Costa Rica tiene café rico, ¡seguro! Doka Estate and Café Britt are two large, Costa Rican companies that both fit into the coffee supply chain, but in two different sections of the chain. Doka deals with the raw resources end of the supply chain; the company grows coffee plants and produces its own coffee from the central valley region of Costa Rica. It is essential for Doka to plan efficient and effective strategies with regards to how to turn the coffee cherries from a coffee plant into coffee beans. The company also must plan how, when and where to source and deliver various materials. It then must execute these plans. On the other hand, Café Britt is a coffee roaster that deals with the marketing chain, which is the forward direction of the supply chain that flows toward the customer/end user. Café Britt receives beans from companies like Doka, roasts those beans and then sells the roasts to its customers. Café Britt is responsible for planning efficient and effective strategies concerning sourcing materials like the coffee beans, making new products and delivering its products to customers. Designing and launching new products is part of Café Britt’s duties, and the company follows its own ideation process. This process includes steps such as brainstorming an idea, conducting research in order to further develop the idea, determining various ways of introducing the idea, determining legal and environmental regulations that must be followed, investing in product and design development, obtaining verifications for the product, producing packaging and distributing the product.

While tourists love Café Britt, most Ticos don’t drink it often, or at all. I talked to my host dad about this, and my assumptions were correct. Café Britt is very high-quality coffee, but this is an excellent reason for the company to have high prices—unreasonably high for most Ticos. In economic terms, the marginal cost of Café Britt is greater than the marginal benefit, especially since even the lower quality Costa Rican coffee is quite tasteful and much less expensive. In addition to its high price, I have another theory as to why Café Britt is not bought by many Ticos. Since tourism is a large portion of Costa Rican’s economy, Café Britt might focus on aiming their marketing towards foreign tourists, knowing that tourists may be more willing to pay a higher price for gourmet Costa Rican coffee.

In addition, it is interesting to note that coffee is not the most popular Café Britt product. Along with coffee, Café Britt sells various kinds of chocolate as well as cookies. In fact, the company has its own chocolate factory. I should mention that during the site visit, the current CEO of the company mentioned that the company name recently changed to simply “Britt” since the company no longer just sells coffee. Instead, the company has expanded its horizons and has multiple divisions that contribute to its financial success. The company is a diversified firm with divisions including Britt Coffee Tour, Britt Espresso, Britt Chocolate, Britt Café and Bakery, and Leyenda (Britt’s lower quality coffee brand). Britt buys its coffee beans from multiple sources, and the company is sure to review and perform quality checks on the beans before roasting them to maintain high quality standards. While Britt has its own chocolate factory, it outsources some chocolate from various companies of a country known worldwide for its chocolate: Ecuador. The decision to outsource chocolate from Ecuador is yet another decision made to uphold the value that the company places on quality. Further ensuring quality, Britt’s certifications for its coffee tours come from multiple sources, such as the TripAdvisor’s Excellence Award. Another value that the company has, like the majority of Costa Rica, is sustainability. Britt practices sustainability by sourcing some of its retail items from the company’s own coffee roast packaging. The packaging is recycled and made into beautiful, unique retail products such as handmade bags and file folders. Looking to the future, Britt would like to expand such products and create biodegradable cups. Additionally, other goals include Britt’s desire to source more café franchisers and obtain the ability to have their coffee products in vending machines.

In my opinion, Britt’s approach to reaching financial success is well-planned and inspiring. After listening to a presentation given by the CEO, I was truly impressed, and I even began thinking about how exciting it would be to possibly work at a company with many great ideas like Britt. Something that stuck out to me as another business investment for the company would be to add a Britt Chocolate Tour, or a tour similar to Hershey’s Chocolate World in Hershey, Pennsylvania. All-in-all, today’s site visits were informative about the global supply chain of coffee, and they served as an opportunity to learn more about the coffee industry and experience pure, Costa Rican coffee.

Hasta pronto,

Taylor Siegfried