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hand-picking, and provides facilities to
process the beans at source to achieve
premium single-origin quality.
Currently, Oriberry sources its high-
quality, premium coffee from local farm-
ers across Vietnam, working throughout
seven provinces from the central north-
ern provinces of Quang Tri and Nghe
An, to the northwest mountainous prov-
inces of Dien Bien and Son La, as well
as the highland provinces of Daklak and
Lam Dong. In total, we work with over
ten different ethnic minority groups.
What sets your coffee apart?
Oriberry single-origin beans offer a
unique taste of Vietnam - a journey for
the taste buds through our various cof-
fee regions, from the mountainous, fer-
tile slopes of Son La, to the rich red soils
of Khe Sanh. Oriberry has an extensive
menu of both traditional Vietnamese
and popular Italian-style drinks. All are
skillfully prepared by our trained baris-
tas and can be enjoyed at one of our
Hanoi stores.
Has Oriberry coffee received any in-
ternational certificates for its quality?
While donor funding helped us to
achieve UTZ certification in 2009, it’s
not a sustainable practice for our farm-
ers. The extra money we pay our farm-
ers for their high-quality coffee goes
towards household bills, school books
and farming equipment; we, nor they,
want to spend it on expensive certifica-
tion programs.
Our projects aim to provide in-
creased opportunities and alleviate
poverty of people in communities dis-
advantaged by geographic remoteness
and ethnic minority background. Our
approach to buying our coffee directly
from the farmer is known as Direct
Trade. It means we know our farmer’s
names, visit their properties and pay a
higher price per kilo which goes directly
into the farmer’s pocket. We’ve chosen
Direct Trade over Fair Trade for several
reasons, with one being the high fees
associated with fair trade certification.
Our farmers find it difficult to see
the benefits of being Fair Trade certi-
fied when the Direct Trade approach
we work with cuts out the high fees and
paperwork. We, and others who prac-
tice Direct Trade, believe our practices
are fair, despite not paying for the Fair
Trade logo for our packaging.
Do you fear competition from big lo-
cal and international coffee chains
such as Vietnam’s Vinacafe, Trung
Nguyen or Highlands?
No I don’t. Vietnamese people have
many different ways to enjoy coffee.
Vietnam has a lot of room for coffee
brands to develop their businesses. I
believe that our premium single-origin
quality coffee has its own position in
the market. Currently, we have only
two cafes in Hanoi, one at 36 Au Trieu
and another at 25 Xuan Dieu.
How would you compare Vietnamese
coffee to that of Brazil?
Vietnam is a small country and on
average, each coffee farmer family has
only one hectare, which is a tenth of
the average in Brazil. A major difference
here is that land is being taken away
from famers. Furthermore, the coffee
varieties in Vietnam are not as good as
those in Brazil. Most of the cultivated
areas here grow Robusta and Arabica
with high productivity, but not very
high quality. However, we’ve been able
to introduce exciting new coffee varie-
ties, such as Typica, into the Vietnam-
ese coffee market.
THE COFFEE CULTURE
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