The coffee business in Costa Rica has been providing economic stability to the country for a long time. Not only with the jobs that it provides, but it has also opened up a new level or tourism within the country. More and more people are constantly finding their way to Costa Rica to find out what the coffee business is, how it works, and what it has to offer. At Cafe Rey, a local coffee roaster we visited today, the exporter manager discussed the fact that many families were dependent on the business. He told us that every time we drink a cup of coffee we should remember at least 350 families are behind that cup of coffee.
The popular belief is that all of the "good" coffee is usually exported outside of Costa Rica, however Cafe Rey prides themselves in providing high quality coffee to Costa Ricans. Cafe Rey is a local coffee roaster in San Jose that mostly caters to Ticos. They don't produce any coffee beans, they instead buy coffee beans from farmers in different regions of San Jose. Cafe Rey has a variety of blends and something signature to the company is the fact that they mix in sugar when they are roasting their coffee beans. Contrary to Cafe Rey's statements, the majority of coffee farmers that we have visited have said that they export most of their high-quality coffee outside of Costa Rica, leaving Ticos with the low-quality coffee beans. So, it seems like Cafe Rey must have a great relationship set up with their supplier.
I'm not a fair judge of whether the quality is good enough for Ticos, I mean you're talking about a person that needs sugar and milk in her coffee. It is hard to define coffee that is good because everyone has a different sense of what that means. According to Gabby at Dota yesterday, your able to taste the accents on good coffee, you can taste some underlying smell like a horse stable, nuts, or bagels, but to someone else this would be different. Like coffee, Ticos can pull the short hand on fruits like pineapple and mango as well. I think in this instance it would be much easier to tell if the fruit is good quality or not. In this case I'd argue that Ticos deserve and should expect a higher quality of fruit. The fruits are produced in their country, using their resources. It can't possibly be fair that they don't get access to a portion of some of the highest- quality fruits.
Part of Cafe Rey's mills and their
freshly roasted coffee beans
This blog entry was intriguing for me to read because I think it's cool how you got culture forward in this segment. It was also interesting to see how the actual trade and business of coffee beans function with and how they go about transactions.
ReplyDelete