Today in Costa Rica featured a trip to Café Britt, a coffee roasting, packaging, and selling company. Despite being a local coffee producer, Café Britt is not a popular coffee brand for ticos. In fact, in Costa Rica, the highest selling Café Britt product is actually chocolate. I think this is because Café Britt targets their marketing towards tourists by appealing to the gourmet ideology. This however does not register with locals because Costa Rican coffee is a commonality in their everyday lives.
Café Britt occupies a few positions on the coffee supply chain. Café Britt does not produce coffee plants, but rather purchases coffee harvests from local coffee growers. Café Britt takes the coffee, roasts it, blends it to produce specific flavors, and sells it under the company name. Café Britt differs from Doka in a couple significant ways. First, Doka grows and harvests its own coffee, while Café Britt purchases already grown and harvested coffee from local coffee plantations. Moreover, Doka sells its coffee in bulk to other companies who then take it, roast it, blend it, and sell it. Café Britt on the other hand does all of this itself and markets/sells coffee to consumers under the Café Britt name.
My group topic for the trip is to analyze the way that companies market and design their coffee for sale. In the instance of Café Britt, the design and marketing of their product is fundamental to the financial success of the company. Most of the Café Britt brand revolves around the quality and selectiveness of their products. They choose to market their coffee as gourmet to make customers feel they are receiving an original, high-end product. Also, Café Britt adjusts the design of their products to appeal to different demographics. For instance, Café Britt products sold in different countries have monuments, landscapes, and features on their packaging that are specific to the area. This gives customers of Café Britt a sense of comfort with the product that ultimately influences their purchasing of it.
Overall, Café Britt occupies a very important part of the coffee production chain. Although Café Britt products are not incredibly popular with local tacos, I find their marketing and design strategies to be very interesting and effective. Associating with the gourmet brand gives their products a sense of value and originality that appeals to consumers. Adapting their branding and design to fit specific demographics also seems very effective. I would not change the design strategies employed by Café Britt.
