An Honestly Slow Start

I suppose purchasing World Trader Coffee was somewhat selfish. When this opportunity was presented to us our first thought was; “Great! We get to have unlimited access to the best coffee in the world at the cheapest prices we’ve ever had available!” As we began improving the business side of things (better bags, logo, brand, website etc.), and we started to look at pricing the actual coffee for all of our customers, we realized it is very difficult to keep the prices reasonable. Since this is not our main source of income, we are able to look at it the same way we look at anything we are going to buy. What is this product worth to us? 

With that mindset, we set prices to cover our costs for getting the coffee to the United States, roasted, bagged and shipped to you while still being able to pay for all of the other costs of running a business (website, marketing, etc.). With all that said, we know people are thinking: “These prices are ridiculous, there’s just no way coffee should be this expensive!” We know it because we said the same thing before taking over this business. Well, it turns out coffee is very expensive. We had no idea how expensive coffee was, but the market is ever growing and as the demand continues to rise, the cost of a limited resource like coffee rises as well. 

As we thought about the worth of coffee, we had to realize that gourmet Arabica coffee has much more quality, to begin with, especially when you add in the small-batch roasting process. It is not nearly comparable to the stale, Robusta blended, grocery-store-shelf coffee. It is like trying to compare an organic, grass-fed, dry aged beef to the standard beef our country has accepted for so many years. Our most difficult challenge seems to be letting people know about the poor quality of coffee we are all used to, mostly because we are out of touch with the social media world.

When you move every three years it is very hard for friends and family to stay in touch. Emailing pictures on a regular basis was tedious at best. We initially got onto Facebook around 2006 while serving in the military so that our friends and families could see what was going on in our lives. Once we were back in the States and slowing down on our moves, we were able to visit more with friends and family and we just didn’t really have a need to stay on Facebook. So, around 2013 we got off of social media altogether. Fast-forward to 2018 and we now have an E-commerce business in a world that uses social media for all of their marketing and customer engagement. Wow, would have been good to have continued using social media and be able to utilize a huge social network to help get the word out about this amazing coffee available for prices you won’t find anywhere else! 

In the meantime, we believe everything happens for a reason, so we are pleased to provide our coffee to everyone we can and hope the word gets out however fast it can. We donate coffee to our church every week so those closest to us can enjoy it. We give it to friends and family because when you find something truly great you share it! And, friends don’t let friends drink terrible coffee.

Please comment (or email us at support@worldtradercoffee.com) and let us know how World Trader Coffee can make this a better experience for you! We are truly open to your ideas and want to provide a forum where we can learn from each other!