Today we toured Café Britt, a coffee roasting plant in the middle of Heredia, aswell as learned how to dance in Salsa and Bachata. The coffee plant was awesome; we got to try around 10 different beans and blends while learning about what goes in to picking and roasting coffee. Our guide explained how the official tasting process works, then a presenter explained the business model and the story of the company. After coming home from lunch, we went to the University for our dance class. It was pretty fun dispite being forced to touch a man.
Durring our Café Britt tour, we learned that the founder of the business was an American who saw the potential for a coffee market in Costa Rica. However, there were laws in place that prevented Costa Ricans from keeping the high quality coffee they produced. The founder worked with Costa Ricans to lobby the government and change these laws, allowing him to be one of the first producers in the market. For changing unjust laws alone, I think that Café Britt lifts up Costa Rican culture (although all drip coffee it very watered down).
Their current business model also reinforces Café Britt’s support for Costa Ricans through their commitment to being carbon neutral. They recently developed a team with the specific task of analyzing the number of people they employ and how much carbon thier machines produce, weighing that against the number of coffee trees they have planted, then deciding on the necessary steps that need to be taken to offset the remaining carbon. They also employ Costa Ricans; this company is not a pocket of Americans in the middle of the country, most of the most important people to this company are locals, further uplifting the Costa Rican sociaty and economy.
