Today we visited Cafe Britt and spent some time learning about how they roast their coffee. While most Ticos do not drink coffee from the company, travelers like us enjoy their products mainly because their advertising and business efforts are mostly targeted towards tourists. Cafe Britt does not even have any wet mills – rather, they focus on the roasting process. They buy green coffee, store it, and only roast per order. This is different from Doka, which we visited yesterday, as Doka has their own plantation where they actually pick and process the coffee cherries in the wet mills. Ironically, Cafe Britt now runs Doka’s coffee tour. Each tour provides a different aspect, as the Doka tour is more informative and goes into detail about the lengthy and tedious process of turning a coffee cherry into the roasted bean we get in stores, while Cafe Britt gave more of a performance and talked about the supply chain aspect of the business as well as the marketing of their products in various countries.

Doka focuses on making the coffee itself, but I found it interesting how Cafe Britt focuses on roasting coffee per order and targeting the tourist market by having their coffee at hotels, stores at the airport, and a customized tour experience. Instead of the traditional tour guides, they have actors who give performances that provide a more unique and engaging presentation experience. Interestingly, coffee is not Cafe Britt’s most popular product. I think their main source of revenue is tourism, thanks to their personalized tour. An additional source of revenue that is similar is e-commerce. In 1996 Cafe Britt launched their website cafebritt.com where customers can easily place their orders online, from wherever they are. This revolutionized Cafe Britt’s place in the Costa Rican coffee industry because of the easy accessibility to tourists, their target market segment. Also, while on the tour I enjoyed trying the different types of coffee and learning about how each type of roast is crafted and produced.

Regarding my field project of planning, I was interested to hear how Cafe Britt is already planning ahead to include more sustainability practices into the business, including the next challenge of creating biodegradable capsules instead of plastic. While this may be a time consuming and expensive task, it was impressive to hear how Cafe Britt is continuously looking for ways to make the company more sustainable, in addition to the recycling practices that are already put into place such as reusing the parchment that covers the coffee beans for paper. Overall, I enjoyed learning about the various aspects of the coffee making process through both the Doka and Cafe Britt tours and am looking forward to our next adventure as we shift gears and head to Monteverde tomorrow.