We had our first company visit at Doka coffee plantation today! Doka focuses on the growing of coffee beans and most of their supply is sent to the United States and sold at places such at McDonalds and Starbucks. It’s crazy to think that I could have had a latte that was made from their coffee beans! Our tour guide walked us through every step of the coffee process, from picking the beans from the coffee plants to packaging them in containers to be sent overseas. One thing that I was surprised about in the coffee process was how labor intensive it is. With the technology we have nowadays I assumed there would be machines to do a lot of the work, however I learned that a lot of it is done by hand. The beans are grown on rather short plants so that the pickers can take them off by hand and they are dried in the sun by workers raking them daily. This was very interesting to learn and even try myself!
Another interesting aspect of the Doka tour was learning about how old the company is. Doka has the oldest working coffee factory in Costa Rica and has been running for over 100 years. This means that a lot of the technology used in their factory was pretty old too, however as the saying goes, “If it’s not broken, don’t fix it.” The machines in the factory are also pretty self sufficient and our tour guide told us that only about 7 workers are needed to run the factory. This relates to the sustainability efforts that Doka implements at their plantation, which I found to be the most interesting part of the tour.
First of all, the machines in the factory are powered by water and the water used in the process of cleaning/separating the beans is reused for multiple steps of the coffee process. Part of the process involves taking the skin off of the beans, which I assumed would be discarded as I didn’t think it was very useful for anything. However, I learned that the skin is actually used for compost on the plantation, which I thought was really cool. Additionally, the coffee beans that are not up to Doka’s high standards still have a purpose. They go though the same process as the higher quality beans and are sold for commercial use in Costa Rica, as opposed to be shipped out of the country to different consumers.
Learning about all the hard work that goes into coffee growing and the sustainable practices that are implemented definitely made me respect this industry much more than I have in the past. I was also able to try some of the signature blends that Doka makes and although I am not a coffee connoisseur, this coffee was definitely better than a typical cup that I would get in the United States. Overall, I certainly have a newfound appreciation for coffee and will think of this process every time I drink my morning joe.