...Critique of: The Coffee Crisis Abstract For years, coffee has been considered one of the most important crops widely grown in the developing world. Several countries’ economies, specifically countries in Central America and parts of Africa, are highly dependent on this crop as a source of both national income and export earnings. About 25 million people, most of whom are small-scale farmers, rely on coffee as their main source of income. For the past 15 years the coffee industry has experienced severe declines in prices that have impacted economic development in several international markets. This critique explores a case study released by the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University written on the events and contributing factors leading up to the crisis. The Coffee Crisis Quinlan, Gomez-Ibanez, and Bok provided an in depth depiction of the coffee crisis that hit the nation in the early 2000s that covered the background of coffee production, the origins of the crisis, and alternative remedies (Quinlan, Gomez-Ibanez, & Bok, 2004). The crisis led to severe hardships for coffee growers living in poor countries already struggling with poverty. A reported 25 million farmers in Latin America, Africa and Asia rely on coffee as their main source of income (Quinlan, Gomez-Ibanez, & Bok, 2004). These farmers were forced to resort to extreme measures in attempts to overcome this crisis. Some had to remove their children from school and use them as...
Words: 1398 - Pages: 6
...CafeSdoBrasil catalogue WHAT WE REALLY SELL IS COFFEE SERVICE 1. PREMIUM QUALITY COFFEE Our goal is a superb cup of coffee. We help you choose the coffee or coffees best suited to your operation. This is realistic and achievable if all the variables are taken into consideration. And there are many! Pre- ground portion packed coffee or fresh roasted whole bean. This can be further broken down into country of origin, blended, dark roasted, decaffeinated, flavoured and sustainable. Brewing a superb cup also requires that the right amount of coffee is used with your equipment to obtain the right coffee to water ratio. We want you to understand the difference quality makes so that each step moves you closer to that perfect cup. In addition to coffee we carry a full line of premium beverage related products as listed in this catalogue. 2. STORE-DOOR DELIVERY Our product is delivered to your door on a set schedule or, when you call us. Courier orders are shipped the morning after we receive them for delivery the following day. An order received by us on Monday will be received by the customer on Wednesday. 3. THE RIGHT EQUIPMENT Almost all of the coffee we sell is our small batch roasted coffee available only in whole bean. Typical installations will need one plumbed in high heat coffee brewer, one portion or retail coffee grinder and if you are doing any amount of tea volume, especially teapots, a water tower, bringing your equipment...
Words: 1820 - Pages: 8
...Rising Costs of Startbucks Coffee By Trina Howell Q1. Why is the price of Starbucks coffee rising? Please explain. Answer: There are many factors to include when considering the economic reasoning behind Starbucks raising its prices. The company, in their news release stated that their costs are going up including energy and fuel, however there is much more to it than that. The coffee beans typically used by Starbucks are Arabica beans that are grown mainly in Brazil, Vietnam and Columbia, yet emerging growers on the Ivory Coast and Ethiopia are beginning to experience higher yield crops and quality beans. The rising cost of the green beans is largely due to a decrease in the available supply due to poor crop output which has driven the cost of Arabica beans to a 13 or 14 year high. While more affordable beans like the Robust beans are frequently more in demand causing their prices to rise considerably as well. Another contributing factor is Brazil’s response to higher global pricing for Arabica beans which has been to withhold crops to push the price of beans higher, resulting in supply and demand imbalances. Add to that the increases in fuel and energy prices and the supply and demand imbalances there, in which inevitability of increases in product prices on a global scale were bound to increase as well. The cost associated with distribution alone could be seen as reason enough for the increase. Q2. What will happen to the quantity of Starbucks coffee...
Words: 802 - Pages: 4
...Tata Coffee & Starbucks Sign MoU for Strategic Alliance in India | ~ Companies to Explore Collaboration for Sourcing and Roasting Premium Coffee Beans in India; Agreement Will Support Starbucks Future Market Entry and Operations in India ~ MUMBAI, India, Jan 13, 2011 (BUSINESS WIRE) --In a significant step toward market entry in India, Starbucks Coffee Company (Nasdaq: SBUX) today signed a non-binding Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Tata Coffee Limited, one of the region's leading providers of premium arabica coffee beans. The MoU will create avenues of collaboration between the two companies for sourcing and roasting high-quality green coffee beans in Tata Coffee's Coorg, India facility. In addition, Tata and Starbucks will jointly explore the development of Starbucks retail stores in associated retail outlets and hotels.The agreement recognizes Starbucks and Tata Coffee's shared commitment to responsible business values. In accordance with the MoU, the two companies will collaborate on the promotion of responsible agronomy practices, including training for local farmers, technicians and agronomists to improve their coffee-growing and milling skills. Building on Tata's demonstrated commitment to community development, the two companies also will explore social projects to positively impact communities in coffee growing regions where Tata operates.Commenting on the announcement, R K Krishnakumar, Chairman of Tata Coffee, said, "We welcome Starbucks entry into India...
