【Interview 2_tashiro coffee co., ltd】Reaching Across Oceans and Mountains for Delicious Coffee Beans- PREX Island

Enterprise managers SDGs
Interview 2: Buying Directly from Farmers

In the programs conducted by PREX, Tashiro Coffee told us that steering the company toward specialty coffee and starting to buy directly from farmers was the beginning of the company’s turnaround.
In this interview, we asked about the background and specific operations.

Learn more about specialty coffees
https://www.tashirocoffee.co.jp/pageview.php?slug=specialty

*PREX’s Okumura, Araki, and Kojima interviewed President Tashiro and his daughter Hikaru in January 2024.

From the first encounter with specialty coffees to direct purchasing

[PREX Okumura]
Which of the farms did President Tashiro remember as having the best tasting coffee?

[President Tashiro]
All coffees are delicious, but the coffee that will remain in my memory is the first specialty coffee I ever drank.
At the time, I was wholesaling coffee beans to coffee shops, but I was also wholesaling frozen foods and mayonnaise used in coffee shops.
At that time, I never thought coffee tasted good.
It was a time of mass consumption and cheaper prices.
The number of coffee bean wholesalers had increased, the market was saturated, and there was price competition among them.

One day, one of my colleagues, from whom I had been learning a lot, offered me a cup of coffee and said, “Why don’t you try this coffee.
That was the first time I thought coffee tasted good.
It was a coffee that had won a prize at a coffee fair in Nicaragua.
Coffee beans that win prizes at competitions are auctioned off.
We wanted to purchase such delicious coffee beans for our own company, so we asked a trading company to allow us to purchase some of the coffee beans auctioned off by the trading company.

Coffee beans are usually imported by trading companies.
Few Japanese companies buy directly from producers.
Japanese law prohibits the importation of coffee beans that have been treated with pesticides. If pesticides are detected, it is a big deal.
There is also a high risk that drugs may be mixed in containers in Central and South America.
Not only that, but there is also communication with the local authorities, transportation and warehousing companies, and a variety of other tasks.

In the beginning, we also received everything wholesale from trading companies.
After that, we asked trading companies to bid under the name of Tashiro Coffee, participated in auctions on our own without a trading company (we had a lot of trouble with the language, but we managed), asked for help from our competitors who were buying directly, hired Spanish-speaking employees, contacted local NGOs that support specialty coffees, etc. We contacted local NGOs and asked them to introduce us to farms we could trust.
And now we are buying directly from various farms.

[PREX Okumura]
I understand that it takes a lot more than you can imagine making direct trade a reality!
I think it is amazing that Tashiro Coffee can handle this amount of work and challenges by itself.
The local area is also very far away, isn’t it?

[Ms. Hikaru]
The plantation we visited last March was in the province of Aceh, Indonesia, so it was very far away.
After arriving in Jakarta, we drove for 10 hours on unpaved roads.
It was really tough.
The following month, I visited Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Honduras.
Visiting three countries was physically demanding.
The travel time was longer than the visiting time.

[PREX Okumura]
In fact, what memories do you have from your buying trips there?

[President Tashiro]
When we visit for the first time, the whole village welcomes us.
And they serve the best quality coffee beans.
Then the next year the quality drops.
We assume that they probably serve the best quality to other new clients.
So we often change the farms we deal with every three years.
Of course, there are farms that continue to provide us with good quality.
We are happy when they tell us that our quality of life has improved.
This is the third year we have dealt with Los Planes Farm in Honduras, and when we visited the area last year, they were in the process of building a new house.
This year they are building an addition.
The farm is in the mountains at an altitude of about 1,900 meters along the border between Honduras and El Salvador.
He told me that he had purchased a Toyota four-wheel drive car from another farm.
For a village in the middle of the mountain, where villagers have only a few cars and the roads are not paved, a four-wheel drive car is very valuable.

A 70-year-old farmer in Honduras
Joy of coffee beans sold in Japan under his farm’s name

[President Tashiro]
In September of this year, a 70-year-old farmer from Los Planes Farm came to Japan at his own expense with his coordinator Ronnie, who always attends to us in the field, to see how their coffee beans are sold.

[PREX Okumura]
What did you do during his visit to Japan?

[Hikaru Tashiro]
Tashiro Coffee held a special seminar for its 90th anniversary.
We invited the wholesale customers of the beans introduced by Ronnie to the seminar, and had dinner together at the reception afterwards.

[President Tashiro]
Other activities included explaining about the Hanshin Department Store and visiting three or four wholesale cafes.

[Ms. Hikaru]
They were very happy that we were selling their coffee beans in this way.

[President Tashiro]
They probably never imagined a situation where coffee beans are sold under the name of his own farm.
For the producers, they don’t expect this to happen.
When they return to their home countries, they will probably talk about this experience in their villages.
It will be a memory that will last a lifetime.
This is their first trip abroad.
They were very happy.
I think it is a very big thing that they are now able to afford such expenses.

Normally, farmers first sell their coffee beans to agricultural cooperatives.
The selling price is about 3 to 4 times higher than the price for the traders like us who come to buy quality beans for specialty coffee directly from them.
Since the price is completely different, they keep the beans in their living room or within sight, not in a warehouse, after harvest to prevent theft.
They are successful villagers who were able to sell specialty coffee.

[Ms. Hikaru]
He was very energetic during his visit to Japan.
He seemed very happy.
After arriving in Tokyo, he took the Shinkansen to Osaka, and when he arrived at our main office, the first thing he said was, “I want to have a cup of good coffee.
He hadn’t had a chance to drink it because he was traveling.
He kept saying he wanted to drink coffee.

[President Tashiro]
He had been saying this for the time.
This is why I can’t quit this job.

Next intaview

Intaview 3 : The Future of Tashiro Coffee

• Date : February 3, 2025
• Name : PREX SDGs Team