Coffee Partners Matter- A Costa Rican Origin Trip
It is hard to know what is true and what is not in the specialty coffee industry. I hear the chatter and read the blogs and magazines predicting the next generation. They say people do not care about the story of coffee anymore and that they do not necessarily want the origin details of their coffee. And if I am honest, our posts about origin, producers, and coffee beans consistently receive the lowest engagement.
Maybe it is my millennial soul resisting that narrative. Maybe it is easier to believe the data than to challenge it. Or maybe we just have not learned how to tell the story in a way that invites people into it.
What we experienced in Costa Rica was not branding. It was not a marketing angle. It was not women founded and used as the next trendy label like Fair Trade or natural or green. What we experienced was relationship, legacy and intention.
Costa Rica, a country about the size of West Virginia, holds some of the most thoughtful producers I have ever met. We visited four of the five farms that are part of The Farmers Project and The National Women's Coffee Alliance, founded by Marianella, a farmer and producer herself. We also visited a major company’s farm, what Marianella described as the Disneyland of coffee. It was polished, expansive, highly systemized. Impressive. It showed what scale and capital can build.
Seeing both mattered. One model built for volume and global demand. The other built on generational land, calculated risks, and deeply personal stakes. Neither invisible. But one felt closer to the heartbeat of why we do what we do.
The detail and intention of the farmers is what caught my attention. Farming, for them, is family centric. Carrying on generational farms. Investing in the next generation not just financially, but emotionally. Children growing up on the same land their grandparents worked.
And yet, the threats are constant. Climate change forcing varietal shifts. Unpredictable weather patterns. Dependence on migrant workers. The tension between technology and agriculture. Every year carries risk.
One of my favorite aspects of this trip was watching entrepreneurs defy cultural expectations. I watched a father and grandfather advocate for his daughter and business partner, Katia, the producer of our next single origin Costa Rican coffee. Workers initially did not listen to her. Friends scoffed at the idea of a woman in charge of milling and quality control.
He stood firm.
“Who is going to take care of your farm when you are gone?! he asked them. We have seen a 30 percent increase in quality and better practices since she stepped into this role.”
Then they respected her.
Then they listened.
It was not performative. It was proven.
We learned that the prices we receive from importers often do not fully account for what farmers actually take home. After the buying process, margins can be thin. And yet we debate a higher cost bag of Costa Rican coffee without always understanding what it represents.
That higher priced coffee pays for innovation.
It pays for a family’s living wage.
It pays for a picker’s living wage.
And the list goes on…
We watched families work eight hours a day in the hot sun picking coffee cherries, earning 6 dollars per cajuela here, versus 4 or even as low as 2 in other regions. We saw producers intentionally choosing to pay higher wages. Supporting schools for the pickers’ families. Investing back into their communities.
We met a group of five friends, women producers, who wanted to do things differently. Build trust. Build ethical systems. Build sustainability on their terms. Not because it sells, but because it is right.
And that is something we want to be a part of.
We will always wrestle with the balance of making coffee accessible to our customers while honoring the real cost of producing it well. If we do not share these stories, all people see is a price. If we do share them poorly, it feels like marketing.
Standing on those farms, watching cherries being sorted by hand under the Costa Rican sun, listening to women claim space in leadership roles they fought to hold, I do not believe people do not care.
Maybe we just have not been telling it right.
I am deeply humbled and thankful for their willingness to teach us. To continue to give deeper meaning to the why and complexity behind what we all do.