, I don't think it makes any sense to communicate numerical results to consumers — at least not in their current form.

I know, we've been doing this for ages; it's one of the hallmarks of our so-called “third wave” (though I honestly dislike this division into waves).

Most consumers don’t know how to interpret these numbers. Worse, many believe that any score printed on a package guarantees a better experience. But flavor is a complex matter — deeply contextual, shaped by brewing methods, water, roasting, expectations… and culture.

If we still want to communicate evaluation results, we need to be completely honest about their origin and context. Ideally, each score would be accompanied by metadata — maybe even linked through a code to a reliable source. Some even suggest using blockchain.

If we offered one score per level of the supply chain — for example, one from the producer’s QC lab, one from the importer, and one from the roaster — it could help consumers understand how the coffee evolves. But how many consumers would actually know what that all means? People want clarity, not complexity.

This is where certification systems can help. Coffee could undergo a multi-stage quality assessment using a universal method — one that tracks quality at every step from patio to cup, while also including scientifically verifiable data on social, economic, and environmental impact.

In the end, everyone — even the consumer — would get a simple message: this label means the coffee passed an independent inspection, and it’s simply better coffee.

This may sound like a big leap, but it’s precisely the direction of The Better Coffee system I’m building at redinkcoffee.com.

A multi-stage ranking method — working title — is currently in development.

TG: 5. Do you have any final thoughts?

Krzysztof: Yes — I believe the specialty coffee world needs serious recalibration. In both senses: we need to literally recalibrate — meet again at some shared “School of Perception” and rethink how we view the product we work with. But also in a deeper sense: we’ve become so attached to linking quality to price and capital that if pointwashing (and greenwashing) weren’t a problem, I’d be surprised.

Over the years, we’ve built systems meant to foster transparency and trust. But in the process, we ended up with indicators like SCA points — often misused, misunderstood, or completely detached from reality. The famous 100-point scale still holds symbolic power and may serve a purpose in cupping rooms, but it’s not what consumers need to decide what coffee to drink.

What we need now is courage.

The courage to say, “I don’t know,” or “This coffee isn’t perfect,” or even, “I feel cheated.”

The courage to abandon marketing shortcuts and make space for honest conversation. To speak truthfully about the product — because many farmers, coffee roasters, and baristas put their hearts into what they do, and the current system still “reduces it to points,” as if their work and passion meant nothing.

Let’s do something better for the people who work with coffee — and for those who love it.

Pointwashing isn’t just about numbers. It’s about what happens when we let easy answers replace critical thinking.That’s a challenge for all of us: tasters, roasters, importers, baristas, educators.

That’s why I write — and why I believe we need better tools, better values, and better coffee.

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