Cafe Blue boss holds pioneering dialogue with students at St George’s College lecture

Years ago, when David Sharp, managing director of Cafe Blue, was offered a once-in-a-lifetime meeting with one of Jamaica’s top hoteliers, he was so excited that he darted four hours from Kingston to Montego Bay, St James, for the meeting.

This was before Highway 2000, and an embarrassed Sharp had to make the long, winding trip back on the ‘old road’, laughing at his folly as the hotelier was never in Montego Bay. Instead, he was metres away from where Sharp had spoken to him on the phone in Kingston.

The next day, in a five-minute meeting, Sharp was given an ultimatum: supply coffee of the highest quality consistently to the hotel’s chain, and he must do so with the best customer service and best prices possible. He had one shot; one misstep and he was out. That’s it, he said.

Fast-forward to the present day, and Sharp’s Cafe Blue is not only the exclusive supplier of coffee to that hotel chain locally and regionally, but the company has also expanded into the markets of locally produced and award-winning coffee syrups and chocolates.

The business has also soared, with Sharp looking to open Cafe Blue’s eighth outlet – all accomplishments he attributes to a never-ending desire to produce ‘something of excellence’, and unbending teamwork and resilience.

However first, he and his associates had to prepare themselves for that breakthrough, he told students who attended yesterday’s 2025 St George’s College Lecture Series, dubbed ‘Pioneers of Tomorrow; a Knight’s Dialogue’. Sharp was the lecturer.

THE CONCEPT OF TEAM

“One of the pillars that has been very important to us as a company is the concept of team. [Likewise] St George’s could never have achieved what it has unless it had an amazing set of people,” stressed Sharp. “There were numerous team members within our company that brought the passion, dedication, and hard work required to build a company of the size it is.”

“In the end, I played a very small role in that success. You can’t build anything of scale by yourself... . It was done by a team of people, and I am only a part of that team,” he charged. Sharp, managing director of the umbrella Coffee Traders Limited (CTL), a fully integrated coffee business, in which he has more than 35 years’ experience. CTL is the largest exporter of the beloved Blue Mountain coffee in Jamaica, while Cafe Blue is Jamaica’s largest indigenous coffee shop chain.

Sharp yesterday took those in attendance, particularly high school students, their teachers, and parents, on a journey of resilience, explaining his battles with more established coffee competitors, and with natural disasters such as Hurricane Gilbert, which in 1988 devastated the island and along with it his father’s business.

The disaster pushed him from a place of comfort and security, from a high school and college student who was only making the grades to pass the lessons, to an entrepreneurship guru.

“One big baller can win a match but it takes a team to win trophies. That is something special about St George’s. Something that you have learned, and something that you must carry forward with you in your future endeavours,” he said. “Make no mistake, in business or any other enterprise, it is about winning. Everything that you do when you go out in the working world you have to win, and you have to be prepared.”

“I want to enforce on you the importance of being ready to win. Because when you are not winning, somebody else is,” Sharp told the audience, noting that the global marketplace is increasingly competitive daily.

Acting principal of the high school Suzette Mullings-Douglas, following the lecture, said she appreciated Sharp’s candid, local delivery, and hopes that it resonates with the students.

“I hope they really realise that opportunities are out there for them to make it in whatever field they want and that they can overcome any challenge once they put their mind to it,” she told the newspaper, while in her introductory speech urged them to follow their passions.

St George’s College is celebrating 175 years of existence, and the lecture, which forms part of the festivities, is the first of three. The others are slated for later this year.

corey.robinson@gleanerjm.com