A Juan Valdez store in Manhattan, US | Photo credit: Jim Henderson CC0 1.0 Universal

Colombian coffee chain Juan Valdez has signed a new joint venture agreement with US-based Green Coffee Company giving the coffee farm group third-party rights to sell Juan Valdez-branded coffee in supermarkets across North America. 
 

Procafecol, which owns Juan Valdez, expects the partnership to contribute $100m in sales by 2030 and help the coffee chain gain a 25% share of the Colombian coffee market in the US – which is currently the largest market globally for Colombian coffee exports. 

“The materialisation of this agreement is an immense opportunity for Juan Valdez in the face of its expansion in the US and Canada. Green Coffee Company will seek to penetrate this North American market by entering large supermarket chains in which we do not have operations, with the aim of generating exponential growth in mass consumption in the US and promoting greater sales of our product,” said Camila Escobar, President, Procafecol. 

Created by Colombia’s National Federation of Coffee Growers, the first Juan Valdez coffee shop opened at El Dorado International Airport in Bogotá in December 2002. The coffee chain, named after a fictional character designed to represent the archetypal Colombian coffee farmer, opened its first international store in Washington DC in 2004 and currently operates 12 US outlets. 

Juan Valdez has more than 560 stores globally and is seeking to open 100 new sites this year, at least 75 of which will be international markets. The coffee chain has a longer-term goal of reaching 1,200 outlets in 2027. 

Founded in 2017, Green Coffee Company currently operates 10,000 acres of farmland and more than 13 million coffee trees in Colombia. The coffee farm group, which is headquartered in the US with operations based in Medellin, expects to become the world's largest producer of arabica coffee by 2025. 

Since 2021, Green Coffee Company has been strengthening its direct-to-consumer model – cutting out intermediaries in order to pay a better price to its farmers. After selling directly to US importers and exporting green coffee to European markets, the business launched its specialty Abira Coffee brand online in the US at the end of 2022 which it sells to small to mid-size roasters and regional distributors.