Eight years ago, busi­ness­man Jose Fran­co bought in­to lo­cal cof­fee com­pa­ny Caribbean Roast­ers.

He want­ed to take the fresh­ly brewed bev­er­age not on­ly to homes through­out the coun­try, but al­so world-wide.

To­day, Caribbean Roast­ers-owned by Fran­co, Vanes­sa Moses and John De­vaux-has be­come more than just a house­hold name.

Not­ing that the foun­da­tion of Caribbean Roast­ers was built on brands rich in Caribbean his­to­ry for al­most 90 years Fran­co said De­vaux’s grand­fa­ther found­ed the com­pa­ny in 1931, fol­low­ing which John took it over in the 80’s.

From du­ty free shops, to gourmet restau­rants to cafés, the var­i­ous blends can be sought at a grow­ing num­ber of places in T&T as well the prod­ucts be­ing avail­able on the re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets.

As its port­fo­lio con­tin­ues to ex­pand, Caribbean Roast­ers is now of­fer­ing five new dis­tinct blends.

Fran­co, who is the com­pa­ny’s man­ag­ing di­rec­tor spoke to the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian about the new of­fer­ings at the Brix Ho­tel in Port-of-Spain on Wednes­day.

“Our founder Jose Perez was a Cuban cof­fee con­nois­seur and we have an hon­orary brand for him that’s been es­tab­lished in Trinidad for many years. We de­cid­ed we want to bring oth­er ranges of cof­fee un­der our brand name.

“...We are launch­ing the Caribbean Roast­ers is­land-in­spired blends; the beach blend, the sun­set roast, the sun­rise roast, the red eye and a co­conut blend which is very unique to the Caribbean.

“So all of these blends speak to the feel of the Caribbean. Peo­ple come to the Caribbean to en­joy the sun­rise, en­joy the sun­sets be­cause they are un­like any oth­er any where in the world and we have the most beau­ti­ful beach­es. So, we have cre­at­ed such ex­pe­ri­ences through these blends,” Fran­co ex­plained.

“These new flavours will be avail­able in lo­cal su­per­mar­kets, du­ty-free shops, spe­cial­i­ty stores and any where that wants to serve cof­fee.”

“We have worked with the food ser­vice in­dus­try so if you go to most ho­tels and most restau­rants, our cof­fee was ac­tu­al­ly be­ing served and en­joyed but we are bring­ing it now to the re­tail mar­ket so peo­ple en­joy it at home,”Fran­co added.

The prices range be­tween $60 to $65 for eight ounces de­pend­ing on the re­tail­er, Fran­co stat­ed, not­ing that the cof­fee is not in­stant as it has to be brewed us­ing a per­co­la­tor or French press mak­ing it “nat­ur­al drawn cof­fee.”

Go­ing for­ward, Fran­co shared some in­sights for the com­pa­ny.

“We want to bring oth­er ranges of cof­fee un­der our brand name or un­der our com­pa­ny name, Caribbean Roast­ers, to the mar­ket with var­i­ous blends, var­i­ous spe­cial­i­ty cof­fees and just ex­pand our port­fo­lio and re­al­ly put our­selves on the map with our brand.

“Our say­ing in our busi­ness is the best cup of cof­fee is the one that you like and we want to con­tin­ue to ex­pand that range and give peo­ple ex­act­ly what they are look­ing for,” he said.

So what makes Caribbean Roast­ers stand out?

“We roast right here,” Fran­co said, adding that at the end of the day cof­fee is best served fresh.

Re­viv­ing the lo­cal

cof­fee in­dus­try

Caribbean Roast­ers cur­rent­ly sources its cof­fee from Brazil, Colom­bia and Cos­ta Ri­ca among oth­er coun­tries.

While T&T has a very small in­dus­try when it comes to sup­ply­ing beans, Fran­co has not ruled out the pos­si­bil­i­ty that this sec­tor can play an im­por­tant role in the sup­ply chain.

“I think the lo­cal cof­fee in­dus­try is start­ing to come back from many years ago and it is some­thing we would love to be a part of be­cause we would like to work with the farm­ers here,” Fran­co said.

