For our third day in Costa Rica, we took a bus trip to visit two different companies within the gourmet coffee industry: Doka Coffee and Cafe Britt. Doka Coffee is a coffee farm set in the foothills of the Paos Volcano, about 1300 meters above sea level. The unique elevation and fertile volcanic soil provide rich nutrients for Doka to grow their coffee. Within their presentation, we learned about the two different types of commercial coffee plants: Arabica and Robusta. Arabica is a smaller plant, and therefore produces less fruit. Its crop is sensitive to issues like rust and dramatic weather changes, but sprouts a bean that produces a much sweeter, mild drink. Robusta is a much larger coffee plant that produces much more fruit, and can withstand the issues that Arabica cannot. However, the coffee brewed from it is much more bitter and less smooth. In Costa Rica, they focus on producing Arabica beans as they emphasize quality over quantity. It was interesting to see firsthand how coffee is produced, from the seeding of a plant, to picking the fruit, removing the flesh, to preparing and roasting the bean. My favorite part of the visit to Doka was their emphasis on biodiversity while growing a monoculture-heavy crop like coffee. Doka introduces different species on their land to both help support the coffee plants and provide a home for native Costa Rican species whose habitats are destroyed from deforestation to make way for monocultures. Learning all of the information on how Doka runs made us quite hungry, so we headed to Cafe Britt for lunch and another presentation and coffee tour.

Cafe Britt is an impressive, gourmet coffee and chocolate company whose headquarters are nestled north of central Heredia. There, CEO of MORPHO (a travel retail agency), Adriana Echandi, discussed the history and levels of the supply chain within her agency and Cafe Britt. It was interesting to see how Cafe Britt, a company of only about 400 employees, was able to climb to the top of it’s specified industry within 34 years. One of the reasons that led it to this position was their focus on innovation. Cafe Britt/MORPHO has established a solid innovation chain and strive to continually find different ways to innovate within their industry. While it has created many products that branch out from just coffee, such as different types of chocolates, every process has its downfall. Adriana discussed how coffee liqueur, a product that had gone through the entire research and development process, had failed in store. The reason this occurred is that Cafe Britt’s main store locations are in airports, where liquids are a difficult item to transport on passenger airlines. The processes for passengers to take the liqueur back home became too complicated and ultimately Cafe Britt had to pull the product from the shelves. That being said, the company continues to innovate and grow exponentially, and I would not be surprised if it held its position at the throne of the gourmet coffee industry for years to come.

When comparing Doka and Cafe Britt in the supply chain, Doka plays more of a role as a Supplier within the coffee industry while Cafe Britt plays more of a Manufacturer/Distributor role. Doka’s main goal is to supply companies with beans that are prepared to be roasted, while Cafe Britt imports beans from multiple different companies and creates its own products to be sold. Although Doka has a slight foot in the Manufacturer role, with its own roasted beans available for purchases on site, its top priority is harvesting and preparing the beans to be shipped. Within the topic of Design, Doka is pretty stagnant in finding new ways to innovate its product. Innovation within growing coffee would be determining the most combination of Arabica and Robusta crop to create a crop that is resistant to environmental factors and produces many beans that provide a mild, sweet brew. Their approach to this is following the trends of its competitors. While that approach is perfectly sound, Cafe Britt has a greater involvement within designing and innovating products, with ideas constantly flowing, and a culture where they act quickly on new ideas constantly. As far as this approach goes, Cafe Britt’s role in the gourmet coffee industry has shown that it is extremely effective, and I do not see any alternative that could be more efficient.

Today, I learned much more about the process of producing coffee products from two companies that are thriving in their responsibilities within the gourmet coffee industry. While both Doka and Cafe Britt share some similarities, they work efficiently and effectively within their niche, and it was fascinating to get some perspective about products that are normally just seen as items on a shelf at a grocery store in the United States. These experiences have changed how I see coffee both from business and consumer perspectives, and I’m looking forward to learning more as the days go by.