Costa Rica: A Return to Origins

This blog will capture the experiences and learnings of our TWELVE Canadian participants.
Check back daily for updates and new postings.


Introducing a new Origin Experience program

Last February, the first group of Starbucks partners traveled to Costa Rica to take part in the pilot Origin trip. Less than a year later, another twelve Canadian partners have been awarded the same opportunity to visit, learn, harvest and truly experience life at our farms in Costa Rica. Follow along and learn from their daily adventures. Through this powerful first-hand experience, partners will be better able to understand and articulate ethical sourcing practices, quality standards and relationship with farmers. It will also help us create a network of passionate advocates to inspire customers and other partners, as well as serve as coffee leaders.


Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Day One in Costa Rica - Jan 11, 2011


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Hello Team Canada from Costa Rica! Well day One is almost over and my cup is full! What an amazing Origins Experience it has been so far! We started with 2 hours of orientation from Dub Hay, partners from the Farmer Support Center and Starbucks Coffee Buying group. A ton of coffee knowledge from the best coffee people in the world! Talked a lot about CAFÉ practices, Fair Trade, etc…. We visited the La Ceiba nursery first, appropriately, since this is where all coffee really begins life. From there we travelled to Bella Vista Tres Rios coffee estate, as you know Starbucks purchases lots of coffee from there. We had our first 3 agronomy classes in the field with the very knowledgeable partners from the Farmer Support Center, Carlos and Orlando. This included picking coffee! (yes I ate a few coffee cherries! Very sweet & tasty, also dropped way too many cherries on the ground, will deal with that at confessional!) I could not stop taking pictures of coffee trees overflowing with ripe cherries! We finished our day at Bella Vista surrounded by all of the coffee pickers and their families bringing in the coffee they picked that day, filling the trucks and getting paid. It was an amazing and humbling human coffee connection. I have 100’s of pictures and stories just from today to share with anyone who will listen when I return!
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