While Café Britt roasts some of the highest grade coffee in the world, many Ticos do not actually get the chance to drink it. Due to Costa Rican coffee being a premium, or top grade, coffee, it can be sold for a much higher price elsewhere in the world. Consumers in the United States are willing to pay this premium level price since coffee is generally a large part of our routine. Due to this, many Costa Rican coffee companies, like Café Britt, choose to export a resounding majority of their coffee to the United States instead of selling it here in Costa Rica so they can increase their revenue.

As mentioned above, the second company we visited today, Café Britt, functions as a roaster of coffee beans. In terms of levels of the supply chain, Café Britt could be considered both a manufacturer and a consumer (retailer) as the company seems to be vertically integrated between two levels. They function as a manufacturer because they mainly function as a roaster. Roasting, for the supply chain of coffee, is essentially the process that turns the materials they import, which is mainly coffee beans but also materials like water and the materials used to make the packaging, into the finished product. Café Britt could also be considered a consumer, or retailer, due to the fact that they sell their products on their own through the small coffee shops they own in the airport, at their manufacturing site, at their stand alone shops and to the hotels they have partnerships with. However, this is not the company’s main focus for their coffee operations, roasting (manufacturing) is.

Compared to Doka, the company we visited this morning, Café Britt functions mainly as a completely different piece of the supply chain. While Café Britt is mainly a manufacturer, Doka plays the role of a supplier although the company also has some very small traces of being a retailer, which is shown by the gift shop we walked through at the end of our tour. Doka’s main purpose in the supply chain is defined by the fact that they grow coffee trees which in turn make the coffee cherries that are picked and processed before being sent to the roasters. In short, they provide the manufacturers with the most important material in the process: the coffee beans.

In relation to my group’s topic, sourcing, Café Britt does a few things to promote financial success. One these is simple on the surface, but much harder in practice and goes a long way towards their financial success. This is choosing to bring in the highest quality beans for roasting which in turn allows the company to generate a larger amount of revenue because the roasted beans can then be sold in the United States for a premium price. Another step the company makes in sourcing to create financial success is vertically integrating their company, even if it is only in a small quantity. By choosing to sell their manufactured beans on their own in multiple locations, the Café Britt is able to save the money they would have either lost in negotiations of logistically getting the product to the stores or the resources they would have expended finding more retailers who would want to sell their products. However, there is one thing that I feel may help Café Britt’s profitability: establishing either a sole source or some captive supplier relationships with their upstream partners. By committing to either only buy from one supplier or buy out multiple suppliers’ capacity, Café Britt could likely negotiate the price of the coffee beans down lower than their payments since they currently buy from multiple suppliers. Of course they would have insure that changing the deals with their current suppliers or bringing in new suppliers would allow them to keep the same quality of coffee beans, but if they can do this while establishing more special relationships with their suppliers, Café Britt could save some money here and there which would add up in the long run and fuel their goal of growing in both the roasting industry and their other industries.