Sahra Nguyen: Founder of Nguyen Coffee Supply
In 2016, Sahra Nguyen noticed that Vietnamese iced coffee was becoming popular in America, but never actually made with Vietnamese coffee beans. She wondered if Vietnam didn’t produce much coffee, but was shocked to discover that Vietnam is the second-largest coffee producing country in the world. Sahra realized that Vietnam’s coffee beans had been rendered invisible in the coffee world - just like she had felt invisible growing up in majority-white spaces. Sahra wanted to change this, so she started Nguyen Coffee Supply. Nguyen Coffee Supply is the first specialty Vietnamese coffee importer and roaster in the US and has been featured on the Drew Barrymore show, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal.
I spoke with Sahra about the alienation she felt growing up from events like pajama day, how youth activism shaped the way she felt about her Asian American identity, and how she’s working to change the narrative around Vietnamese coffee beans.
Photo by Erics Kun
Rebecca: Can you share with me how your family came to the United States?
Sahra: My parents are both refugees from Vietnam. They didn’t meet until after they both came to the US, but they have similar experiences. During the Vietnam War, their families went to the outskirts to avoid the war, and growing up, my parents would hear bombs dropping in the distance. When they were around 18 years old, they both tried to escape Vietnam by boat. It took them each several attempts before they were able to escape, and they spent two months or so on the boat. They landed in refugee camps in Hong Kong and after a year or two, they were both sponsored to come to the US. They met in Boston in their early 20s.
My parents were the only ones from their families who came to the US and they were refugees, so they literally came with nothing besides some clothes. My dad went to vocational school to learn to paint houses, and my mom worked as a tailor and then at a laundromat. In the 1990s, my parents eventually saved enough for my mom to start her own laundromat and for my dad to start his own house painting business, followed by a floor sanding business.
Rebecca: Can you share about your upbringing, especially as it relates to your Asian American identity?
Sahra: I grew up in Boston, where I wasn’t in an ethnic enclave or around a lot of other Asian Americans. I spent the first few years in Roslindale, which is a very diverse community with a lot of immigrant families. There were a lot of Latinx families, and we were one of two or three Asian American families on the block. Down the street there was a Cambodian family, whose parents were survivors from the genocide. The mother of this family became my babysitter and started taking care of me when I was 3 months old, since both of my parents had to work. They became my second family. When I was five, we moved to Hyde Park where our neighbors were pretty diverse but we were the only Asian family in the neighborhood. I’m so grateful I grew up around a lot of immigrant families, because that’s where my understanding of building solidarity across cultures comes from.
Growing up, there was always a handful of Asian American students in my classes. Even at a young age, I noticed I was different from most of my classmates because I was Vietnamese. My mom dressed me in boyish clothes and gave me a bowl haircut with sideburns. This made me insecure, because all the girls around me had long blonde or brown hair. My facial features were also different from everyone else’s. When my parents would come and pick me up from school, I could tell that they interacted with teachers differently than other parents did. My parents spoke broken English, and my mom had her own bowl haircut. At this point, my parents had been in the US for less than 10 years.
One specific memory that made me feel alienated from my classmates was pajama day in preschool. My teacher told us it was pajama day that Friday. When I went home and asked my parents and sister what that meant, no one knew. We didn’t have internet at the time and I didn’t want to ask my teacher. I figured it was a holiday, so I should dress up. I dressed up in my favorite outfit, and when I walked into school that Friday, my heart sank. I saw everyone in their pajamas with their stuffed animals, blankies, and slippers while I was dressed up. Once again, I looked different from everyone. My teacher asked if I had forgotten it was pajama day, so I pretended I had. I was so crushed and embarrassed and angry. Moments like that continued happening throughout elementary school, middle school, and high school.
Rebecca: How did the way you felt about being Asian American evolve as you got older?
Sahra: I was really lucky, because I found youth activism when I was a sophomore in high school. I joined a youth organizing group in Boston called the Coalition for Asian Pacific American Youth; it was housed on the campus of UMass Boston inside the Asian American Studies program. Through this program, I received a lot of mentorship and attended workshops on Asian American history and social movements in the US. We studied topics like the Black Panther Party and the Black Power Movement, and we unpacked the history of oppression in the US.
