September Coffee News

The news from the coffee farm is that Guillermo's brother Abilio has been working on a mini-hydroelectric project. For years we have talked about harnessing the water power of the nearby Rio Negro (a small but quickly moving stream that flows through the farm) by channeling water through pipes to fall onto a small turbine connected to a small generator. Finally, this project is moving forward and the family looks forward to adding a few light bulbs to the house and perhaps the "luxury" of refrigeration.

On-line buying

At a different level of technology advancement, we have finally, finally entered the world of on-line commerce. The VFC website -- www.vfamilycoffee.com -- now accepts credit card orders! In the next month, we also hope to add a feature for our regular monthly customers to pay on-line too, or if you wish, to enable us to charge your regular orders to your credit card. Let us know if you would be interested in this convenience.

Walk for Justice and Stewardship
On September 16, Cathy will have the opportunity to participate in the Walk for Justice on behalf of Land Stewardship Project. She'll walk with 2000 other walkers representing over 120 progressive organizations from around the area. Her team is walking to raise funds to support Land Stewardship Project's work for sustainable farming and healthy local food. (Visit www.landstewardshipproject.org for more about this effective organization.) To learn more about the walk, or to make a donation visit her personal walk page or www.walkforjustice.kintera.org/lsp.

Fair Trade Part 3: Transparency and Accountability
Another part of accountability and transparency has to do with being open about the flow of money. Last month we promised a break down on the costs that go into a typical bag of coffee - so here they are. We think it is only fair that if we claim to offer "fair trade" coffee, you know how your money is spent.

We sell most of our coffee in 12 oz bags for $8.00 so we will use that for our breakdown.

A typical 12 oz bag of roasted coffee uses about 1 lb of green unroasted coffee (the roasting burns off some of the moisture in the bean) for which we pay our family member who grew it $2.50. (They use this to pay their workers to harvest the coffee and keep the fields clean of weeds, to pay for and transport organic fertilizers, to pay for a processor to clean and dry the coffee, to buy bags, and to invest back in the farm with new coffee plants -- with hopefully a bit left for family expenses as well).

The coffee travels by boat from Honduras to Miami and then by truck to Minnesota. In 2007, this cost us $.26 per pound for transportation and customs.

We pay our roaster (and label printer) $1.22 per 12 oz bag for roasting, packaging and labeling.

Beyond that, we have all of the other additional expenses of running a business: computers and office supplies, telephone and website service, some minimal marketing expenses and rent for storing our roasted coffee in a small store room. For home deliveries, we have the extra cost of gas and miles on our car. For mail orders, we offer a 10% discount for monthly subscriptions. For credit card purchases, we are charged .30 per transaction plus 2.9%. For our wholesale and fundraiser customers, we charge $6.00 per 12 oz bag ($4.00 per bag goes back to the fundraiser recipients).

So far we have paid ourselves for our time only by purchasing occasional plane tickets to Honduras (and of course unlimited free coffee). Depending on sales, our hope is to start paying ourselves a modest amount in the coming year.

We were fortunate to have the chance to work with a couple of graduate students from the Carlson School of Management a year ago who helped us analyze some of this financial data. Their recommendation at the time was that we needed to raise our prices. We are considering increasing the regular price of our 12 oz bag to $8.25 with perhaps a slight change to wholesale and fundraiser prices as well. But we'd welcome input from you our customers as well. What do you think?

We are grateful for your regular purchases and your input. Thank you.