Our adventure today included a beautiful trip to Cafe Britt, and a quick dance lesson this afternoon. Britt is large coffee distributer in Costa Rica and to some countries around the world. Many many many travelers take Britt coffee, chocolates, and souvenirs back home with them. Britt is under a bigger company called Morpho Travel Experience. Contrary to Hacienda Doka, Britt does not grow their own coffee, they source it from other farmers and then roast the beans to their liking. One of the most interesting things I learned about Britt was that they don’t sell the same coffee or souvenirs in every country. They use the coffee beans from the country they are in to make the coffee to sell in that specific country. They don’t use Costa Rican beans everywhere. I thought this was interesting because many multi-national companies sell the same things, or they advertise the same kinds of foods. Britt is considered a multi-local company, meaning it is in many different countries but sell things local to that country. Even though, I don’t have a knack for business, I still find this incredibly impressive.

An important aspect for Britt is the sustainability. As I went through the tour I wondered how they keep these roasted beans fresh to keep the quality high. I learned that they roast to order, meaning once a specific order comes in they will do that roast. This helps eliminate the time fresh roasted coffee beans are waiting to be used. To continue, I also wondered how they can make the packaging and delivery of the coffee sustainable. After my team asked a few questions to our speaker, we learned that the packaging is hard to make biodegradable because the chemicals will seep into the coffee and mess up the aroma. Of course Britt has solved part of this problem, if people bring used coffee packages back they can be used for construction materials!

After we had lunch and lots of coffee at Cafe Britt we traveled to Universidad Latina de Costa Rica for some much need dance lessons! We learned how to Salsa, Bachata, and Merengue. A fun fact I learned while dancing was that Salsa was actually created in the United States. This is because many immigrants wanted to have a cultural dance, so many influences turned into one big “salsa” dance.