About 40 percent of the coffee coming out of Ethiopia (a country for whom coffee represents 36 percent of export earnings) is made from high-quality varieties of beans like Yergarcheffe, Sidamo, and Harar. Until recently, however, these were purchased from farmers at commodity rather than premium prices. Starbucks and the Ethiopian government worked together to create a series of licenses for certain varieties of coffee beans, which will now be sold at a premium by retailers who will explain to consumers why they cost more: “By allowing licensees to use the trademarks without paying royalties, Ethiopia is, in effect, trading their use for free marketing.” Although an appellation contrôllée-like system (as is used for French wine and other food products) was considered, creating a certification process would have been complicated and expensive.

San Francisco entrepreneur Timothy Childs believes the same could happen with cocoa beans. Childs is founder of a start-up company called Tcho, which the Economist described as “a technology firm that makes chocolate” in the same issue as the coffee article (here it is online.) Most chocolate is classified and sold by percentage of cocoa solids and country of origin, neither of which leaves much room for nuance or quality control: “rather like labeling a wine ‘France, 13% alcohol,’” says Childs. He’s developed a method to analyze, grade, and describe beans that could help producers improve and tailor production, as well aid buyers in finessing their purchasing. On the production end, Tcho is feeding back to research groups on-site, with which it communicates through satellite-internet connections, about ways to improve the quality and consistency of the beans. He also employs remote-video-monitoring bean processing in far-flung locations. On the retail side, Tcho has developed a flavor wheel and other tools to educate buyers—both professional and casual—about ways to judge chocolate quality.

Consumer education is the key to selling better-quality products at fair, higher prices. Once people understand—and, importantly, taste—the difference provided by a higher-quality product, they can make more informed decisions about whether they want to spend the extra money, thus placing the higher-quality producers on a footing in which price and packaging aren’t the only criteria on which they’re being judged. Labeling and marketing are tricky issues to get right, but these two efforts seem to have the right idea.