"From the farm to the coffee shop"

After two years of negotiations, Pun Coffee Company concluded its first export contract for Arabica Khe Sanh coffee with TL Group LLC, headquartered in the United States, last December. This is not only the specialty coffee of Quang Tri but also the pride of Vietnam.

Ms. Luong Ngoc Tram, Director of Pun Coffee, explained that she and her husband, Mr. Phan Hong Phong, co-founded the Pun Coffee Company in 2019 after 10 years of processing green bean coffee for other businesses.

Instead of collecting and processing coffee on a vast scale, the duo decided to concentrate on the "niche market" of premium coffee beans, specialty coffee, and roasted ground coffee. Ms. Tram explained, "We aim to manufacture specialty coffee in the direction of "from the farm to the cup of coffee," bringing consumers the most delectable specialty coffee bean.

They were confronted with numerous obstacles in the beginning, including the reduction of coffee material area and the usage of pesticides and chemical fertilizers... With a strong determination to build the brand name of Khe Sanh coffee, the couple began urging and persuading coffee growers in Huong Phung commune, Huong Hoa district to change their conventional coffee farming practices, such as ceasing the use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers and properly harvesting coffee, so that the company would agree to purchase the coffee at a price 1.5-2.0 times higher than the market price. More farming households have been persuaded to adopt the new farming model, which is believed to provide long-term benefits and ensure the sustainability of clean coffee products.

Ms. Tram and her husband have established a model linking approximately 45 coffee-farming homes in the communities, the majority of which are ethnic Van Kieu.

The duo invests in a membrane drying system, a system of fresh fruit separators, and a fruit milling machine for clean coffee production to generate standard specialty coffee products; they also attend training courses on the preliminary processing of green coffee beans and coffee roasting, among others. The process of processing specialty coffee is also very laborious.

"After two years of operation, in 2021 we registered the "Vietnam Specialty Coffee 2021" competition and won the First Prize with Natural processed Arabica coffee. Honey processed Arabica coffee also met the specialty coffee requirement. In addition, the product was created by the Quang Tri Specialty Coffee Group of Pun Coffee, and the other three members won the Second Prize as well. The achievements have demonstrated that Quang Tri is a prominent Vietnamese specialty coffee area," Ms. Tram said with pride.

In addition to Arabica catimor coffee with local red fruit, Pun Coffee currently offers robust coffee, blended coffee (Arabica and robusta) for machine, filter, drip – cold brew... In addition to resorts, Shin chain stores, Mountain Perl, Purio, and Huong Viet, Pun Coffee also exports its products to Russia, Japan, and the Netherlands using a closed processing method.

Taking hold of the US market

Pun Coffee Company and TL Group LLC, headquartered in the United States, signed a contract by the end of 2021, following a series of rounds of discussion. According to the contract, Pun Coffee will provide TL Group LLC with two tons of roasted and ground Arabica Khe Sanh coffee beans from the 2021-2022 crop. Between 1 December 2021 and 1 December 2022, TL Group LLC has the exclusive right to distribute roasted and ground Arabica Khe Sanh coffee supplied by Pun Coffee Company on the whole US market.

According to Ms. Tram, to win the contract for exporting Arabica Khe Sanh coffee to the U.S. market, all stages of cultivation, care, and harvest must be strictly controlled. Several samples of green bean coffee and roasted and ground coffee were sent to the US partner for evaluation and evaluation; the labels of the products were also prepared to meet the requirements of the US partner.

Pun Coffee's Arabica Khe Sanh coffee product officially reached the U.S. market in early 2022, after nearly two years of effort to pass the rigorous quality control procedure. Ms. Tram stated that it is not just the glory of Quang Tri specialty coffee but also Vietnamese specialty coffee.

Translated by Linh Linh