Selling coffee the way they do is tough. I had a friend that wanted to inport coffee into the U.S. he went to Guatemala to meet with a farmer that won best coffee in the world 2 or 3 times, then I had meetings with his son to close a deal.
Some issues to deal with:
- even though Guatemala is tropical, they don't produce coffee year round, so you have to bring coffee from other parts of the world.
- there is a chance the crop gets f*cked. Better have a backup.
- Roasting is big. Either roast and sell right away, freeze it, or roast and take a while to sell. The longer you wait to sell it, the more the true flavor deteriorates. I would imagine the coffee is mixed in such a way so after a certain number of days it tastes the way they want to. Maybe?
So, the solution would have been to either have seasonal coffee offerings or mix coffee from different plantations/countries to achieve a year round uniform flavor (which sounds like a major PITA).
At the quantities they bring, you need to roast all that stuff right away and package it, which means it will spend days or weeks in a warehouse or shelf before consumed.
After doing a ton of additional research, including contacting exporting companies (it is amazing how hard it is to find a company that exports OUT of certain countries), I told him it was a bad idea. What put the final nail on the coffin was the roasting part. All the independent places in MA were owned by a bunch of hippies, setting up the roasting was not an option, it was cheaper to pay someone.
and she looked at us.
