Coffee growers

You live in a rural part of Colombia. You have about two acres of land to farm and your main source of income is from growing and selling coffee. You plant the coffee trees and weed the ground. The trees require lots of regular work and attention to keep them healthy so they bear fruit well. You harvest the coffee 'cherries' by hand when they are ripe. You dry them in the sun and sell them to a visiting buyer. The money you earn from the coffee is essential to pay for your children's school and the family's medical bills. Every 15 years you need to buy seedlings to replace old trees.

 Coffee exporters

You visit the growers to buy their coffee. The growers are scattered over a wide area, so you have to pay for transport and fuel to collect the coffee. Your factory processes the coffee 'cherries' to extract the 'green beans'. You sort the beans, pack them in bags and transport them to the coast where you sell them to a shipping company. The market for coffee is unpredictable, so you sometimes have to pay to have it stored.

You also need money to renew and repair expensive machinery in the factory and to pay skilled people to operate it.

The Shipping Companies

You buy the bags of 'green' coffee beans from the coffee exporter, load them on to your ship, and transport them to the UK, where you sell them to the coffee roaster. You have to pay highly skilled people to operate your ships. There are risks involved and you have to take out insurance for the ships and their cargoes, as well as pay for fuel. You also need to pay fees for using the ports and taxes for importing the coffee.
 

 The Roasters

You buy the 'green' coffee beans from a shipping company and mix the different varieties of bean to get a 'blend'. You roast the beans and process them to make instant coffee then package it into jars and sell it to the retailers. It is a very competitive business and so you have to spend large amounts of money to advertise your brand and to provide attractive packaging. You constantly need to invest money to improve the taste of your blend and keep ahead of the competition.

 The Retailers

You buy the instant coffee from the wholesaler (the roaster), store it until you need it, label it with the price, put it on display and sell it to the customer. You have to pay high rents to sell your goods at a busy location. You have to make your shop attractive, which means expensive decoration and you need to train and pay a large sales force to provide a good service to the customer.