The Compañeros Café Project
In 2005 the nonprofit Compañeros Cafe project began in earnest with a cash donation of $5,000 from the Knuth family and an additional $885 from the Vermont chapter of Partners of The Americas. These funds enabled an initial purchase in March 2005 of 13 bags (150 lbs apiece) or about 1, 950 pounds of certified organic green coffee from the COFEACOMA farmer’s cooperative in Honduras, Central America.
Mané Alvez of Vermont Artisan Coffee and Tea and Coffee Labs International offered to store our coffee at his climate-controlled facility for no charge. He has performed quality tests of the coffee for us as well. These were conducted through his Coffee Labs International business. He graded our coffee and gave us instructions as to how to improve the quality through processing changes in Honduras. Last year the president of the Co-op, Carlos Galvez was in Vermont and trained under Mané. He has taken the information we have gathered back to Honduras and is working with the farmers in the Co-op to improve the processing quality.
After the initial purchase the coffee was shipped from Honduras via a shared shipping container to Miami. In Miami the coffee in the shipping container was divided up among three groups sharing space in the container and shipped to its respective destinations. Our coffee was shipped to Virginia with the Honduras Coffee Company’s shipment. From Virginia the coffee was palletized and shipped directly to Vermont Artisan Coffee and Tea where it was stored and eventually roasted by Mané Alvez.
A note here that in roasting coffee there is a general loss of weight equal to about 20% of total weight. Because of this loss we must keep in mind that the initial purchase of 1,950 pounds of green coffee roughly equals 1,560 pounds of roasted coffee.
Kendra and I were both very excited to roast and begin selling some coffee on our own. Initially we roasted a couple hundred pounds with Mané and his crew at VT Artisan. This was when we began to take action on our sales model. We decided that any coffee we sold would be at $10 a pound and that all of these monies would go directly back into our coffee project account. Kendra and I still sell coffee on our own for this price with all proceeds being put back into the accounts, but selling coffee in this manner would not enable us to divest ourselves of the nearly 2,000 pounds of green coffee we had purchased.
From the beginning of this process Kendra and I knew that we would need to find alternate ways to sell the quantity of coffee we were planning on purchasing. Kendra had had great success selling small amounts of coffee in previous years as fundraisers for student trips to Honduras and she now committed her South Burlington High School students to selling several hundred pounds as a fundraiser for a trip to the Dominican Republic. This model seemed to work well and we hoped to expand our sales by finding other groups interested in conducting fundraising activities with the Honduran coffee. We decided that for the coffee sales fundraiser we would sell roasted, bagged, and labeled coffee to groups for $7 per pound with a suggested resale of $10 per pound. This would enable the groups and our project to each capture a margin of profit.
This year we were able to contract out with a few groups that held a genuine interest in selling the Honduras coffee as a fundraiser for their student learning initiatives. Kendra and I both were able to connect with some teachers other area high schools (BFA St. Albans High School and CVU High School) that were taking student groups to Central America as part of separate service learning experiences. We also contracted with a local group of Alternative Spring Break students from the University of Vermont that I am bringing to Honduras for a weeklong service learning project.
In addition to the groups we have already contracted with, there are a handful of other groups we have met with that are potential bulk purchasers for next year. These include the Vermont Student Assistance Corporation (VSAC), the organization responsible for funding VT student loans for the state, a local chapter of Upward Bound, and a local youth leadership development non-profit.
This summer we were also able to participate in the annual Flynn Center: Fine Wine and Food Expo held at the esteemed Shelburne Farms Stagecoach barn. This amazing marketing opportunity allowed Kendra and I the chance to mix with local restaurant owners and influential businesspersons from the community while showcasing our unique, non-profit fundraising activity. We hope to utilize some of the contacts from this event in the next year and are looking forward to being invited back to the event next summer.
2006 and Next Steps:
In addition to the sale of coffee through our personal efforts and the bulk sales to school groups for fundraising, Kendra and I both have sold limited amounts of coffee in a local restaurant and a pharmacy. At this time we are beginning to plan out a more comprehensive sales strategy for local stores that will include signage and displays for the coffee. Through some conversations with local businesses, including coffee shops, and natural food stores it is apparent that next year we will be able to successfully begin placing our Honduran coffee in some retail sites. In this model we may or may not have to pay a portion of these sales to the establishments. Many establishments in this area are willing to support this type of project with their own goodwill. We may also arrange to provide a tax-exempt deduction to these stores for a portion of the sale price that they allow us to keep.
We would also like to pursue partnering with local restaurants to serve limited runs of our coffee in the cup and then capturing a portion of those sales for the fundraiser. Pounds of coffee might also be sold in these restaurants.