First of two parts
A DUO–Basil and Vie-pioneering in Alamid coffee, have a dream. Their dream is that 10 years from now, while walking by a small coffee farm, they’ll be invited by the farm owner for coffee. And the first thing that they’ll see in the farmer’s living room is a flat-screen TV —a symbol of the coffee farmer’s new-found prosperity.
This prosperity would also serve as a measure of their Kape’t Buhay program’s success. How do they propose to achieve this? “By linking the rural poor with the urban poor,” Basil confidently declares. Through the program, the coffee farmer does not have to sell his produce only to the middleman or the buying stations of big coffee manufacturers. He goes beyond this by roasting his own beans, and if he is intrepid enough—creating his own brand—and selling them to the urban poor not only for consumption but also for retail to the public. In this way, the farmer gets a better and fairer price for his beans.
On the other hand, the urban poor have an opportunity to become vendors not of coffee beans or powder but of coffee concoctions in mobile coffee shops—brewed hot coffee in the morning, and iced coffee in the afternoon. Instead of automatic coffee machine, what is used for brewing are “takure” and “itakure”. This process underscores the fact that no chemical is used in preparing the coffee. Jeepney drivers, market vendors, newspaper boys, cigarette vendors, and pedestrians—they represent the target market of the poor man’s coffee shop.
Now on its pilot stage in Pasay City, Kape’t Buhay involves the private sector and government agencies like the Department of Agriculture (DA) and the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD). The DSWD, for example, is not only in charge of identifying prospective coffee shop operators among the beneficiaries of its “Pantawid Pangkabuhayan” program, but can also provide interest-free start-up loans of up to P 10,000 payable in two years. A modest projection of the income statement shows that the coffee shop entrepreneur can earn a net profit of at least P2,500 a day, if he is able to sell 142 cups at P10 each.
(To be concluded)
