MEDELLIN, Colombia – The Green Coffee Company (GCC) has announced that it has obtained the exclusive third-party rights to use the Juan Valdez coffee brand for roasted coffee sales in the U.S. and Canada. The agreement gives GCC the rights to put Juan Valdez coffee back on supermarket and retail shelves in the U.S. – the largest global market for Colombian coffee – and in Canada.
It also provides GCC the same rights for sales to large institutional customers like hotels, restaurants, cafes, hospitals, food distributors, airlines and other U.S. and Canadian corporate and business clients.
GCC will use the Juan Valdez coffee brand to sell the coffee that it grows on its over 10,000 acres of coffee farms in Colombia with a goal to capture 25% of the expanding single-origin Colombian coffee market in the U.S. over the next 10 years.
“At the heart of this partnership lies a shared vision between GCC and Juan Valdez to rejuvenate and reintroduce the Juan Valdez brand in the U.S. and Canada,” said Ted Skodol, GCC’s Chief Revenue Officer.
“Going back to the 1960s, the Colombian Coffee Federation did an outstanding job, using the Juan Valdez persona, of educating U.S. consumers that Colombia produces the world’s best arabica coffee. To this day, U.S. consumers overwhelmingly choose Colombian coffee over any other single-origin coffee, more than 70% of the time.
Consumers will remember clever marketing campaigns for Juan Valdez in high-profile spaces like the Super Bowl, making it instantly recognizable to older Americans and the growing Latino population in North America. They already see Colombian coffee and Juan Valdez as a premier brand, which we expect will give us the ability to grow sales quickly.”
GCC believes that with Juan Valdez it can, through a similar client focus, mirror the success that Modelo Especial has had in the U.S. in growing Modelo Especial into the country’s leading beer brand. GCC will focus on giving Juan Valdez significant presence in major U.S. and Canadian supermarket chains and adding Juan Valdez coffee to the product offerings of large institutional roasted coffee buyers. GCC will combine the Juan Valdez® brand with their sustainable coffee-growing origin story that truly delivers value back to small farmers, leveraging agricultural and technological processes never before utilized in the 300-year history of Colombian coffee.
“We can’t wait to separate ourselves competitively from some of the best-known coffee brands in the U.S. and Canada,” added Ted. “We are ready to prove that we can not only sell high-quality coffee affordably from the best coffee-growing country on earth, but that our vertically-integrated operations empower us to do so at an unmatchable customer value proposition.”
