Coffee City
Melissa Allison follows the world's biggest coffee-shop chain and other Seattle caffeine purveyors.
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Starbucks reduces coffee buying in Costa Rica, Reuters reports
Posted by Melissa Allison
Reuters reports that Starbucks has reduced purchases of Costa Rican coffee this year. Guatemalan growers said in December that Starbucks was slow buying their coffee, too, and some speculated then that the company was angling for lower prices.
Starbucks' sales were up 4 percent last quarter -- a sign that it still needs lots of coffee -- so it's also possible that the chain just wants less inventory, like many retailers who were burned by having too much in stock when the recession started.
Starbucks told Reuters it buys about 75 percent of its coffee from Latin American growers.
In 2008, the coffee company bought 383 million pounds of coffee, up from 351 million a year earlier, according to its global responsibility report. It paid an average of $1.49 a pound, up from $1.43 a pound a year earlier.
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