The brokers' essence was the work at the streets. Even if a great amount of activities took place at the office, by phone or at the Coffee Exchange, brokers always returned to the streets. More than a site of work, it was a place that had its own dynamics, a place of acquaintanceship where they gathered informations.

[...] Few businesses were settled with the delivery of the coffee. It was always done by the difference. I mean, you sell to 'x,' when the settlement month arrives, but instead of delivering it to you, I bye it back and therefore the deal was dead. 100 sold, 100 bought - dead deal. So there was very little delivery of the goods. But it was the way market prices were made, it regulated the market prices. (Alvaro Vieira da Cunha, A., 2011, p.3)

When you bought or sold, you went over ... had a contract that symbolized the purchase you made, technically that was a purchase you could have received and then transferred it to another. If the contract died at 5pm you had to pay the bill. So this how it worked, if you knew that contract was going to come back to your hand, because later you went to someone, who went to another, and then went to another, and passed it to another and finally it would come back to you, then you held this contract for the maximum limit of time, about 10 minutes before 5pm. Then you called your broker and said pass this contract to so and so. He would deliver with no time left and you wouldn’t have to pay the bill. Sometimes it returned to you at an incredible speed because sometimes the person was in the next room and came back. Then you had to keep the bill, or in the opposite case, it stayed in the hand of another. That was the flow of chain of brokers in the late afternoon, and it was an interesting the way it happened, wasn’t it? And the broker would know if it was going back to you or not, because the he was basically making all the connections ... if you did the first deal with someone and that someone wanted to sell to another, and you already had a buyer for him, then you knew where the deal would end up. He knew where the chain would end and he would want it to end up with his best customer, taking the bill from his hand. (Fernando Feliciano Suplicy, p. 5)