Mystic Coffee

Mystic Monk Coffee is a company founded by the Carmelite Order of the Catholic Church in Clark, Wyoming. The Coffee company was built in response to the Order’s need of funds for a new location. The Carmelites was formed by men who traveled to the Holy Land as pilgrims and crusaders and had chosen to remain near Jerusalem to seek God. Carmelites led a life of solitude, silence, and prayer before being recognized as an order of the Catholic Church in Europe. The Wyoming Carmelite monastery was founded by Father Daniel Mary. Until finding the multi-million-dollar ranch perfect for them, the Carmelites’ in Clark had 13 monks living in very humbly in a small home.

The Organization grew through word of mouth in the Catholic churches. There are 150 million consumers of coffee in America. With Catholicism reaching to 69 million Americans, there is bound to be a large population of overlap. Using an online portal, customers can order premiere coffee from an order of the catholic church to help finance their goals. People feeling like it is a form of charity will even pay more for that same coffee just because it is from a church. This is probably the largest most powerful strength of Mystic Monk Coffee. By establishing itself as a Catholic Church coffee business, they can have Catholics feel more inclined to buy from them than any other coffee source.

Unfortunately, this also limits their customer population. By becoming a business of the church, the organization has also capped their customers to only be catholic coffee consumers. In a word of mouth type of business, unless they can get monks and bishops from multiple churches, the world won’t be able to travel very far. Of course, they have established an online portal and have ads and sponsors which help revenue and allow any human on the planet with internet access to potentially buy the coffee. But most people will turn to the easiest source for their home brewed coffee in supermarkets if they do not feel the influence of the church.

Mystic Monk Coffee can compete with other home bought coffee businesses by providing shipping to their customers who wish to buy from the church. This in a sense is a monopoly for those wishing to only buy from the church. But they do compete with other possible home brought coffee with customers who do not care about buying from the catholic church.

I believe their marketing strategy is what is letting Mystic Monk Coffee from expanding. Word of mouth, though seemingly effective with sales averaging $56,500 per month in their first year while receiving a net profit margin of about 11%, is not the most reliable form of marketing. Word of mouth is more likely to hurt a company’s growth with one bad customer experience than a thousand-good customer experiences. Marketing should be done through the church as a way of charity or should be done through ads in churches or trying to compete with the public and establishing itself as both a church coffee business not limited to Catholics. This way the business can expand to all denominations and not just Catholics greatly increasing their customer pool.