Sahra Nguyen on Vietnamese Coffee and Redefining the Meaning of Specialty [109]

Take a minute to think, “what does specialty coffee mean to you?” If you work in coffee, it might mean one thing, if you don’t work in coffee, it might mean another. The word “specialty” implies something unique, different, something that makes it different than just regular coffee, right? For something to be a specialty item, something else that’s decidedly NOT specialty has to exist. Today, we’re going to break down what specialty is—and what makes a thing special—with Sahra Nguyen, founder of Nguyen Coffee Supply in Brooklyn, New York. Sahra was a filmmaker and owned a restaurant in New York, and often found herself in coffee shops that had some of the “signals” of specialty coffee. Coffees from a single origin, for example. She’d see coffees from Ethiopia, Honduras, Indonesia, and wonder, what about Vietnam? Sahra is Vietnamese and would see restaurants and cafes advertise Vietnamese Iced Coffee, but oftentimes found that people didn’t use coffee from Vietnam in their drinks. As she questioned this—why would a coffee drink claiming to be from Vietnam not have coffee grown in Vietnam in it—she encountered some of the questions we have about specialty. Vietnam is the second-largest producer of coffee, and the first largest producer of robusta coffee, so why couldn’t she order a coffee from Vietnam in her local cafe? Coffees from Vietnam don’t get talked about in the specialty market. You don’t see them winning barista competitions, and you likely can’t order them at most cafes. But if you’ve had instant coffee, Folgers, any sort of diner coffee—you’ve had Vietnamese coffee. So what is it? Why isn’t it talked about in the specialty world? In this episode, we explore what it means for a product to be considered specialty and ask, is specialty inherent, or is it created?