On July 14, for the first time in its history, the city of Santos will celebrate the Day of the Coffee Broker. To celebrate the date, the Coffee Museum, an institution of the Ministry of Culture, has developed a virtual exhibition in honor of this historical subject of crucial importance in the history of coffee and the city of Santos. This day was chosen because, in 1914, a law was signed establishing the Santos Coffee Exchange which mandated the presence of an official broker to mediate coffee negotiations.

     However, the job of the broker had various functions besides the purchase of coffee.

     Because of the distance and difficulty of communications between production areas and the ports there was a need for an intermediary to resolve issues between the two. Initially, this role was performed by the commissioners of coffee who were trustworthy farmers, whose duties also included funding sales of coffee from the producers to the exporter. These commissioners, as well as commercial firms and warehouse owners, could have been called brokers.

     With the growth of negotiations there was a need for another type of intermediary in exporting centers such as Rio de Janeiro and Santos. these coffee brokers, called "drones," were present in the square and represented, without exclusivity, different buyers or sellers of coffee, earning a commission on the traded value. They were also important sources of information, knowing the daily prices and the market situation in the Square before the official disclosures.

     Even after the job of the commissioner of coffee was eliminated, these brokers continued to perform different functions such as representing clients from the interior, meeting with other brokers in their offices, reselling coffee for export, working in the Coffee Exchange or trading in Commodity Exchanges.