Vietnam's coffee production and marketing
From: Daniel C. Tsang <dtsang@uci.edu>
Reply-To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Date: Mon, Feb 11, 2008 at 5:53 PM
Here's a view from a independent coffee house owner who has since abandoned Starbucksization... Martin Diedrich of Kean Coffee (and the founder of Diedrich's Coffee) talks in this interview with me today (it includes a discussion on how Vietnam became a major coffee producer in the world, selling "robusta" -- low-grade coffee and in the process throwing lots of fine coffee growers out of business elsewhere; and on the marketing of Vietnamese instant coffee in the U.S.).
FYI, another opinion online is this note here: "Vietnam coffee industry: Learning from the Past": http://www.new-agri.co.uk/02-6/develop/dev04.html
The show info follows:
The Passion & Politics of Coffee
For Subversity's 11 February 2008 show at 9 am on KUCI, 88.9 fm in Orange County, Calif., we talked with Martin Diedrich, the founder and master roaster of Kean Coffee in Newport Beach. Best known for Diedrich's Coffee which he ran for many years, Diedrich grew up in Guatemala, where his family owned a small coffee farm. He founded the first Diedrich Coffee in Costa Mesa in 1984. Under his direction, Diedrich Coffee became well-known as an OC institution. In its new permutation, Kean Coffee (named after his son), Diedrich attempts to continue social responsibility and community values that he believes a social entrepreneur must commit himself to.
We talked about the Starbucks, the Irvine Company, and how to maintain an independent and unique coffeeshop amidst all this homogenization and Starbucksization. We also discussed how Vietnam entered the world coffee market and what is fair trade coffee.
For more information, see:
Kean Coffee: www.keancoffee.com
Selected Articles in OC Weekly:
Coffee. Talk. No. 9: Kean Coffee keeps it real in this mixed-up, crazy corporate world, by Nick Schou.
'Back to Square One': Martin Diedrich Celebrates the Death of His Family's Coffee Chain, by Nich Schou.
A Reality Shrine for a Wired World: The Year in Coffeehouse Founder Carl Diedrich, by Nathan Callahan
The Politics of Food show on KUCI
An interview with coffee guru Martin Diedrich about his new Coffeehouse in Costa Mesa named after his son Kean. 2/9/06
To listen to the entire 11 February 2008 Subversity show, click here (or paste into browser): http://kuci.org/~dtsang/subversity/Sv080211.mp3
dan--
Daniel C. Tsang
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From: Sarah Grant <sarahggrant@gmail.com>
Reply-To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Date: Mon, Feb 11, 2008 at 11:23 PM
Dear Dan and others interested in Vietnamese coffee,
Thanks for the interview and links. The "Learning from the Past" article is written by Jan von Enden who is now working for EDE Americas but definitely kicked off a lot of the coffee consulting and rural coffee development projects in Vietnam in the late 90s. If you're interested in more recent or "trade oriented" news articles related to the Vietnamese coffee industry, The Coffee Tea and Trade Journal maintains a mediocre search engine on their archives page:
http://www.teaandcoffee.net/archives/
Out of the trade journals I've collected over the past couple years, Vietnam's precarious position in the world market is often mentioned in brief but suggestive columns. The International Coffee Organization also posts the occasional update on the Vietnamese coffee market, price prospects, and news from the London futures market. In fact, the ICO occasionally posts interviews with VICOFA or other state representatives in the coffee industry: http://www.ico.org/
Cheers,
Sarah
Sarah G. Grant
MA Southeast Asian Studies
Ph.D. Student, Cultural Anthropology
University of California, Riverside
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