5/14 Le Bella Tica & Monteverde

Well, today was the first full day of adventure and I must say it was full of fun. After a nice, bumpy ride on the bus we arrived at the UGA CR campus. We got to experience our first real Costa Rican meal which consists of rice and beans, but never mixed together, and then some kind of meat. It was pretty good and of course I mixed my rice and beans. Then came our first business visits. Today we toured Le Bella Tica Coffee and Monteverde Natural Cosmetics. Both companies follow Costa Ricas goal of sustainability. They make their products themselves and use all natural products. Coffee of course would be already considered to be all natural, but here it is more personal. The coffee farms are grown and the beans are hand picked by the farm owners, sometimes with help from friends and family. Unlike in the USA where coffee if prepared and packaged most likely by machines, in Costa Rica the coffee is prepared by individuals. Though they do use a couple machines to help with the depulping and other preparations, most of the process is still done by the locals. Preparing coffee is a personal process here. The same goes for Monteverde Natural Cosmetics. The owners of this company not only make the products themselves, but they make all of their products in their own backyard. All of their products are completely natural. They use natural oils and waxes in their products, and some products even contain actual coffee grounds. Both of these businesses can be considered sustainable. By locally preparing their products and using natural ingredients they don't do anything to harm the environment. However, they do have some different business approaches. The main one thing that I noticed is that Monteverde Natural Cosmetics wants to expand their product lines and are even trying to expand their market by now selling their products on amazon. Le Bella Tica Coffee is the complete opposite. Le Bella only makes 3 different coffees and they only sell from the actual business location. They do not seem to have the desire to expand while Monteverde is looking for many opportunities to expand. I believe a big part of this is that the coffee is a much, much more time consuming process while the cosmetics require much less work. Though the soaps do have to sit for months at a time to fully harden, it only takes them about half an hour to prepare a batch and they could make them back to back. Coffee is not something that can be rushed though. It has to grow and be prepared properly. I must say though, I hope they never changed their local personal ways because the coffee here is simply amazing!