The Coffee Shop Business & The Economy…
January 21st, 2009Coffee is the world’s second most valuable traded commodity, second only to petroleum. There are approximately 25 million farmers and coffee workers in over 50 countries involved in producing coffee around the world.
Coffee was traditionally developed as a colonial cash crop, planted by serfs or wage laborers in tropical climates on large plantations of landowners for sale in colonial countries. Coffee producers, like most agricultural workers around the world, are kept in a cycle of poverty and debt by the current global economy designed to exploit cheap labor and keep consumer prices low.
An estimated 11 million hectares of the world’s farmland are dedicated to coffee cultivation. The largest producer and exporter is Brazil, followed by Colombia, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Mexico. Around the globe, the annual consumption of coffee has expanded to 12 billion pounds.
Coffee is the US’s largest food import and second most valuable commodity only after oil. According to the International Coffee Organization, the US imported 2.72 billion pounds of coffee from September 2001 to September 2002.
The US primarily purchases coffee from Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Guatemala, and Vietnam. The U.S. also buys coffee from Indonesia, Costa Rica, Peru, El Salvador, Ecuador, Venezuela, Honduras, Uganda, Thailand, Nicaragua, India, and Papua New Guinea. In the U.S. alone, over 130 million consumers are coffee drinkers.
In recent years, new cafés have been opening at an explosive rate, making specialty coffee mainstream and increasing profit margins for specialty coffee roasters and retailers. The Specialty Coffee Association of America estimated that there are 10,000 coffee cafes and 2,500 specialty stores selling coffee. Chains represent 30% of all coffee retail stores, but the majority remain in the hands of independent owners or small family businesses.
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