Words: 853 - Pages: 4
...monastery with accommodations for 30 monks, a retreat center for lay visitors, a Gothic church, a convent for Carmelite nuns, and a hermitage. He believed the monastery could rely on Mystic Monk Coffee operations along with donations to fund the purchase of the ranch. 2. Although Father Daniel Mary has a strategy, he does not have clear set objectives for achieving his vision. 3. He developed an execution plan that would enable Mystic Monk Coffee to minimize the effect of its cloistered monastic constraints maximize the potential of monastic opportunities, and realize his vision of buying the Irma Lake Ranch. A competitive advantage for Mystic Monk Coffee could be the variety they offer and the high quality fair trade Arabica and fair trade/organic Arabica beans. 4. Mystic Monk Coffee’s strategy is a money-maker given they satisfy the buyers wants and needs at a price customers will consider a good value. Mystic Monk Coffee’s business model is high quality coffee targeting a segment of U.S. Catholic population who drink coffee and wish to support the monastery’s mission. The high value provided and pleasing price makes the value proposition attractive to customers. The pricing tied to its customer value proposition allows for acceptable profits to Mystic Monk Coffee. 5. The strategy qualifies as a winning strategy. The strategy has an external fit and is in sync with prevailing market conditions. The company has the ability to execute the strategy in a competent manner. It...
Words: 426 - Pages: 2
...Opening Statement Broadway Café is a family owned coffee shop located in Greenville, NC . The coffee shop specializes in many different products including: coffee, tea, a full service bakery, and a homemade sandwich, soup, and salad shop. My grandfather has ran the business for 59 years using no technology this process worked up until five years ago now business is steadily declining now it is time for change. The first step to insure success is to invest in computers to store recipes, payroll, inventory, ordering, and marketing coupons. A valid website will also be helpful. So, I came up with many ways to make our family coffee shop better. Our new website is http://broadwaycaf.webstarts.com this should help us to reach a wider range of people. Our company name will also be put on popular search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing this process will make it easier for our customers to find. A suggestion page will also be added to the website to get feedback from our customers. To obtain new customers I would need to advertise and set a grand re-opening. This will allow customers to view the changes being made with products, staffing, and procedures while still keeping the environment traditional. Competitive Advantage It is very important for us to have competitive advantage because it helps us to be in a better position in the business environment. This process will allow us to have high quality good at a reasonable price for the market. We will use bargaining...
Words: 2064 - Pages: 9
...agricultural products and is the largest exporter of coffee, juices, sugar, and alcohol (Invest in Brazil, 2011). Brazilian Coffee beans are used as the base for the espresso blends. Brazil is the world’s top manufacturer of Arabica coffee, supplying over one third of world production (world barista, 2011). As South America's economic and industrial focal point, Brazil is home to well-established, cutting edge advertising agencies, with high standards and levels of resourcefulness (Overseas Digest, 2011). Coffee Cabanas is the perfect supplier because their roots can be traced back to Queen Isabel and the abolishment of slavery when the ports were opened for new immigrants. Since then, the skill of growing and roasting coffee has become an intricate part of the Coffee Cabana family and has been passed down from generation to generation (Coffee Cabana, 2011). Coffee Cabana selects beans from the Cerrado region of Brazil. The Cerrado region’s soil is consistent and the winter weather is always mild and dry during harvest season. Due to the reliability of the weather, the beans ripen all at once and are harvested on top of tarps, so that the beans never touch the soil once ripened. Coffee Cabana works directly with their farmers and the beans are 100% Arabica ~ no blends! Because Brazil is a member of the World Trade Organization it has made commitments to subscribe to the sanitary and phytosanitary agreement and to Codex Alimentarius principles. Food regulations issued at the...
Words: 664 - Pages: 3
...a design in the establishments comfortable and modern and have a presence in urban centres and try to unseat the competition. Dates that had marked the history of Starbucks also are 1992 when he entered in the stock market, and 2006 after a disproportionate growth since 2000 was the first time that the company had a small recession and so was forced to make strategic changes. SOWT ANALYSIS: Strength: • Leading retailer and roaster for brand specialty coffee in the world. • Known for providing superior products and services. • No. 7 on Fortune Magazines’s 100 best. • There was a limited number of strong competitors. • High market share and market growth. • Location and convenience. • Starbucks only purchases Premium Arabica Coffee Beans. • Store Internal Atmosphere. • The store has opened in major cities within accessible locations in the market. Weakness: • High pricing because of the quality ingredients used. • Starbucks refuse to...