This was completely life-changing for me. I finally had the political and social context and the language to describe how I had felt as a kid. It was so empowering and sparked my lifelong commitment of bringing our stories to the world and being an advocate for my community. I was involved with this organization for three years. We organized youth conferences and workshops and talked about social justice issues through organized rallies. That was where I found my voice. I applied to UCLA as an Asian American Studies major to continue my path of critical consciousness and became a student activist on and off campus.
Rebecca: When you were growing up, were you aware of what your parents had gone through to immigrate to the US?
Sahra: I definitely started thinking about it in high school, because of my involvement with youth activism. We learned a lot about Asian American history, so that naturally sparked my curiosity in learning about my parents’ immigration journeys. But to be honest, my parents and I didn’t talk much about it in high school. I’ve gathered bits and pieces of their story over time. I learned about the US’s involvement in the Vietnam War, the refugee resettlement program, and the secret war in Laos, and this provided context for my parents’ journeys. Learning about these events gave me a sense of pride and appreciation for my parents, but also a sense of anger at how oppressive and imperialist the US has always been and the harm that’s created for my community.
My mom doesn’t like to talk about certain parts of her history, because she says it’s too painful to remember. She just wants to remember the good times now. As the child of refugees, I want to document all these stories, but also respect people’s experiences if they don’t want to talk about it.
Rebecca: Can you tell me about how you started Nguyen Coffee Supply?
Sahra: I’ve always thought about building different businesses, and I became more serious about it in 2016. At the time, I noticed Vietnamese food and culture was having a major moment in mainstream America and gathering more attention. In particular, I noticed that Vietnamese iced coffee was becoming trendy and showing up in many non-Vietnamese restaurants and cafes. But I became frustrated, because every time I was in a non-Vietnamese cafe and ordered a Vietnamese iced coffee, it would taste terrible. I would ask baristas what kind of beans they were using, and they’d explain that they were actually Ethiopian or Colombian or Brazilian. I thought this was such a lazy way to bring diversity to their menus and problematic for so many reasons. It’s false advertising and misleading consumers about what Vietnamese coffee tastes like. It’s also rendering the actual producers of these beans invisible; these cafes are taking away the credit of the farmers, whether they’re from Ethiopia, Colombia, or Brazil. These cafes want to profit off the cultural cache of these places, but they’re unwilling to do it with cultural integrity. The producers of Vietnamese coffee and culture do not benefit from this transaction at all.
This all infuriated me, so I started doing some research. I realized I couldn’t find a fresh roasted premium single origin Vietnamese coffee bean anywhere in the market. I would search all the supermarkets and websites of the major craft roasters, and no one was offering it. I found this really interesting and wondered if maybe Vietnam didn’t produce coffee. But as I did my research, I was shocked to discover that Vietnam is the second-largest coffee producing country in the world. People all around the world drink their coffee, but just don’t know it. I thought this was insane and realized that it’s because of a lack of transparency, visibility, and representation. Vietnam’s coffee beans had been rendered invisible in the coffee world - just like I had felt invisible growing up.
If you want to change something, you have to be the change, especially if it’s directly related to how your community is being shared and represented. I saw that this was a problem, and I wanted to try and solve it. I can’t expect someone who’s not from my community to have the same level of understanding and cultural integrity needed to build this company.
Sahra Nguyen visiting coffee farms in Vietnam. Photo by Erics Kun
Rebecca: How did your parents as well as the general population react when you started Nguyen’s Coffee Supply?
Sahra: My parents were super supportive from the beginning. Beforehand, I was a freelance filmmaker and writer for six years, so my parents felt like my path was unstable. I was producing great work, but it was unstable financially, mentally, and emotionally. My parents also didn’t quite understand that profession; they only understand either working for a company or starting your own company. When I started my company, they were supportive and ecstatic, because it was something they could understand. Seeing my parents as business owners, especially when I was younger, gave me the desire to have that for myself. I’m proud that they were able to start their own businesses after being in the US for just a few years. Seeing my parents’ sheer grit and determination gave me a lot of my own work ethic.