While scale may be a chal­lenge it is not im­pos­si­ble to over­come.

“Our needs are very huge and we find that some­times there is a lit­tle bit of an in­con­sis­tent sup­ply but we def­i­nite­ly want to ex­pand and have some lo­cal in­puts and have that brand­ing around that too. I think we would def­i­nite­ly be a part in help­ing that in­dus­try come up again.”

Grow­ing Sales

Lo­cat­ed in Di­a­mond Vale In­dus­tri­al Es­tate in Diego Mar­tin, Caribbean Roast­ers makes about 5,000 packs of cof­fee a day.

Ac­cord­ing to Fran­co, the com­pa­ny re­cent­ly in­vest­ed US$60,00 in new equip­ment, which would en­able a quick­er and more ef­fi­cient pack­ing process.

While Fran­co is him­self a force to be reck­oned with giv­en his as­tute busi­ness acu­men-hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly worked with large cor­po­ra­tions like Tar­get- he al­so at­trib­uted the com­pa­ny’s growth to his busi­ness part­ner and mar­ket­ing di­rec­tor, Vanes­sa Moses.

Moses, who is al­so the com­pa­ny’s strate­gic con­sul­tant, is her­self no stranger to com­merce as she pre­vi­ous­ly owned her own bev­er­age com­pa­ny called Freezie Bev­er­ages.

Re­gard­ing her part­ner­ship with Fran­co, she said, “The jour­ney re­al­ly start­ed off with us get­ting in­to the food ser­vice busi­ness...my in­de­pen­dent com­pa­ny be­fore hand was an in­de­pen­dent cof­fee com­pa­ny that came to Trinidad and start­ed build­ing out the food ser­vice foot­print. We start­ed with gas sta­tions and con­ve­nience stores and I met with Jose who was in­ter­est­ed in be­ing a sup­pli­er part­ner. We de­cid­ed to get to­geth­er to cre­ate this busi­ness where I brought in my food ser­vice and ma­chines and they had the roast­ing fa­cil­i­ties, the re­tail and dis­tri­b­u­tion through­out the is­lands and we be­came a ful­ly in­te­grat­ed com­pa­ny. That’s when this part­ner­ship was born.”

Moses, who has Trinida­di­an roots and cur­rent­ly lives in the US, has worked with Caribbean Roast­ers since 2018 and has at­trib­uted in­crease in sales to the en­ti­ty be­ing ful­ly in­te­grat­ed.

“Mean­ing we buy our cof­fee, we roast our cof­fee, we pack­age it, we put it on the shelves or in restau­rant or ho­tel. So we do re­tail, we do food ser­vice, we are in the gift mar­ket and we are in the du­ty free mar­ket and we are through­out the Caribbean. So all of that is at­tribute to ex­po­nen­tial growth for the busi­ness,” she added.

Moses al­so de­tailed the di­rec­tion of the com­pa­ny and how she is help­ing to chart this course.

“I’m lead­ing some of our new projects when it comes to the US ex­pan­sion. We are get­ting ready to build out some new plat­forms, any­thing from e-com­merce, which is now in the works, to build­ing out tra­di­tion­al dis­trib­u­tor­ship of a mul­ti­tude of our prod­ucts. We do cof­fee at the core but we have al­so cre­at­ed a won­der­ful tea line that we have re­brand­ed dur­ing COVID and we have a choco­late prod­uct which is a Caribbean rum ball and a few oth­er prod­ucts we are com­ing out with to hit some di­as­po­ra and unique spaces in the US,” Moses de­tailed.

Fur­ther, she said the com­pa­ny is ex­plor­ing in­te­grat­ing lo­cal choco­late in­to some of its line ex­ten­sions.

Caribbean Roast­ers’ prod­ucts can be found in ten is­lands in­clud­ing Bar­ba­dos, Grena­da, St Thomas, St Lu­cia, St Mar­tin, An­tigua among oth­ers.

The com­pa­ny was named the Man­u­fac­tur­er of the Year 2022 by the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA).