VietNamNet Bridge – There are three weasel coffee producers in Vietnam, namely Trai Ham, Trung Nguyen and Huyen Thoai Nui. Though taking losses with the luxurious coffee, they still pour more money into its production, hoping to conquer the world with this unique Vietnamese beverage.

Nguyen Quoc Minh, Director of Trai Ham Weasel Coffee Company, was a lawyer when he bought a plot of land in Da Lat to grow roses, his wife’s favorite flower.

Today, the land is a coffee farm, where Minh grows moka coffee, feeds the ripe coffee beans to 140 weasels, and then collects the “specially processed” coffee beans from the weasels to make a kind of high-end product – weasel coffee.

Minh said coffee beans ripen in the months from October to January. The weasels only eat some 20 percent of the selected coffee beans given to them. His annual output of weasel coffee is very modest, about 200 kilos. But with a retail price of VND20 million per kilo, Minh can earn VND4 billion a year.

When asked how he got started, Minh said the first step was the hardest. The Indonesian and domestic civets he fed all died because of the unreasonable feed volumes. Only after a great deal of experimenting did he succeed.

Weasel coffee has been favored by Vietnamese and people all over the world. Minh said he knows of someone in HCM City who took a flight to Da Lat City just to buy one kilo of weasel coffee.

Trai Ham’s coffee is available at Kim Do Hotel’s café in HCM City. Even though he does not advertise the product, his output is not enough to satisfy demand.

Taking loss with weasel coffee

Trai Ham’s products are sold for VND20 million per kilo. Trung Nguyen markets its at VND64 million, while Huyen Thoai Nui’s goes for only VND8-15 million. Notably, Trung Nguyen only makes weasel coffee to orders in limited quantities.

The products advertised as weasel coffee are available at many shops in Da Lat City, and sold for hundreds of thousands of dong. According to Minh, most of it is <not poor | poor-quality> weasel coffee, or coffee made of artificial flavors.

Also according to Minh, all producers are taking a loss with weasel coffee. Trai Ham, for example, is taking loss due to its big initial investment capital of VND40 billion and its big daily expenses.

“We need to sell 80 cups of weasel coffee every day at VND200,000 per cup to get enough money to pay workers. Meanwhile, we can only sell 20-30 cups a day,” he said.

Still making investments in weasel coffee

Though the producers are take a loss, they continue to expand their production scale. That’s because they can see the great potential of the market.

Trai Ham plans to open two cafés in Hollywood, where it will introduce the original weasel coffee of Vietnam. A Japanese partner has suggested cooperating with Trai Ham, while a South Korean company has promised to buy all of Trai Ham’s product.

“Consuming clean, organic products is the growing tendency in developed societies,” Minh said, adding that he plans to harvest 500 kilos of coffee a year instead of his current 200.

NCDT