OXCART COFFEE
COSTA RICA
Traditional oxcarts, or carretas, are one of the most prominent national symbols of Costa Rica, and they call back to the country’s long, proud history with coffee. That longevity and pride, as well as quality in work and deed, is the reason we chose the same symbol for our office in the capital city of San José: Oxcart Coffee – Cafe Imports Latin America, a full-service import-export operation that allows us to work directly with growers, build better connections and keep a closer eye on the quality and logistics of all coffee shipments leaving Costa Rica bound for Cafe Imports’ sales offices around the globe.
Café Imports has been sourcing high-quality microlots from Costa Rica since 2006. We partnered with an exporter in Costa Rica in the early days and even pioneered with them the term “microlot” here to describe the totally industry-changing processing being done by the individual micromills in the country. The first container had mixed results. The coffees were amazing in the cup and had the farmer’s name on the bag, which was revolutionary at that time, but we could only sell half of the coffee, and hard to mark down the other half, as the market just was not there yet. We knew this was the way forward for coffee, so we bought two containers the next year and saw the volume continue to build as the coffee world began to understand and appreciate what micro lots and specificity in coffee truly meant. Now, this has grown to include “honey” and “natural” processing, along with a myriad of fermentation experiments. The natural next step for us was to open our own export company to support these incredibly innovative farmers better.
Founded in 2018, Oxcart Coffee serves as a resource and watering hole for the amazing coffee farmers we work with directly within Costa Rica. Producers are welcome to use the Oxcart Coffee offices not simply as a place to do the business of selling coffee but also as a kind of quality hub and resource: Open cuppings, an onsite roasting lab, the ability to get calibrated together in real-time, and the space and time to have candid conversations about quality and expectations make Oxcart a truly special addition to our relationship-building and development efforts in Costa Rica—and beyond.
Producers and roasters alike have an open invitation to visit the Oxcart Office to deepen their business selling and sourcing coffee in Costa Rica.
“Oxcart is a Costa Rican export company, but Cafe Imports is a worldwide company,” Oxcart Manager Luis Arocha says. ”The idea is to be able to share all that knowledge and experience of all of our years with everybody—bringing coffee people and producers to the Oxcart office to create and be more part of the community. The coffee community is growing in Costa Rica, and I want to be part of it, seeing us as a hub of experience and tastings. The cuppings will be wide open places, where people can come.”
STAFF
Please reach out to your sales rep or email sales@cafeimports.com to learn more about sourcing Costa Rican coffee with Café Imports and Oxcart Coffee
OXCART COFFEE
COSTA RICA
Traditional oxcarts, or carretas, are one of the most prominent national symbols of Costa Rica, and they call back to the country’s long, proud history with coffee. That longevity and pride, as well as quality in work and deed, is the reason we chose the same symbol for our office in the capital city of San José: Oxcart Coffee – Cafe Imports Latin America, a full-service import-export operation that allows us to work directly with growers, build better connections and keep a closer eye on the quality and logistics of all coffee shipments leaving Costa Rica bound for Cafe Imports’ sales offices around the globe.
Café Imports has been sourcing high-quality microlots from Costa Rica since 2006. We partnered with an exporter in Costa Rica in the early days and even pioneered with them the term “microlot” here to describe the totally industry-changing processing being done by the individual micromills in the country. The first container had mixed results. The coffees were amazing in the cup and had the farmer’s name on the bag, which was revolutionary at that time, but we could only sell half of the coffee, and hard to mark down the other half, as the market just was not there yet. We knew this was the way forward for coffee, so we bought two containers the next year and saw the volume continue to build as the coffee world began to understand and appreciate what micro lots and specificity in coffee truly meant. Now, this has grown to include “honey” and “natural” processing, along with a myriad of fermentation experiments. The natural next step for us was to open our own export company to support these incredibly innovative farmers better.
Founded in 2018, Oxcart Coffee serves as a resource and watering hole for the amazing coffee farmers we work with directly within Costa Rica. Producers are welcome to use the Oxcart Coffee offices not simply as a place to do the business of selling coffee but also as a kind of quality hub and resource: Open cuppings, an onsite roasting lab, the ability to get calibrated together in real-time, and the space and time to have candid conversations about quality and expectations make Oxcart a truly special addition to our relationship-building and development efforts in Costa Rica—and beyond.
Producers and roasters alike have an open invitation to visit the Oxcart Office to deepen their business selling and sourcing coffee in Costa Rica.
“Oxcart is a Costa Rican export company, but Cafe Imports is a worldwide company,” Oxcart Manager Luis Arocha says. ”The idea is to be able to share all that knowledge and experience of all of our years with everybody—bringing coffee people and producers to the Oxcart office to create and be more part of the community. The coffee community is growing in Costa Rica, and I want to be part of it, seeing us as a hub of experience and tastings. The cuppings will be wide open places, where people can come.”
STAFF
Please reach out to your sales rep or email sales@cafeimports.com to learn more about sourcing Costa Rican coffee with Café Imports and Oxcart Coffee