Chuck Holmgreen, director of operations at Blue Mountain Coffee Inc in the United States, says that currently inflation and logistics challenges are affecting the US market, but that the potential for growth has never been higher for coffee in that country.

Blue Mountain Coffee Inc is a company headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, in the United States and owned by the Munn family.

The company estimates that it imports about 70-80 per cent of all of the Jamaica Blue Mountain Coffee that comes to the United States.

Seventy per cent of Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee production goes to Japan and five per cent to Europe.

The US accounts for only five per cent of total coffee exports from Jamaica, but Holmgreen believes the potential for growth is significant.

Holmgreen told the Jamaica Observer, “The US market for Jamaica Blue Mountain Coffee is interesting, especially post-COVID and with significant inflation, especially in transportation. Even with those challenges, we believe there is more room for growth of this wonderful coffee.”

Holmgreen explains, “The reason for that is that we tell the Munn coffee history to show that we are the trustworthy and authentic source for this wonderful coffee. We are the only coffee roaster in the United States that has that much family history in the JBM industry.”

Blue Mountain Coffee Inc has been selling roasted coffee directly to consumers for about 15 years now.

Online, the company is known primarily for Jamaica Blue Mountain Coffee, which is how many new customers find it.

“We consistently rank at the top of the organic listings on most search engines,’’ the company official states, adding, “A large part of our success revolves around getting the coffee to our customers at the peak of freshness.

“We roast five days a week. We pull the orders between 6:00 and 7:00 in the morning, then we roast, package and ship that coffee the same day.

The company uses USPS Priority Mail (two-three days) and FedEx 2 Day Air, so customers receive the coffee two to three days after it’s roasted.

It’s a challenging way to do business, but, as Holmgreen outlines, “in this level of the industry, we consider it a requirement. The absolute freshness is one of the top compliments we receive.”

Holmgreen comments, “Continued growth requires highly targeted marketing. We are fine-tuning our marketing on a regular basis to target individuals that desire the best and have the means to buy it.”

In the past two years, marketing has helped us more than double our Internet sales, and the company official says, “we believe we can double it again. We are now at the point where some of the producers are not able to supply everything we would like to buy.”

The company’s next steps will be to create additional supply.

One challenge comes from others who advertise as Jamaica Blue Mountain Coffee, but most likely are not.

Holmgreen said, “We get calls and e-mails weekly from people that have purchased what is sold as Jamaica Blue Mountain Coffee from other sellers, wondering why it doesn’t taste special. We end up converting many of these, but our concern is that some of these sellers are damaging the reputation of the true Jamaica Blue Mountain Coffee.”