Today we took a tour of Café Britt to see the roasting and packaging side of the coffee industry rather than the planting and picking and sorting that we saw at the Doka Estate. Britt is a premium coffee brand that sells internationally via e-commerce or in famous restaurants like Legal Seafoods.

Like all premium coffee, tourists love Café Britt, but most Ticos don’t drink it. The reason is simple: in the past, Costa Ricans did not roast coffee commercially in the country as it was illegal. The only coffee Costa Ricans could have was boiled “green beans” and bad quality and funky taste. Overall the coffee they had was subpar. So, like most countries, the culture around coffee drinking never changed: a cup is a cup. If a cup is a cup why spend 12 dollars on a bag of Britt when you can get a low-quality two-dollar bag.

Somehow coffee isn’t Café Britt’s biggest export. Café Britt is part of a cooperative so I think potentially milk is the largest export of the large corporation under the Iced-Café Britt company because the amount of milk in drinks is much more than the amount of coffee beans in said drinks.

What Café Britt does that contributes to its financial success as it relates to my team’s topic, delivery, is there is no middleman most of the time. After they get the dry coffee beans they control the rest of the progress through vertical integration by sending their products to their locations with their baristas. This approach is certainly the most lucrative; however, what I would do differently (on a different point) is sell cheaper t-shirts. Thirty-one dollars is much too expensive and t-shirts are free marketing.