Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Highlands Coffees are here!


In our quest to bring you all the best coffee that can be exported from Vietnam, we are proud to announce our new distributorship in the USA for Highlands Coffee, the fastest-growing producer in Vietnam.

Highlands Coffee shops (~60) are found mostly in the central business districts, tourist destinations and waterfront locations. Highlands is a progressive company with the mission of bringing traditional Vietnamese coffee roasting and serving techniques to the modern world, in vital areas of Southeast Asia and now to the USA and Canada.

We are carrying two coffee ranges from Highlands, including 4 popular roast & ground coffees and 3 truly incredible espressos. The Full City Roast Espresso (Italian style) is our own personal favorite! And the natural water-process DeCaf is exceptional. When we serve it in our test kitchen people agree that it could pass for good non-decaf espresso in most coffeehouses.

We are featuring the coffees also in a Highlands version of the Ultimate Coffee Kit (in samples and gifts) and in a discounted sampler on the main Highlands shopping page.

Highlands is great coffee-- if you love the taste of cafe coffee in Vietnam, you should try it! And if you are an espresso fan, these espressos may become your new favorites.

Monday, October 12, 2009

New coffees arriving

We are excited to see so many new coffees arriving this week and next.

We have flown in a new shipment of Liberica, Liberica/Excelsa Blend, and Coffee Alamid from the Philippines, arriving tomorrow on October 13th. Finally, this long-awaited coffee will be available in quantities for general sale on our website, ultra-fresh due to air freight expediting. We had an advanced shipment of the Liberica, a once-vanishing coffee species, in-house last month and it sold out in two days through our exclusive customer mailing list. We hope to have the coffees up on the website in the next couple of days.

We have ordered 30 ESE pod brewing machines for test marketing of our new office/bakery/restaurant coffee service and these are also arriving this week, along with Splendour Coffee's exeptional Classic Blend of Indonesian Java Highland Estate mixture of Arabica and Robusta. This is one of the company's "house coffees" that is supplied with the state of the art coffee vending machines that actually grind a fresh cup and brew it while you wait. This blend scored very high with our test group in open office hours and we had many requests to carry the coffee, so we have purchased several cases to make it available to our general market.

Next we have the new shipment of Nacha Thai coffee, the incredible rich and fragrant Arabica Typica-based Original and the Typica/Catimor blend called Classic. These coffees are the new production of the coffee that won Best Asian Coffee in Long Beach in 2007, beating Kona and other competitors for the title. A little darker in roast than the original coffee, we have tested the new lots with our local fans and they are thrilled with the new blends. Nacha is also supplying the popular Souvenir Canister that we carried briefly last spring, which sold out quickly.

Finally, we are getting in a new shipment of Trung Nguyen whole bean along with our new line of Tam Chau teas and 4 styles of Phin filters. For years we have looked for a wholesale supplier of larger Phin filters, for our customers who want to brew a cup of 8 or 10 ounces instead of the standard 6 ounces, and now we will be carrying all three sizes. We also have a new shipment of the screw-down filters for those who prefer that type.

Now we just have to try to keep from being totally over-caffeinated as we sample all the new coffees... it's a rough job, but somebody has to do it!