June 2010 Coffee News

-Coffee Fest
-Coffee Exporting
-Tropical Storm Agatha
-Honduras in the World Cup!

We just got back from Coffee Fest, a specialty coffee trade show being held at the Minneapolis Convention Center. This was our first experience at a coffee industry expo like this and we want to tell you all about it. We also have brief updates on our coffee importing process and tropical storm Agatha that hit Central America this past week. Oh and how can we forget -- Honduras will be playing in the World Cup, starting on June 16th -- more details below.

Coffee Fest
As we finalize this email, we're still a bit jittery from all of the coffee samples we were offered today and mentally overloaded from the workshops we attended and all the trade show vendors we talked with. While the show was most relevant for people running coffee shops, with workshops on making lattes and how to design your cafe, and companies selling everything from smoothies to espresso machines, there were a few things that were interesting for us as well. We connected with vendors selling coffee bags, coffee importers and roasters, consultants offering merchant credit card services and others who were explaning how to control cost of goods as a key to profitability (which sounds MUCH harder to do in a coffee shop). We learned of a coffee company that sells carbon offsets by planting trees in Ecuador (hmm..interesting idea for the future). And we connected with trade groups like the Specialty Coffee Association of America. We're sure to be paging through all of the materials we picked up for weeks to come

Coffee Exporting Process Moving Slowly
We reported last month that we are learning all of the logistics involved in importing our coffee ourselves (rather than working through a cousin as we have done in the past). The status of our efforts can be summarized quickly -- our 2010 coffee is still in Honduras! Never fear, there are no problems, just the paperwork on the Honduras side of things is going slowly. The coffee is all processed and bagged and ready to be loaded into a standard 20 foot shipping container when all of the Honduras exporting steps are complete. Then, as we understand the plan, it will be shipped from Puerto Cortez, Honduras to Norfolk, Virgina, where the container will be loaded onto a train that will deliver it to a warehouse in Minneapolis. This part of the journey is estimated to take around 20 days. At that point the coffee will be "off-loaded" to a truck to be delivered to its final destination at our roaster in Le Center, Minnesota. (Well, not exactly final destination -- as eventually it will be roasted per our instructions and trucked to us in St. Paul a few days before we ultimately get it to you.)

Tropical Storm Agatha
You may have heard reports of the storm that slammed into Central America last Saturday. Most of the worst destruction was felt by the people of Guatamala (perhaps you saw the images of the dramatic sink hole that formed in Guatamala City). Honduras experienced flooding from the heavy rains as well, but we are happy to report that our family members are doing just fine. Sadly, as usual, the poorest citizens of these countries were impacted the hardest. Storms like these expose many vulnerabilities reports the Inter Press Service.

Honduras in the World Cup
Our boys have been talking about the World Cup for months, ever since Honduras made it through the difficult qualifying process -- only the second time ever (the last time in 1982). Honduras' first game will be played against Chili on June 16. (See the complete schedule here. And an explanation of the World Cup format here.) You can be sure, Hondurans everywhere (including us) will be watching and cheering on their underdog team, hoping that success in South Africa this next month will heal some of the bad feelings lingering from Honduras' recent political troubles. Time magazine online asks: Can Soccer's World Cup Save Honduras? We hope it can.