Words: 506 - Pages: 3
...MBA CORE MICROECONOMICS PROJECT AN ANALYSIS OF THE COFFEE MARKET ASHWIN MURALI (I001) | ANIRUDHHA BHATOTIA (I006) | APALA RATH (I063) CONTENTS Sr. No. Topic Page No. 1. Research Question 2 2. Introduction 2 3. Industry characteristics in India 3 4. The economics of the coffee market 4 5. Findings 6 6. Conclusion 7 7. Suggestions 7 8. References 8 1 Research Question How does weather drive microeconomic forces to affect the prices of coffee? Introduction Coffee is a brewed drink prepared from roasted coffee beans, which are the seeds of "berries" from the Coffea plant. Coffee is a popular beverage and an important commodity. Tens of millions of small producers in developing countries make their living growing coffee. Over 2.25 billion cups of coffee are consumed in the world every day. Over 90% of coffee production takes place in developing countries, while consumption happens mainly in the industrialized economies. Coffee has its origins in the Horn of Africa, in the Ethiopian province of Kaffa, where in all probability the first coffee tree appeared. It’s been attested that coffee beans used to be chewed by African slaves brought to Arab countries and coffee has been cultivated in Yemen since the 15th century. Coffee was brought to Europe by Venetian traders in 1615, when hot chocolate and tea had already become fashionable. Europeans then started to cultivate coffee...
Words: 2189 - Pages: 9
...Nestle is one of the world’s most popular coffee brands, launched in Switzerland in 1938 and it is now available in over 189 countries with 5,500 cups consumed every second. (Nescafe.com) Nestle coffee is best known for its quality, varieties in tastes and aroma, convenience and different formats, “from Nescafé Classic to our newer well-being products such as Greenblend with higher levels of antioxidants.” (Nestle.com) In this paper, I will argue that Nestle coffee is a global brand that contribute to the international trade among counties and also adopt environmental sustainable policy, as well as providing somewhat fair treatment for employees. I will argue this by looking at its geographic flows and the social and environment condition as well as some of the criticism of the product. Although headquartered in Switzerland, Nescafé coffee actually originated in Brazil due to the its large supply of surplus coffee resulting from the Wall Street Crash in the 1930s. “The creation of Nestle coffee has helped thousands of Brazilian farmers avoid hardship and crop waste.” (Nestle.com) Moreover, the innovation of soluble coffee has developed a new way of making coffee simply by adding boiling water. The convenience and versatility of flavor and format has made Nestle’s instant coffee an attractive consumer product in emerging coffee markets, and has remained popular for decades. The raw material of coffee is of course---coffee beans, and coffee beans are the seeds of coffee plants...
Words: 956 - Pages: 4
...Coffee Barometer 2014 Sjoerd Panhuysen & Joost Pierrot 13 / ha India 5 mio Vietnam 22 mio bags 40 bags / ha 10 / ha Ethiopia 6 mio 7 Indonesia 13 mio bags 1 Hivos IUCN Nederland Oxfam Novib Solidaridad WWF Content 2 1 Introduction Coffee, cultivated in more than 80 countries in Central and South America, Africa and Asia, ranks among the world’s most valuable agricultural commodities. Coffee cultivation provides livelihoods for 20-25 million farming families [4]; and engages over 100 million people in its producing and processing. Smallholder coffee farmers, together with their families and rural workers produce over 70 per cent of this labour intensive crop. Women comprise half the productive workforce and play a crucial role that often goes unnoticed. However, to retain the involvement of rural youth is a challenge as they often aspire to a different future and seek employment outside the coffee sector. Historically, declining terms of trade and price volatility have plagued coffee production. This makes poverty reduction, which is essential to ensure the sustainability of the sector, both an important and difficult challenge. Figure 3 presents an overview of the main social, economic and environmental challenges for smallholders and plantation labourers. These problems at the production level are compounded by the effects of changing climatic conditions. The International Coffee Organization [9] acknowledges that the world coffee sector is facing major challenges...
Words: 2781 - Pages: 12
...significant decline in the price of coffee. This called for the gathering of the coffee producing nations to get together to determine their best course of action on how to handle this decline. A 40 year low hit the coffee industry in 2001 and continued to remain low since. That resulted in hardships for the farmers and their families, as most children were pulled from school so that they could help on the family farm. Some of the countries that were hit extremely hard created financial programs to help their farmers. Most coffee producing countries are not rich, as a result the financial programs were not able to be sustained for long. Basically there are two types of coffee, robusta and arabica. The difference is the type of flavor they have. According to the data, arabica coffee makes up about two-thirds of the total coffee produced. The coffee bean life cycle is quite long. It takes two years before a seedlings will produce fruit and then several more years before it reaches full maturity. Like most farming professions, the crop depends on that particular weather that year. The cause of the crisis is a long and distinguished list. There has been a steady price decline for the past 15 years. The consumption of coffee is barely keeping up with the growing world population. Over the last 15 years the average coffee consumption was around 4.6 kilos per person per year and in the US alone the 20% consumption saw a decline due to the rise in popularity of soda...
