Thirty years of a Vietnamese coffee name, counted rather than claimed.
In 1979 a family left a village in Ninh Hoa and crossed a mountain pass into the red earth of Dak Lak. Sixteen years later, in a provincial town where the world's coffee was grown but nobody's coffee was named, a medical student walked away from his degree and started roasting beans in a hand-cranked drum.
This is the record of what happened next: a hand-built roaster, a few kilos of beans bought on trust, a shop on Nguyen Kiem street that gave coffee away for ten days, an instant coffee that was put to a blind test against a global brand, a museum, a farm in the highlands, and finally a name on shop fronts in Westminster, San Jose, Portland, Philadelphia and Houston.
It is also a record of what is not known. Three different years are given for when he entered university. Two different dates are given for when the company began. Sources disagree on how many friends signed the 1996 application, and on how many shops now stand on American ground. This book does not resolve those gaps by choosing the version that reads best. It sets them side by side and says which document each one rests on.
Every figure here is dated to the moment it was stated. Announced targets are marked as announced targets. Accounts given by the participants are marked as accounts. Where the recorder went to a place and looked, that is marked too.
Twenty-seven chapters, five parts, 1971 to 2026.
This book is an independent work of record. It is not authorized, sponsored, or endorsed by Trung Nguyen Group, Trung Nguyen Legend, or Mr. Dang Le Nguyen Vu.