Our Story
We were born into a coffee family: coffee growers, coffee producers, and coffee exporters. In essence, our history in coffee derives from two families.
Benjamin Caballero (third from left to right - first row), our maternal great-grandfather, was one of the first coffee growers in Santa Barbara, Honduras, in the early 1920s. He started one of the first coffee cooperatives in Honduras.
In 1955, our father, Roberto Hawit Castro, got a job in the Montaña de las Flores, Yoro, with Hermann Gastel, a coffee producer family of German origin. Without any prior knowledge on the science of coffee, our father worked at this farm for two crops. This was a starting and defining point for his career.
At the age of 21 he began to buy small batches from producers in the Montaña de las Flores and sell it to exporters in San Pedro Sula. Little by little he gathered a team of coffee pickers and provided this service to the producers.
In 1958, Mr. Elias Siwady, a successful merchant, trusted him and lent him some money; with which he began to buy and sell larger quantities of coffee. Alongside his father, Nicolas Hawit Badour, they bought a farm in 1963 and made it their primary center of operations.
In the image above, Nicolas Hawit Badour and Roberto Hawit Castro (from left to right).
Thirteen years later, our father founded his own coffee exporting company, Roberto Hawit y Compañía, where he worked along with his six siblings. They became the leading coffee export company in Honduras and renowned in the world of green coffee in the United States and Europe.
On September 10, 2001, Raul and I (Munir) started Caffex. We deviated from what our father was doing, and we embarked on a new adventure. We believed that the future lay in specialty coffees. That is why we started Caffex, short for Cafés Finos de Exportación (Fine Export Coffees).
Munir and Raul Hawit, Caffex co-founders, pictured above (from left to right).
In 2006, we began to market coffee with certifications such as Rainforest Alliance, Utz Kapeh (now UTZ), Fairtrade and Organics, in addition to working directly with producer organizations and cooperatives.
That same year, our coffee from Finca Santa Martha, won first place of the Cup of Excellence with a wonderful Pacamara.
In recent years we have developed relationships with our entire supply chain, which we are proud to say is highly transparent: all the way from the producer to the roaster. We have had social projects, quality, and special products that we have launched together with roasters and producers.
