International Coffee Broker

There is an orphanage in Honduras that several of the folks from our church help out with. We sent a team down last week with a whole 18-wheeler size trailer full of supplies (including an x-ray machine for a local hospital there, several thousand bottles of antibiotics and 100 wheelchairs - among other things). Very cool.

My one request of the team - find me some good coffee to bring back. But, I don't want roasted coffee that will go stale in a couple of weeks - I want green coffee, still in the burlap sack (I roast my own coffee). And, it needs to be good quality, high grown Arabica beans. No problem, right?

They quickly informed me that I would need to tell them where to go and who to talk to get those beans. This proved to be much more difficult than I thought it would be.

I should have realized that stateside coffee wholesalers would not be too eager to tell people like me where to get good quality coffee. (Current "fair trade" price is about $1.39/lb - which means market driven, non fair-trade coffee has to be around $1/lb or less. And, considering the fact that coffee roasting is not a terribly difficult or expensive art - it is amazing that the same $1/lb coffee is being sold for $12 -$16/lb or $1.50-$4/cup in coffee shops. No wonder Starbucks is making a killing.) That being said, I was very much on my own.

I found a promising Honduran Fair Trade Coffee Cooperative web site. Too bad it was all in Spanish (and Google translator wouldn't work). My four years of Spanish in middle school and high school did me no good - what a waste. For a few brief moments I tried to muster my courage to make the international call to the phone number on the web site. But, I just knew someone would answer and say, "hola, como estas?" - and I would be completely lost. I wrote down the phone number and the address and gave it to our team. "Call them" I said. It was the best I could do.

One of the team members called me yesterday to tell me they couldn't get a hold of anyone at that number. On to plan "B". They said they talked to someone who knows someone, who knows someone, who... could connect them to a grower up in the mountains. Who knows what they will get. Who knows if they will be able to get the beans past customs. They might have to "smuggle" it. They'll probably get arrested. I'll probably get arrested. You'll probably see me on the news.

All I wanted was coffee.