Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/737343
STiR coffee and tea 39 owned restaurants both here and in the US Virgin Islands. Today, 95% of Gustos Coffee's revenues come from food service. "From the day we started, our focus has been on having the best coffee possible. Because of that, in the beginning we didn't roast coffee. But I realized that I was not able to get the coffee I wanted on a consistent basis," said Torres. The company soon began growing its own coffee in Yauco, and now packages cof- fee under the Casa Grande label. Just over three years ago, Torres — who studied hotel and restaurant management at Michigan State University — opened his Gustos Café boutique coffee shop. Few coffee connoisseurs would mistake this place for a Star- bucks. For one thing, its décor is rather unusual, ranging from the bright orange portafilter door handles at the entrance to its rustic atmosphere, complete with antiques such as a 1970 Vespa motorcycle hanging from the ceiling, a huge industrial coffee grinder from the early 1950s and a small portable Remington typewriter dating from before World War II. Behind the counter, skilled baristas like Viviana Cruz and Gioella Malatrasi make espressos and pourovers as they hap- pily chat with customers, many of whom work at La Telefónica, Triple-S Insurance and other nearby businesses off Avenida F.D. Roosevelt. The café also features breakfast fare such as oatmeal, fresh fruit, and egg dishes, and for lunch, mostly wraps — as well as a private room where barista classes are given. "The front of the house is a showpiece," Torres said as he walked through his enormous warehouse full of espresso ma- chines and coffee equipment awaiting delivery to clients or un- dergoing repairs. Torres is not shy when it comes to offering opinions on why the island's coffee industry is in decline. "In order for Puerto Rico's coffee industry to be successful, we need to find a way to consistently export," Torres told STiR. "But for now we're focusing on the local market. It makes no sense to export today and not be able to export tomorrow." A big part of the problem, he said, is protectionism, which has prevented Puerto Rico from developing exports in the way Costa Rica, Hawaii, and Jamaica have done so. "Puerto Rico has suffered because of excessive government controls over the years. Puerto Rican and Hawaiian coffee are very similar in quality and taste, yet Hawaii did not have the pro- tections Puerto Rico had. Therefore, it used market strategies to promote Hawaiian coffee worldwide over the last 50 years. They found a way to survive," Torres complained. "The fact is that for coffee farmers to survive, we need the export business. Yet we've allowed 50 years to go by without marketing our cof- fee, and now farmers have no need for great coffee to export because they can sell it locally." In contrast, Hawaii sells its beans for $10 a pound, and Ja- maica for $40 a pound. Puerto Rico, on the other hand, can't even produce enough coffee to satisfy local consumption, so the government must import about 250,000 qq of beans annually from Mexico. Be- cause of price controls, imported coffee is now cheaper here than local coffee. In the long term, a bigger problem is the island's perennial labor shortage when it comes to coffee, since the industry is prohibited from importing low-cost workers from the Domini- can Republic or other countries. "Nobody wants to pick coffee beans. They'd rather just be on welfare," said Torres, adding that "the best pickers are more than 60 years old. They're the type of people willing to wake up at 5 a.m. and work until noon, or until they make $25 and they're happy. Today's youth don't have that mentality, so we worry what's going to happen in the future." Larry Luxner, a Tel Aviv-based journalist and photographer, lived in Puerto Rico from 1986 to 1995. He returned to the island for five days in August to research this article. Various Puerto Rican coffee brands for sale at a duty-free shop in San Juan's Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport.