A Short History of the Costa Rican Coffee Retention Program and the Beginning of a Specialty Coffee Marketing Strategy
Download a copy of
my paper at the link below.
I was part of the last contingent of staff at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Costa Rica as it was being closed in 1996. During the same period, USAID underwent a "Reduction in Force" (RIF), requiring some staff to be fired to reduce the agency's operating expenses. Except for top leadership, no one knew who would be terminated. I was 43 years old with a wife and two young children. Creating a new skill set I could carry into the private sector was on my mind when I enrolled in an executive MBA program at an affiliate of the University of Costa Rica. In my first class, Marketing 101, I chose to look at Costa Rica's coffee marketing strategy. My research took me into a theme that would be part of my life for years to come and would eventually result in a paper I wrote in 2000 regarding a strategy for how USAID could engage with the specialty coffee sector to increase the income of 25,000 small-scale coffee farmers worldwide.
The Reduction in Force (RIF), my enrollment in an MBA program in San Jose, Costa Rica, and the research I conducted on the global coffee sector led me to focus on coffee as a way to help small-scale farmers increase household income, reduce poverty, and promote national and regional stability. This paper was shared with the true pioneers of specialty coffee in Costa Rica and the world -- Steve Aronson of Cafe Britt; Jim Stewart, founder of Seattle's Best Coffee; Ted Lingle, Executive Director of the Specialty Coffee Association of America; and others. They led the way to the differentiated specialty coffee market that we have today.