Words: 1280 - Pages: 6
...[pic] Coffee, Cooperation and Competition: A Comparative Study of Colombia and Vietnam Authors:[1] Adriana Roldán-Pérez Maria-Alejandra Gonzalez-Perez Pham Thu Huong Dao Ngoc Tien Research assistants (Colombia): Franz Xaver Riegler Stephanie Riegler Catalina Tabares Melissa Eusse Research assistant (Vietnam): Nguyen Thu Hang Table of contents List of figures 4 List of tables 4 Acronyms, abbreviations and definitions 6 Weights and measures 6 Abstract 7 1 Introduction 8 1.1 Research objectives 9 1.1.1 General objectives 9 1.1.2 Specific objectives 9 1.2 Research methodology 9 2 Literature review on the global value chain (GVC) of coffee 11 2.1 Theory of global value chains 11 2.1.1 Introduction to the value chain concept 11 2.1.2 Global commodity chains 12 2.1.3 Value chain analysis 13 2.1.3.1 Definition 13 2.1.3.2 Methodological aspects of value chain analysis 15 2.1.4 Governance 15 2.1.5 Barriers to entry and rent 16 2.1.6 Upgrading in value chains 16 2.2 Overview of the world coffee market 17 2.2.1 World coffee production 17 2.2.2 Production by type of coffee 18 2.2.3 Coffee producing countries 19 2.2.4 Stocks in producing countries 20 2.2.5 World coffee exports 21 2.2.6 World coffee consumption 24 2.2.7 The International Coffee Organisation and coffee prices 29 2.2.8 Mapping the global value chain of coffee 31 3 Analysis of Colombia and Vietnam’s participation in the coffee value chain 33 3.1 Vietnam’s...
Words: 28626 - Pages: 115
...Strategic Initiative Paper FIN/370 Strategic Initiative Paper Starbucks Strategic Planning Initiative Strategic initiatives are a special set of strategies that an organization sets up to help that organization reach certain goals and achievements that are set up in that strategic plan. The platform in the strategic planning initiative of the Starbucks organization is to make certain they use only high quality goods, and they treat their customers and employees with respect. Starbucks is “committed to ethically sourcing and roasting the highest quality Arabica coffee in the world” (Starbucks Corporation, 2012). Starbucks’ mission is “to inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup, and one neighborhood at a time” (Starbucks Corporation, 2012). Starbucks Corporation uses this statement as a fulfillment to their success: Under ethical sourcing the company outlines the goal that by 2015 the organization will use coffee that is only produced and obtained through the use of ethical trading and responsible growing (Starbucks Company Profile, 2011). The initiative discussed in Starbucks Annual Report says “Blair Taylor, Starbucks Chief Community Office, announced the launch of a new nonprofit corporation with a $1 million seed grant to introduce job skills, leadership and apprenticeship programs to young people across the company’s multi-billion-dollar supply chain, and further expansion of the company’s support for U.S. manufacturing through an order...
Words: 1169 - Pages: 5
...Marketing in a Global Economy Edward Walls BUS 620 Managerial Marketing Prof. Dr. Susan Sasiadek October 7, 2013 Marketing in a Global Economy Starbucks has grown from a specialty coffee roasting company based in Seattle, Washington to an international behemoth that buys, roasts and sells specialty Arabica coffee beans and coffee beverages these expensive Arabica coffee beans are the main ingredient in Starbucks American version of Italian coffee beverages like espresso, lattes and cappuccinos that many customers from other countries love. However, Italy remains to be an untapped market for Starbucks because of the likelihood of tarnishing the good name of the company while in the process of trying to satisfy the refined taste and preferences of coffee drinkers of Italy. Starbucks must definitely be mindful of the potential risk of ruining the company’s good name by trying to compete in an already flooded market in Italy that is home to 140,000 coffee cafes or bars as they are called in Italy. In Italian coffee bars the customers pays first then served and the bartenders who are dressed in white shirts and bow ties are called baristas serve up cups of espresso on a daily schedule to satisfy the local customer demand for local traditional coffee preferences over all other brands because Italy is the coffee culture capital of the world (Faris, 2012). Italian tastes and preferences differ from the northern parts of the country to the southern parts of the country....
Words: 1057 - Pages: 5
