Agri-based value chains are powerful drivers for transforming food systems. Being part of cash crops, coffee is crucial for smallholder farmers in many producing countries because of its potential to create incomes and jobs. Nevertheless, coffee value chains are very competitive and income inequality can be significant between actors of the chain. The in-come for the actors involved and jobs created by the coffee activities and their distribution along the value chain depend over the organisational and institutional processes and the governance mechanisms which are largely shaped by the strategies of the actors inside the value chain as well as the country's own context and the international environment. To establish some pathways between the mode of governance and the economic and inclusiveness performances, we propose a cross-cutting analysis in two Latin America and Carribean countries where VCA4D* coffee studies were performed: Honduras and Ecuador. Our paper aims at highlighting how differently the actors are involved in the governance of the value chains and how they benefit from the value chain activities in these two countries. The main results show that Honduras which have set a mode of governance shared between public and private actors, including the participation of producers in the definition and implementation of a national coffee sector development strategy, is performing better than Ecuador that has a regulation only delivered to the market forces and whose production strongly decreased after the dollarization of its economy. Valuable insights are drawn from this cross-cutting analysis to move the food systems in which coffee value chains are meaningful towards more sustainability and inclusiveness.