Coffee and Collaboration with the Velasquez Family

Allowing students the chance to collaborate on teams with real clients on real projects locally, nationally, and globally is a pillar of the entrepreneurial studies (ES) program. Velasquez Family Coffee (VFC), a company run by Guillermo and Cathy Velasquez that sells fair trade, high-quality coffee grown by their family in the mountains of Honduras, is one of the latest collaborations.

Velasquez Family Coffee began in 1991 when Guillermo and Cathy Velasquez brought a few hundred pounds of coffee beans from Guillermo’s family farm in Honduras back to Minnesota in suitcases. That year, coffee prices were so low that Guillermo’s father didn’t even want to harvest the beans, but Guillermo proposed trying to sell them in the U.S. The beans sold, and when more beans came in suitcases the following year, those sold too. Thus, VFC was born.

Guillermo and his brother Sabel Velasquez check out the coffee harvest at Sabel's farm in Matazano, Honduras—one of the places Velasquez Family Coffee gets coffee beans.

Today, the company is fifteen years old, selling shade-grown, hand-picked, sun-dried coffee on a subscription-based model. The beans are grown at the farm, prepared by Guillermo’s brothers, and shipped to Minnesota where they are roasted and delivered to customers in a matter of days. In the past year, VFC reaped a bountiful harvest. “Knowing we were getting a full container and that Guillermo’s brothers were planting more, we wanted to figure out ways to grow our base of customers,” Cathy says. In looking to refresh their business model and marketing materials, the Velasquez family connected with the ES department at MCAD.

ES Director Stephen Rueff felt that VFC was an ideal match as a program client: “They pay more than fair trade; they’re paying their growers at a premium price. They meet a lot of the sustainability values that we look for in clients.”

A group of students collaborated with VFC in two classes—Client Studio, taught by Rueff, and Project Tracking, taught by Nick Dahl ’10, also a digital manager at mono. The students organized a coffee tasting and created surveys for VFC's subscribers and the general public. They then looked at the specialty coffee market in the Twin Cities, analyzed five years of VFC’s monthly subscribers through data mapping, and evaluated VFC’s marketing approach. At the end of the fall 2016 semester, they presented a growth strategy, new potential target markets for VFC, a social media playbook, and a redesigned email newsletter.

Entrepreneurial studies students present to Velasquez Family Coffee at mono.

Cathy and Guillermo were very pleased with the students’ work. “They helped affirm some of the things we had hunches about, that yes, customers are looking for the story and that personal connection, and that fits nicely with what we have to offer,” Cathy says.

VFC has already implemented several of the group’s solutions, including the newsletter template and design elements that guided the revamping of the company's website, and will stay on as a client for future ES courses. “Students will build on this research, updating based on how the company or the marketplace has evolved,” Rueff says.

The Velasquez family is excited about that idea. “We’ve been really impressed with what we’ve been learning about MCAD itself. It would be fascinating to see what else we can learn having other students work with us,” Cathy says.

Entrepreneurial studies students created a growth strategy, new potential target markets, a social media playbook, and a redesigned email newsletter for Velasquez Family Coffee.