Mystic Monk Coffee

Mission and Vision

Carmelite Order of Monks

Mission

Carmelite Order of Monks devotes themselves to a life of prayer, worship, solitude

they also need to understand the reality of obedience, chastity, and poverty.

Vision

To be able to transform the small brotherhood home of the Carmelite monks into
a new 500-acre Mount Carmelite monastery in Wyoming Rockies, under the glory of God.

Mystic Monk Coffee

Mission

To provide funds to the Carmelite Order of Monks for the building of a new
monastery through selling high quality fair trade Arabica and Arabica seeds to the US
Catholic population.

Vision

To be able to attract US Catholic who are coffee drinkers into purchasing the Mystic
Monk Coffee.

Has Father Daniel Mary set definite objectives and performance targets for achieving his
vision?

The goal of Father Daniel Mary is to acquire $8.9 million to purchase the Irma Lake Ranch.
The case indicates that to acquire this the monks would rely on the donations, profits generated
by the Mystic Monk Coffee operations, and a group of Cody business owners. This set of goals
are not definite since it is silent on what are the short and long term objectives and performance
targets to achieve this vision.

How would you classify Father Prior's strategy, based on Porter's generic strategies? How
would Mystic Monk secure a competitive advantage from the strategy?

To achieve Father Prior’s vision, he established the Mystic Monk Coffee which employs a
focused differentiation strategy. The competitive advantage of the Mystic Coffee is the use of high
quality fair trade Arabica and fair trade/ organic Arabica beans which distinguishes them from the
other businesses rather than the use of less flavorful Robusta beans that makers of value brands
use. Additionally, they also produce whole bean and ground caffeinated and decaffeinated
varieties in different roasts and flavor.
 In terms of marketing and connectivity with consumers, Mystic coffee utilizes the online
platform through the use of websites for a more convenient access to their market. Mystic coffee
greatly relies on word of mouth among loyal consumers. They were also able to establish a tagline
of “use their Catholic coffee dollar for Christ and his Catholic church.” Since Mystic Monk Coffee
specified its target market to be the US Catholic population who are coffee drinkers and wish to
support the monastery’s mission. This gives the Carmelite Monks a huge population of consumers
which is 69 million Americans which is four times than the second-largest Christian denomination
in US.

The specialty coffee industry has grown 5.2 billion dollars within the past seven years
showing that this company has the opportunity to grow even more because the industry is growing
rapidly. To secure a competitive advantage from the strategy Mystic Monk should think of ways
to continue to attract more customers by highlighting how buying their product could help their
monastery. This can be done through an increase of marketing efforts to reach a wider market
across Wyoming. Additionally, it seems that only Father Mary is thinking of ways to achieve the
vision. I suggest that the Monastery should have a clear hierarchy and division of labor. Also, the
Monks are not allowed to go outside the monastery so business expansion might be difficult, the
monastery should hire non-monk individuals to do this kind of job.

What is MMC's business model? Assess the value proposition and the profit proposition.

Mystic Coffee has partnered with UPS for the delivery of their product and affiliate sites to
further promote their product. Mystic Coffee produces high quality and a wide variety of coffee to
US Catholics, which was stated in the previous number. Aside from their coffee business, their
website also shows products such as T-shirts, gift cards, CDs featuring the monastery’s Gregorian
chants and coffee mugs. To produce their coffee Mystic Monk use their roaster but its production
capacity is limited.

MMC’s target market is US Catholics; they have a strong value proposition with their
customers which is evident with their tagline “use their Catholic coffee dollar for Christ and his
Catholic church”. This kind of ideology will satisfy their customers in the sense that (1) it is a high
quality product (2) buying the product would provide positive reinforcement to these Catholics that
they are able to help the cause of the monastery.

MMC showed a high cost structure, this is highly attributable to their incapacity to increase
their production because of their limited time, lack of labor and limited capability of their roaster
production. Monthly sales of $ 56,000, does not include expenses, a month may be hard for MMC
to reach their quota of $ 8.9 million in a short period of time, which by then someone else might
be able to buy the property. Majority of the revenue of MMC is deducted due to their expenses
this should be looked at by Father Mary. Overall, the current business model of MMC is the reason
on why their profitability is limited. Father Mary should address the current situation.