September 2010 Coffee News

-Meeting New Customers
-A Family on Bikes
-History of Coffee and other new links

It's a cool windy day here in Minnesota. That, along with getting our kids ready for school next week and several emails from schools wanting to start up coffee fundraisers again, make it clear that summer is coming to an end. It is a good time to reflect on our coffee experiences this summer and look forward to what is in store for the fall.

Meeting New Customers
Typically coffee drinking slows down a bit in the heat of summer, school fundraisers are on hold, and our sales run a bit flat. That was somewhat true this year as well, but we were pleased to continue to add 4-5 new customers each month to our monthly delivery route throughout the summer and now have over 130 home deliveries plus 50 consistent mail customers each month.

Word of mouth has been our best source of new customers, but we have also been fortunate to have articles written about us like the one in The Brief last month and we always enjoy meeting new people at events. On August 4, we participated in the market day at La Semana, a popular cultural camp for families with children from Latin America. On August 22, we spent a lovely day at the Homegrown Experience on Nicollet Island in Minneapolis offering brewed samples of our coffee. (You can see pictures of us at the event. Click on the Photo link. We're in the very first photo and again in the third row, second to last photo.)

Family on Bikes Goes through Honduras
We always meet a lot of interesting people when we set up our coffee display. We thought we'd share one particular new connection. At the Homegrown Experience, we met a woman whose brother and family are biking from Alaska to Argentina! They are writing a blog at www.familyonbikes.org and although they are in Bolivia now, they wrote about their experiences passing through Honduras last April and May 2009. You can see pictures and read about their experiences of Holy Week in Omoa, on the beach in Utila, staying at a center for street kids in Comayagua, climbing the hills on their bikes (I can't imagine!) near Tegucigalpa, and much more. What an adventure!

Links to the History of Coffee and more
Last month, we highlighted coffee recipes on our newly updated Links page. This month we've added additional links to National Geographic's extensive exploration of the history and culture of coffee and to the Coffee Research association. Check out a simple animation of how coffee beans develop to see what is happening right now on the coffee farm with next year's coffee crop. (We invite you to share your favorite coffee websites with us.) Happy Fall!