In the beginning, Nguyen Coffee Supply faced so much stigma from people in the coffee community. They were fixated on the narrative that Vietnamese coffee is cheap and gross. It was wild to me how strong the disdain for Vietnamese coffee was in the western coffee community, when so many of them had never even tasted it or been abroad to the farms like I have. This reaction made me feel intimidated at first, but also gave me more fuel.
I knew that specialty coffee isn't just something you drink. Specialty coffee is a collective effort from people all along the supply chain to improve lives and build a more sustainable and equitable world. Specialty coffee as it exists today didn’t just happen, because the farmers said they had a specialty coffee. Scientists and agricultural producers worked together with farmers to grow a better product. When it came to Vietnam, no one was willing to get these principles out. People immediately wrote off Vietnam and boxed it into its historical coffee experience, which has been more commercialized for cheap coffee consumption. While there’s some truth to this, it can change. Perpetuating old narratives and stereotypes about Vietnamese coffee is harmful to the people behind the world’s second largest coffee production and Robusta coffee growers worldwide - it bars people from the opportunity to advance their lives. The pattern of devaluing Asian food, coffee and culture is directly related to devaluing Asian lives. This needs to change.
In terms of the public reaction, people love our Robusta coffee. We have 1500+ reviews on our website and 95% of them are five stars. In general, we’re not saying Robusta is better than Arabica, but we do deserve diversity and different narratives, because our consumers are diverse. People deserve to determine for themselves how they like Robusta compared to Arabica. In the coffee industry, as with other industries, there are gatekeepers who will say that 100% Arabica is the standard for premium coffee. But those are just narratives that benefit some people at the expense of others, and that’s what happens when there are only a few, non-diverse people creating the products that shape the coffee industry. I want to help Robusta coffee beans get more representation, because I believe Vietnamese Robusta is the future of specialty coffee. Robusta coffee beans are easier to farm, and they’re more robust and less volatile than Arabica. We are huge champions of Robusta, which has been deliberately excluded from specialty coffee.
Sahra Nguyen visiting coffee farms in Vietnam. Photo by Erics Kun
Rebecca: What are your short-term and long-term goals for Nguyen Coffee Supply?
Sahra: My short-term goal is to make Vietnamese coffee more accessible to people starting with those who live in New York City. Right now we’re primarily e-commerce, and I’d love to be on the shelves in more supermarkets.
Our long-term goal is to bring Vietnamese coffee culture to as many people around the world as possible. Right now, we generally don’t talk about the culture that surrounds our coffee beans. We don’t even talk about Ethiopian or Brazilian coffee culture enough. I want to build a people-centered coffee company where the people and culture are included in the compensation and conversation of the coffee. Italian coffee culture is enjoyed around the world with the espresso machine. I envision that same scale for Vietnamese coffee culture and the phin brewing method. I want to help Vietnamese farmers convert their current farming land from a cheaper commercial production to a more premium specialty production. That kind of change takes time through education and doesn’t happen immediately. It involves changing the agricultural practices, the type of fertilizer used, switching to organic practices, and teaching farmers how to handpick the ripe cherries. This also makes their land more sustainable for future farming; for the farmers, it’s risky to switch over to specialty farming if they’re not guaranteed buyers. We are building that awareness and demand for specialty coffee. I can work directly with the farmers to help them convert their land and guarantee a certain demand. It’s a collective investment. With any industry, cheap products have a human cost to them. I want to change the way we think about coffee, so that we can improve the lives of the farmers on the other end of the supply chain.
The more we can shift the narrative around Vietnamese coffee and grow the awareness for Vietnamese coffee culture, the more opportunities we have to create economic advancement in Vietnam and Robusta growers worldwide. Our mission with Vietnam will have a ripple effect on Robusta farmers around the world. This is how we create a sustainable and equitable world together.
Sahra Nguyen roasting Vietnamese coffee in Brooklyn. Photo by Erics Kun