Fairfield Dolan students have gathered data from more than 20 Connecticut coffee roasters to study the direct trade model within local community coffee shops.
Throughout the spring 2024 semester and into the summer, Helena Glebocki, PhD, associate professor of economics, and her students in the Charles F. Dolan School of Business explored the viability and benefits of the direct trade model in specialty coffee sourcing.
Partnering with Those Coffee People — a Medellin, Colombia supplier of specialty Colombian coffee beans that directly serves coffee shops and roasters around the world — the project used qualitative and quantitative research to investigate how local Connecticut coffee roasters source their beans, and assessed the perceived and real challenges of working directly with farmers.
With assistance from the Dolan School's Mahoney Fund, which supports faculty-mentored student research, the team of researchers simulated the direct trade process and examined the associated costs, benefits, barriers, and overall effectiveness of this sourcing model.
