As a tourist, I love love love Café Britt. While we visited their headquarters, I learned that they have different marketing startegies towards Ticos and tourists because most Ticos don’t drink Café Britt’s coffee. Ticos view the coffee and brand as more touristy and gourmet rather than a local quality coffee. With that in mind, Ticos tend to gravitate towards other brands whenever they visit their local shops or choose to make coffee at home, instead they buy Café Britt as gifts but not for their own functional purposes. If I had to guess what Café Britt’s most popular product is, I would say their coffee tours and souvenirs, because many locals do not buy their coffee and the brand is mostly local so they might not be generating a lot of revenue from the coffee itself. I feel like tourists are more likely to buy souvenirs that they can take home and give to others as cute gifts rather than something actually functional.
In the supply chain, DOKA is a coffee producer because they are involved in picking, growing, cleaning, and drying the coffee beans and after this process, they package the coffee and ship it out to companies such as Café Britt. Café Britt is an example of a distributor of coffee as their company is in charge of the roasting and branding process. Café Britt is concerned with creating the different roasts and flavors of the coffee and marketing it in relation to their brand. They also have several brands involving coffee shops and bakeries where they provide various coffee tutorials for your regular tourists or locals.
In relation to design, Café Britt implements various intricate marketing tactics to get the consumer’s attention and money of course. To ensure their financial success in the competitive world of coffee, they’ve started to expand into nearby countries like Chile, Peru, and Mexico. But they do this with a twist. Café Britt makes sure to send one of their employees to the country of choice and research the culture for 6 months. That way, they can adapt their marketing and product design to said country. They try to focus on aspects of the country to create a sense of place for the locals when purchasing Café Britt’s products. Their goal is to create a reputation of quality, local coffee that locals and tourists alike want to purchase and consume. For instance, on the packaging in Peru, they will use landmarks well known in Peru versus anything related to Costa Rica (even though that is where the headquarters are located). I agree with this approach, and think that it is a very smart way of doing business and attracting customers in different environments. If I were apart of their team, I’d also look into trying to expand more abroad in places like Canada and the States, as there is a very large coffee culture presence. I think that if advertised correctly and effectively as quality coffee, their brand would do very well.
