Saying Goodbye

By Leticia Hutchins
Finca Terrerito

Sometimes, you slip the shoe on Cinderella’s foot and it’s a perfect fit. But what happens when you realize you’re wearing a glass slipper on a bumpy/muddy road ahead?

In August of 2023, OBIIS shared a blog about the perfect farm direct fit between BIGGBY COFFEE and Finca Terrerito “Finca T”. Mutually in awe of each other’s alignment on core values it felt like a “marriage made in heaven.” We quickly bonded over wanting to fundamentally change the coffee industry and so many personal commonalities. We became fast friends; traveling to coffee origin, expos, and roasteries together.

Bob, Leticia, Michelle and Al hamming it up at Finca T

Mission, goals, and personalities aligned. What could go wrong? Well, in my short 31 years of life, I have found that sometimes all the puzzle pieces align but something can still be off “wearing the right shoe for your foot but wrong for the trek ahead”. And that one thing can lead to all the pieces crumbling down. Let’s dive further…

In late 2024 and early 2025, the global coffee market saw significant price increases. In fact, in November of 2024, the price had reached an all-time high of $3.26 per pound. When a price spike like this happens, it takes time to acclimate for all parties involved. But the price kept increasing, leaving the future of coffee a big question mark ahead. By February of 2025, it had reached an all-time high, surpassing $4 per pound!

Before we get into how price affected our partnership, let’s review the Finca T farm direct supply chain. You see, we at Finca T produce our own coffee. We process, mill, export and every other step in between but we also work with other small producers to help get their coffee to market. So, when prices spiked, our verbal commitments and contracts were set to prices that were no longer reasonable to allow us to buy coffee, simultaneously our costs were increasing. So, the chain reaction begins, our farming partners want more money from us, we need more money for our own production, and the buyer (BIGGBY COFFEE) has to make a decision…do we pay more or do we not?

Leticia and Harry Hutchins and their roastery Alma Coffee in Atlanta, Georgia.

Coffee can be a bit difficult to understand so let’s use another example. Let’s imagine you are planning a vacation to Honduras with a travel planner. You and your travel planner find the perfect flight at a reasonable price. You verbally commit to working with the planner and they verbally commit to the quote they give you. Together you decide not to book the flights because they are expensive and you’d rather save a little bit more money now before you purchase them, plus prices stay relatively steady on flights anyways. 3 months go by and suddenly, all flights to Honduras spike. You and your travel planner both freak out because no one can do anything about the airline changing their price. Ultimately, you can’t commit to going on the trip because the travel planner can no longer honor the previous quote.

You see, it’s the same with coffee, the market is like the airline, prices can fluctuate drastically without warning even though the pattern is that they stay relatively consistent.

So back to coffee, we went back into negotiations with OBIIS/BIGGBY COFFEE and we simply could not land on a price that made sense for us all. It wasn’t a blame game or a pointing finger situation. The shoe fit perfectly but the road ahead simply wasn’t congruent with the shoe. We won’t get into the issue with tariffs too deeply to avoid politics but that added greatly to the mix and bumped our import costs from about $500 per container to $22,000 per container! All parties tried to keep the partnership strong but due to pricing our agreed upon coffee volume to BIGGBY was cut by 77% for 2025. Ultimately, despite our mutual efforts, we mutually decided it was best to part ways as a farm direct partner for the time being.

We write this to firstly, be transparent about the partnership and its current status and secondly, to thank Bob, Michelle, and the entire BIGGBY/OBIIS family. We are grateful for a great year of working together. As we look towards the future, we know the future is bright for the BIGGBY/OBIIS family and we look forward to collaborating with them as opportunities arise.