Page 38 - #58 English

People

Nguyen Tuan Dung Vietnam specialty coffee scene have people to thank
Having rich coffee history and big opportunities,

Vietnam Specialty for bringing and developing the concept in Nam.
Nguyen Tuan Dung is Vetnam specialty cof-
Coffee Pioneer fee pioneer, who not only brought this concept to
his home country, but also is working on creating
a coffee community. Dung has been always in love
with coffee and drinking gallons of it while travel-
ing gave him new prospects after he decided to
quit his business development and consulting job
back in 2012. He always admired coffee scenes of
Australia, Singapore and Hong Kong and after
traveling to these coffee-lovers destinations he
This February we were lucky to visit Vietnam Coffee Festi- decided to open his own place.
val and see how this coffee-producing country has been develop- Workshop was opened in Ho Chi Minh City
ing specialty coffee scene. Vietnam is a really special market for in 2014, before that it was really hard to find a
specialty coffee as its share jumped from 0.1% to 20% in just 30 place to sit and work while having a good cup of
years, what made Vietnam the world’s second largest coffee ex- coffee. That is where name ‘Workshop’ originates,
porter for Robusta.However,Arabica was introduced to Vietnam Dung and his team wanted to create a place where
by French colonials in 1856 and, in the late 1990s, Vietnam first you can come any time to work and enjoy an excel-
announced plans for starting to expand the production of Ara- lent service, of course they do understand that
bica coffee. As for today, Vietnam has increased the production nothing can be perfect but they try to improve
of Arabica to over 1.2 million 60-kilogram bags. Meanwhile, every day. Workshop’s customers are mainly in
Vietnam does have Coffee Association, sponsored by the govern- above-25 age group, as the cafe is located in the
ment, as it is seen as a cash crop for local people. centre area these people move around a lot.

40