They were called brokers from the interior, often those who owned offices and dealt directly with the client that had the coffee to sell, be it producer, cooperative, or at other times, truck drivers or coffee merchants. For about 20 or 30 years, the city of Santos has had several General Warehouses. These brokers receiving the coffee from the interior would take the sample by way of a delivery order.

To know exactly what they were selling, brokers had to have equipment and expertise needed to sort the coffee by type and quality.

All brokerage offices, even mine has the classification system, as does any exporter. The testing room and other things always existed for almost any broker, and still does today. I learned testing, at the time, with great teachers who were kind of like my professors of testing, not for sales, sales I already knew how to do. I learned how to test with great people, classifiers that are no longer living. The system was practically the same as the exporter’s, when you sold the coffee you knew exactly what you were selling, what was the taste, the details and what type, all you had to learn was to classify, and to drink it. You couldn’t sell a commodity if you didn’t clearly know what it was you were selling. It made no sense. (Fernando Feliciano Suplicy, p.1 and 2).