Nguyen Coffee Supply Wants To Create A More Inclusive Coffee Culture
5 mins read
If you do a cursory search of “Vietnamese Iced Coffee” online, you’ll probably find a lot of recipes that use commercial, instant coffee paired with sweetened condensed milk
If you do a cursory search of “Vietnamese Iced Coffee” online, you’ll probably find a lot of recipes that use commercial, instant coffee paired with sweetened condensed milk. However, Sahra Nguyen is working to change people’s preconception that Vietnamese coffee is synonymous with the cheap powdered stuff you’d find in plastic jars or metal tins.
Disappointed in her local cafes’ “Vietnamese iced coffee,” which usually turned out to have dubious ingredients that had nothing to do with the origins of the drink, the filmmaker-writer-activist decided to add another occupation to her resume: entrepreneur. Sahra founded Nguyen Coffee Supply, the first Vietnamese specialty coffee importer and roaster in the United States. Staying true to her cultural roots and desire to honor her heritage, the brand makes it a point to import its beans directly from a 4th-generation Vietnamese farmer before roasting them in New York. Nguyen Coffee Supply now sells three different roasts of its coffee, as well as traditional Phin (pronounced “feen”) filters that have a passionate fanbase.
When Sahra and I chatted over Zoom last month, she quickly rattled off key facts about Vietnamese coffee that she didn’t even know, despite identifying as Vietnamese-American. For example, the country is the second largest coffee producer in the world, and the largest producer of highly caffeinated and resilient robusta beans. To Sahra, her company’s mission is larger than sustainably importing and roasting high quality beans, it’s also about challenging people’s perceptions of Vietnamese and specialty coffee overall. By both modeling the values of ethical direct-trade coffee production and increasing visibility of the producers that actually make the beverage we drink, Sahra hopes Nguyen Coffee Supply will help consumers see the value in not just Vietnamese coffee but also Vietnamese culture.
Read on to hear what Sahra has to say about using Nguyen Coffee Supply’s platform to support social justice, what her favorite blend is, and how she’s creating a more inclusive, people-centric coffee culture.
(This interview has been edited for length and clarity.)
TI: What inspired you to enter the coffee industry?
SN: There were so many cafes who were offering a Vietnamese iced coffee on their menu, but when I would try it, it didn’t taste anything like Vietnamese iced coffee. I’d find out that they made this drink from their house cold brew or espresso from an African or South American country.
I found that to be very problematic, because one, it’s false advertising. It’s miseducating consumers about what a Vietnamese iced coffee actually tastes like. Plus, it’s rendering invisible the actual producers and farmers of the bean that’s being used. Most importantly, we have businesses who want to profit off of the cultural cachet of Vietnam and Vietnamese iced coffee, yet those who are creating the culture were not benefiting from this transaction at all.
And so I started Nguyen Coffee Supply to bring more transparency and representation and visibility to Vietnam as the second largest coffee producing country in the world.
TI: You’ve called out some of the stigma associated with robusta coffee and gatekeeping in coffee culture, what’s been the response to that?
SN: There are lots of folks in the coffee industry who have come out in full support of what we’re building, because they’re like, holy shit, you’re right, what is specialty coffee? We’re challenging people to think about how elitist, classist, and hierarchical a lot of these ideas really are.
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