July 2012 Coffee News

-Harnessing the Power of the River
-Updated Web Presence
-Buy Local - Share Local this Summer!
-Keurig Cups

Harnessing the Power of the River
With massive power outages in the news, it seems timely that our email this month focuses on the mini-hydroelectric turbine that is providing clean reliable energy to the coffee farm. Our Minnesota Peace Corp friend, Gabe Sidman, was back in Honduras in June and sent us a report. It sounds like Guillermo's brother Avilio had Gabe rolling in laughter again, telling stories from the Fall of 1997 when he visited us here in Minnesota and spent several days with a weed-eater while working a landscaping crew with Guillermo. Avilio also tells hilarious stories of the many hours he has spent getting wet trying to figure out how to channel the power of the river to create electricty for the farm. After many years of trial and error and advice from different sources, a mini-hydroelectric project now provides 5000 watts of electricity servicing several farm houses and the Rio Negro school and church, powering 50 lights, three refrigerators and two televisions completely off the grid.

It was great to hear from Gabe that his friend Jeff is doing his doctoral thesis about these microturbines in Rio Negro. Jeff's project is looking at the effect of the microturbines on the development of the town. He wants to see who has turbines, why those particular people have the turbines, and how they have affected the lives of those people. While they were visiting, they went around to almost all the houses in the township to do a survey of the people who don't have turbines, to see what factors are stopping them. Jeff also hopes to use GIS mapping software to determine some areas of the town that would be ideal spots for turbines that could benefit the entire community.

To see photos of Avilio's turbine, with some basic explanation of how it works, visit our new Facebook page at: http://www.facebook.com/VelasquezFamilyCoffee. And while you are there, make sure to "like" us to get our future posts and share Velasquez Family Coffee with your friends.

Updated Web Presence! 
In addition to the new VFC Facebook page, our website shopping cart was upgraded this month. There are two changes that we are very excited about: 1) Credit card purchases are no longer run through PayPal which lowers our processing costs and hopefully makes things less confusing than the old system. 2) Website orders within our free home delivery area are no longer charged postage based on your zipcode. So you can feel free to use our website if you wish to place delivery orders and pay for them too. Now that these upgrades are complete, we'll be spending the next few months expanding our internet presence. Pass on your suggestions for websites or online directories where we should be linked or listed.

By the way, our switch to a new credit card merchant account (that made the above changes possible) also allows us to accept American Express in addition to Visa, Mastercard and Discover. Let us know if you'd like to use any of these to pay for your coffee orders.

Buy Local -- Share Local this Summer
This past month, we became a member of the Twin Cities Metro Independent Business Alliance and proudly join the many fine businesses in our community that are working to build a strong local economy. July is Independent Business month. Visit buylocaltwincities.com to find and support local businesses and enter a contest to win $1,250 in gift cards.

As you chat with your neighbors this summer and in preparation for any neighborhood block parties coming up on National Night August 7th, we want to make it easy for you to share your favorite coffee source. Let us know if we can bring business cards or flyers with your coffee to pass on to your neighbors. We'd love to expand our drops sites in your area.

Keurig cups anyone? 
Do you use a Keurig coffee machine to make single servings of coffee? You can use our coffee in a Keurig machine if you purchase a "K-Cup" filter and basket. For even more convenience, our roaster can package Velasquez Family Coffee in single use packets that can be used in the Keurig basket. We have several people who are interested, but we need to have a minimum of 50 lbs to make this happen. This works out to 15 cases of 150/pods each that would sell for $75/case (50 cents per pod or $12.50 per box of 25). Please let us know if you would be interested in purchasing Velasquez Family Coffee in this way. We'll get you a sample pod to try it out. If we have enough interest to sell 15 cases, we'll move ahead to offer this in future months.