Waking up bright and early on this long day was probably not the best idea. Our excursion for today started with coffee tour numero dos this time at “Cafe Britt. The tour guides were hilarious and we had a nice lunch. Then we headed over to the Universidad Latina de Costa Rica where we had a lecture on tropical agriculture where we had a nice speaker, but not a very nice fire alarm system. The fire alarms constantly started going off in the middle of the lecture. We also witnessed our first Costa Rican thunderstorm, they are extremely loud. Then finally we ended off with some dance lessons. I was pretty bad. I was also wearing jeans and polo because I thought it was “drip”, the only thing I was dripping was sweat.
Many tourists are fans of Café Britt, but the locals are not too fond of drinking it. It may be because the coffee is too expensive. Café Britt knows that its customers are mainly tourists, so upscaling their prices would be fine for the tourists but not the Ticos. It could also be because Costa Rica sends out their higher quality coffee to other countries and keeps their “poorer” quality for the drinkers in Costa Rica. Maybe this discrepancy is enough for the coffee to not be worth it anymore for the locals. Considering that Café Britt’s main source of revenue is tourism and e-commerce, it makes sense that Ticos would prefer it less because of the price.
Coffee not being Café Britt’s most popular product is shocking to me. I thought that they were more about coffee than anything else because of the tour and the name “Café Britt.” So what do I think is the most popular item? It can be either its chocolates or tourism because of the company’s high quality chocolates. Chocolate was given to us and we had many opportunities to get chocolate even during the tour of the coffee plantation. The gift shop was also filled with chocolate. As for tourism, I assume many people come to visit the locations and make a lot of money that way. But I do not think that the popularity for tourism is greater than chocolates as they are more accessible for more people.
The Doka coffee is more on the earlier side of the supply chain. They focus on the earlier processes and how coffee is grown. They are involved in the cultivation or start of the growth of coffee beans. While Café Britt is towards the end of the supply chain. After the coffee is roasted, they make sure that the coffee’s enemies light, oxygen, and water are blocked out using packaging cooling chambers. They focus on the roasting, brewing, and process until it gets to your sweet cup of joe.
Café Britt has many distribution centers in the entire world. For example, one of them is located in Florida. These distribution centers help gain revenue through retail. Thinking about the streamline of its distribution process, it can get e-commerce orders quicker for places near that distribution center than it can without. In my opinion, it is a fine idea to have many distribution stations around the world. However, as Roberto Lopez said, it is tough for them to get through some of the barriers for entry for many countries. If they can get past these humps, having more distribution centers will help them.
