Vietnamese girl with a mission to bring home coffee to the US: Determined to demand justice for Vietnamese farmers on the way to the world

Coffee is a popular drink not only in Vietnam but around the world. The taste may be different, but the spirit is still an “irresistible” drink for many people.

Vietnamese people in the US are obsessed with coffee

Vietnam is the second largest coffee producer in the world, everyone knows that. In the distant US, people enjoy a delicious cup of coffee grown by the hands of Vietnamese farmers.

But few people know where the thing they sip every morning comes from. And that is the reason for the Nguyen Coffee Supply coffee brand to be born. This brand belongs to a girl of Vietnamese origin named Sarah Nguyen (born and raised in Boston, Massachusetts, USA).

Portrait of a Vietnamese girl with a passion for coffee in her hometown.

With all her love and self-respect for Vietnamese agricultural products, this girl has done something unthinkable in a bustling, bustling place like New York City (USA). Sarah Nguyen brought coffee beans grown in Da Lat, Vietnam to the US and then found a way to roast them exactly to the customer’s preferences.

Then, all difficulties and efforts were exchanged with the trust and appreciation of both “connoisseurs” of coffee or easygoing people.

In 2020, the Start Up page (a website about young entrepreneurs starting a business) had an interview with Sarah Nguyen. From there, one has a deeper insight into the mind of a Vietnamese girl who loves the taste of her homeland.

Sarah Nguyen – Vietnamese in the US successfully started a business with the taste of home

Below is an excerpt of a conversation with Sarah Nguyen:

Hello Sarah Nguyen! Tell us about the journey you founded the Nguyen Coffee Supply brand?

I am a Vietnamese-American woman born and raised in Boston, Massachusetts. I majored in Asian American Studies and World Arts & Cultures at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

As a coffee drinker like everyone else, I belong to the sloppy group that doesn’t have a coffee scale or any understanding of the art of latte. As a consumer, I feel that the coffee industry has fostered an elite culture rooted in the elite. But it didn’t impress me.

At Nguyen Coffee Supply, we foster an inclusive coffee culture rooted in personalization, where everyone’s coffee experience counts. You love bodega coffee, great! I like to use a scale to measure coffee, that’s fine! There’s no right or wrong here, no better or worse – we all simply find coffee good.

More specifically, I noticed that there are no businesses that provide high-class Vietnamese-class pre-roasted coffee beans.

As someone who has enjoyed Vietnamese coffee during family visits, I know how delicious and wonderful Vietnamese coffee can be. I couldn’t find any Vietnamese beans among the 30-40 brands in any supermarket in New York City. That’s when I decided to start importing coffee and roasting it myself.

With a mission to transform the coffee industry through diversity, inclusion and transparency, Nguyen Coffee Supply is the first Vietnamese specialty coffee importer and roaster in the US, specializing in providing robusta coffee – a strong and delicious coffee with unique benefits. In it, including impressive indicators such as: twice as much caffeine, 2 times more antioxidants, 60% less sugar and 60% less fat than Arabica coffee.

We have faced many challenges in the robusta coffee market. Since the inception of Nguyen Coffee Supply, we have found that 75% of our customers prefer robusta over arabica.

This is not to say that one bean is better than another because coffee beans do not live in a hierarchy and we do not promote a hierarchical culture in coffee. Instead, it points to the fact that we all deserve more variety, in terms of service, in product quality.

In April 2019, Sarah Nguyen opened Cafe Phin stall inside An Choi restaurant on the Lower East Side, Manhattan, New York. Her stall specializes in serving Vietnamese-style brewed coffee, using beans that combine robusta and arabica.

What has Nguyen Coffee Supply done to gain the trust of customers?

We innovate by choosing to do what no other manual coffee roaster wants to do. It is self-roasting Robusta coffee beans brought from Vietnam.

While the entire coffee industry is focusing in one direction: being arabica beans from Africa and South America, we are moving in another. It’s robusta beans from Vietnam.

Vietnam is the 2nd largest coffee producer in the world, which of course means that Vietnam contributes to the worldwide coffee drinking experience. But often people don’t know they are consuming coffee grown in Vietnam.

We are proud of robusta beans and believe that robusta is the future of specialty coffee.

We are also working to increase economic opportunities for Vietnamese farmers by working with them to improve production and transition from commercial farming to premium farming.

Farmers will have a “fairer” income through a direct commercial relationship with us. Besides, they also have the confidence to maintain the area of ​​coffee being planted for many years to come. At the same time ensure business – sustainable growth.

I realize that the specialty coffee community is always about transparency, but this value does not apply to Vietnamese coffee farmers. I often see cafes advertising “Vietnamese Iced Coffee” on their menus, but they don’t use Vietnamese beans at all.

They usually use some kind of coffee from Africa or South America, add condensed milk, then call it “Vietnamese Iced Coffee”. I find this really unfair to Vietnamese farmers.

How has the Covid-19 pandemic affected your business? How do you cope?

In March 2020, we lost almost all of our revenue from in-store sales, about 35%. We quickly shifted our focus to e-commerce. This is how we continue to maintain and develop the brand.

What tough choices did you have to make, and what were the lessons learned?

Too many tough choices and lessons learned. It is often said that as you grow up, your problems increase with you.

One of the biggest lessons of the past few months has been learning to trust, especially when entering a new experience or relationship. When a new relationship begins, we often feel that trust comes through time and work.

I have learned to trust myself to make the right decisions in getting together with a certain XYZ partner. It is important to nurture relationships from the foundation of TRUST right from the start.

What plans do you have for yourself and Nguyen Coffee Supply in the future?

I deal with stress and anxiety by setting boundaries and protecting my mental and emotional space. At the same time, I seek to create space for myself to clear, meditate, relax, energize, and focus.

Sarah Nguyen does yoga in the morning.

As the company grew, I got busier and busier. I couldn’t make more hours out of my day, so I learned to set boundaries and allocate my time wisely. This means cutting out a lot of the day’s work and tweaking everything.

Competitors with Nguyen Coffee Supply are all well-known brands, including Blue Bottle, La Colombe and Stumptown. I believe they will soon be ahead of the Southeast Asian wave and launch Vietnamese specialty coffee beans when they see the wave that we are driving.

The way we keep the game going and lead the way for the Vietnamese coffee movement is through authenticity. No amount of R&D money or brand ambassadors can replicate what we are building at Nguyen Coffee Supply, which is rooted in real authenticity, social impact. association and community.

Finally, what do you wish for?

We are building the biggest Vietnamese coffee brand in the world. There are many famous legacy coffee brands, from Lavazza to Starbucks, but none of them represent the coffee culture of the world’s second largest coffee producer, Vietnam. It’s time we change that.

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