Álvaro and Dulce Romero have worked hard to sell their high-quality coffee produced at their family farm in Santa Rosa. This Guatemalan department is known for being, due to its geographical location, “the Heart of the Americas”. Among the COVID-19 pandemic, they have implemented new payment methods and focused on customer service to take the export-quality coffee to homes of Guatemalan families.

For the Romero family, the entrepreneur adventure started when Dulce started her undergraduate thesis on Guatemalan coffee exports. Afterwards, Álvaro coursed AGEXPORT’s postgraduate program on foreign trade, which was when the “Ambrosia” brand was born.

Ambrosia means “holy food” in Greek. Ambrosia was the food of gods on the Olympus and now we seek for our clients to enjoy exquisite coffee from Santa Rosa; said Mrs. Dulce Romero, head of commercialization and customer service of the company.

In 2017, with help from AGEXPORT’s Specialty Coffees Committee they launched their first samples of roasted and packaged coffee, seeking to display coffee from Santa Rosa, a region that is not highly recognized as an important coffee region in Guatemala.

Apart from coffee, the Romero brothers have also started producing honey by mixing their coffee plantations with honeycombs on coffee, such as it was done by their grandfather years ago. With this combination, bees support with the pollination process and the company can also offer a “superfood” that helps the immune system.

Overcoming the impact of COVID-19

Part of the company’s plans for 2020 were to increase its client portfolio by positioning as a supplier of coffee for institutions that would like to offer export-quality coffee to their clients and suppliers; nevertheless, the COVID-19 pandemic had them shifting their business model.

Since the start of the pandemic, a large amount of companies opted to work from home, so we started offering home delivery services. We were forced to get to know the preferences of individual customers, their doubts on our products and the logistics to make delivery possible. Among other challenges that we faced, we needed to expand our payment options by either accepting payment upon delivery or with electronic transfers. Now we started benchmark studies to accept payments with credit cards; said Mrs. Romero.

To be able to handle orders on a safe and practical way, the company also opened a business WhatsApp account to communicate with clients.

As clients are currently on lockdown at home, the company also developed an educational campaign on social media so their customers can learn to prepare coffee cups at home with different methods and techniques.
As well, they seek to establish alliances with other entrepreneurs. For example, for Mother’s Day, Ambrosia partnered with a bakery entrepreneurship to offer special promotions.

Work now to see results in the future

Despite the fact the future is unpredictable, the Romero brothers continue to progress on their yearly goals. Among them: innovate on different processes to produce specialty coffees as well as designing different packaging options and offer different coffee qualities at different prices.
With all the current circumstances, as business owners we are required to adapt, but we need to be clear and focus not to let our dreams die and seek for alternatives to keep moving forward; said Mrs. Romero.

Ambrosia coffee is another option to drink coffee made #InGuate