How To Disrupt Your Industry | Sahra V. Nguyen | TEDxNYU
when I launched nuyen coffee supply in 2018 the first company's solely dedicated to importing roasting in distributing coffee bees to Vietnam with no prior experience in importing roasting or the coffee industry my friends and family wondered why prior to this I was living in New York City and working as a full-time freelance filmmaker and writer my main topics of coverage were immigration racial justice and creative entrepreneurship so in essence I've always cared about increasing representation and visibility of communities that were historically pushed to margins and working as a full-time freelancer in New York City I drank a lot of coffee and also as a first-generation Vietnamese American I made frequent trips to Vietnam to visit my family abroad and so at a young age I fell in love with Vietnamese coffee as I had experienced it in Vietnam majority robusta slow dripping through a Vietnamese fene filter over the last five years in New York City Vietnamese food and culture was booming with the emergence of new modern restaurants such as DMD Madame Bois and Saigon social finally Vietnamese cuisine was hitting the mainstream headlines even the New York Times personally I was so ecstatic to see my culture represented and celebrated by the masses and on a similar wavelength but slightly lower I noticed that Vietnamese iced coffee who was becoming increasingly trendy the words Vietnamese iced coffee was hitting coffee shops and beverage menus all across the city and I thought well this is so cool people are finally embracing Vietnamese coffee until I tried it and nine out of ten times I was utterly repulsed because what I found was these coffee shops weren't using Vietnamese coffee to make their Vietnamese iced coffee Morton or not these coffee shops been using their house trip or their house cold brew which could have been anything from an Ethiopian beam to a Peruvian being adding condensed milk to it and then calling it Vietnamese iced coffee now not only is this cultural appropriation its mis-education to the consumers because condensed milk doesn't make it Vietnamese using Vietnamese coffee beans makes it Vietnamese coffee and if a business is going to benefit from a culture by using the buzzwords Vietnamese iced coffee the producers of this culture in the producers of Vietnamese coffee beans should be included in the transaction to benefit from the trend as well I felt inspired to do something about this problem so I started to learn as much as I could about Vietnamese coffee in my research I was amazed to discover that Vietnam is the second largest producer of coffee in the world and on top of that Vietnam is the number one producer of robusta beans I couldn't believe that I'd never heard of this facts before more into my research I realized that it was actually pretty difficult for me the consumer to find real Vietnamese coffee beans in the United States at this time the two main options that Vietnamese restaurants were using for their coffee was either jammu 'i'm a product of vietnam usually pre ground and also very well known for including artificial ingredients or the other one was Cafe Du Monde a New Orleans based company offering pre-ground coffee however not providing any information on its website or packaging about where is sources its beans so I realized it was actually really hard for me to find fresh roasted Vietnamese coffee beans anywhere in New York City all of these discoveries from the appropriation to the mis-education to the lack of acces led me to build and launch new you know off resupply in 2016 when I was traveling to Vietnam to visit my family I talked to my my my relatives about this idea to elevate the profile of Vietnamese coffee beans by importing and roasting in Brooklyn one of my aunts said I have a friend who used to work in my company but then left my company to go take over his family coffee farm we booked a ticket to go visit him and a lot I met up with him visited his farms in the rest is history the word disrupter has become such a buzzword in the entrepreneurial landscape that when you imagine a disruptor you often think about a crazy new innovation or a new product that hasn't been done before that has the ability to change the world but what if I told you that the key to disrupting your industry is not to reinvent the wheel but to take control of the wheel and increase transparency this goes for both the creator and the consumer we all have the power to disrupt any industry we care about by prioritizing transparency now earlier when I mentioned that I'd never heard of the fact that Vietnam was the second largest producer of coffee in the world I really wasn't the only one in a survey conducted by the National Coffee Association respondents were asked to identify which countries they associate with the production of coffee 84 percent of respondents stated that they strongly or somewhat associate Colombia with producing coffee this was followed by 60 70 67 percent of people associating Brazil with the production of coffee the lowest number of respondents had only 16% said the associate Vietnam with the production of coffee perception and reality our opposite ends the poll right and not only is Vietnam the second largest producer of coffee in the world the United States is the number one importer of Vietnamese coffee beans in 2017 the u.s. imported a honey seventy thousand tons of vietnamese coffee it begs the question for such a top-ranking fact why don't more people know or associate coffee production with Vietnam lack of transparency can happen on many levels in government in production in commerce and in marketing yes it is true that for many years large corporations were news Vietnamese coffee beans and their cheap products including instant coffee supermarket shelf coffee or private label right and while these corporations made billions of dollars in the coffee industry Vietnamese workers and farmers remained in poverty due to the low price tags attached to their coffee beans lack of resources lead to poor working conditions poor living conditions sometimes a poor product and too often misconceptions there are potential dangers for the end consumer in Vietnam the lack of transparency there can lead some companies to add fillers to their ground coffee such as roasted soybeans now is transparency a class issue does increase transparency lead to increased prices for the consumer possibly but not necessarily yes of course all businesses want to make a profit or at the very least have a sustainable business model but there is a difference between creating a financially thriving business and squeezing every penny for profit possible and actually for the entrepreneur transparency is good for business seventy three percent of consumers say they are willing to pay for a product that offers complete transparency eighty five percent of Americans say transparency from business is more important than ever in addition for companies with a track record of offering transparency 9 out of 10 people say they are more likely to give second chances after a bad experience and even stick with the company through crises and hey we all make mistakes yes transparency can be scary transparency opens up the doors for accountability from all of us in accountability to produce safe products and accountability to treat people well and an accountability to be responsible consumers but once we push through the fear of accountability and own up to our social responsibility transparency is an opportunity for us to each empower each other and create a better world for everyone if you're an entrepreneur you want to disrupt your industry create transparency if you're a consumer you want to disrupt your industry demand transparency imagine if we all knew where our products were coming from and how they're being produced we could improve the lives of people across the globe simply by letting companies know we care imagine if companies were transparent about their production and the and the communities they work with they could build the trust and gain the loyalty of consumers imagine if your beloved daily ritual of coffee wasn't just coffee and it was also associated with coffee production in Vietnam how had that changed the way we appreciate and respect other cultures when we can break down the walls of information that keep producers in a cycle of poverty consumers from being empowered and companies from developing trust we can create a system of openness honesty and sustainability that truly creates a win/win world thank you