The journey from a common dish from Korea to the premium coffee of Vietnam of the Vietnamese-Korean couple.
The journey from a common dish from Korea to the premium coffee of Vietnam of the Vietnamese-Korean couple.
I wanted to sell kimchi at the markets as an alternative to vegetables pickle, in the end I had to throw away 5 tons of kimchi.
“Selling Mr.Kim’s kimchi brand is like marrying a mature daughter to a suitable and appropriate family”. And the second child is usually smarter and brighter that the first one. And our second child turned out to be coffee”, CEO of Kim&Kim owning Mr.Kim’s kimchi brand - Ms.Hanh shared.
“Speaking of kimchi reminds me of my “married first child”. 15 years ago, I met Mr.Kim (Kim Tae Kon), he was my boss at that time”, she recalled with emotions. Mr.Kim is now her husband.
In 1994, Mr.Kim came to Vietnam, initially to support a gourmet firm of an acquaintance.
He was working in advertisement. Because of the economic crisis in 1999, he went back to Korea.
5 years later, he returned to Vietnam with a small capital. He hired an office with 20 employees and started working in e-commerce.
At that time, e-commerce was not common in Vietnam. His firm was not making any profits for months.
As a Korean he eats kimchi everyday. He often shared his kimchi with Vietnamese employees. He realised that they really enjoyed kimchi and came up with the idea of selling his homemade kimchi.
He asked for Ms.Hanh’s help to buy the ingredients, which includes almost 20 types of vegetables.
“In the beginning, we aimed for the open market as an alternative to vegetables pickled. We hired 5 salesman to deliver to the market around the 22nd of December (Lunar Calendar). The next day, we came to the stores to check and found out little was sold. The store owners hid the kimchi, they bought just to please us, also because they were too busy. We could not let our salesman to stand at the stores to introduce either due to the limited space”, she said.
5 days later, Ms. Hanh and Mr. Kim decided to throw away 5 tons of kimchi in storage to change the strategy. Those 5 tons of kimchi were Mr. Kim’s big assets at that time.
The decision to aim for supermarkets
In that same year 2014, after throwing away 5 tons of kimchi, Mr.Kim and Ms.Hanh went for the supermarkets. Ms.Hanh decided to withdraw her savings and sell her motorbike to continue her work with kimchi. The plan was to produce 50 kg of high-quality kimchi to offer to the supermarkets.
“We offered our kimchi at Citimark. I told the manager that we made deliveries throughout the holidays. Having seen the eye-catching package and the good quality, they agreed at once”, she said.
And so Mr.Kim’s kimchi arrived at other supermarkets. The owners became closer and got married in no time.
At the beginning of 2016, Kim&Kim company had more than 200 employees, its annual growth rate reached 50% at some points.
From kimchi to coffee
After 10 years of hard work to build and create the famous Mr.Kim’s kimchi brand, they decided to transfer this brand to the CJ corporation. This decision was considered as a marriage of their mature daughter.
“Selling Mr.Kim’s kimchi brand is like marrying a mature daughter to a suitable and appropriate family”, she said. According to her, the second child is usually smarter and brighter that the first one. And her second child turned out to be coffee. Ms. Hanh is on her journey to conquer coffee, in which she believes will promise a bright future.
Ms. Hanh’s second child is coffee itself. She has been nourishing it when her first child was still with her.
She said that during the time she was searching for a trustworthy source of Vietnamese coffee to sell to Korean businessmen, she got to know a friend in her group who has studied about coffee for the last 7 years, especially specialty coffee. This person is a highly experienced coffee artisan who knows approximately 60-70 roasting formulas.
The more contact she has with this friend, the more interesting she learns. Though she was born in a family that grew coffee but the knowledge and experience she acquired when visiting her friend’s researching place, it is like a whole new world of this drink, from the roasting and grinding methods to maintain the most taste and smell without resorting to parfums.
“Vietnam is an amazing country but he is ashamed of the fact that people drink 3B coffee: Black, Bold and Bitter”, she reported her friend saying.
This friend is simply working in researching and recommended her to do business. At that moment, her urges to sell Mr.Kim’s kimchi brand became stronger so that she could focus to invest in coffee.
Low-quality, faulted beans, low prices have killed Vietnamese coffee
“I want to use Vietnamese coffee beans to make specialty coffee since not many people are doing this and this is a classy coffee market”, she said.
According to her, specialty coffee requires a much different production method. Specialty coffee cherries must be selectively picked, not by strip picking method that is used currently.
“Why does our country, unlike others, strip pick coffee? According to Ms.Hanh, this is due to culture, since Vietnamese coffee ripens in Christmas, near the time of the Lunar New Year holidays. There is a shortage of labors at this time of the year, and labor costs are high; the investors want to save money by strip picking both ripe and unripe coffee cherries to dry under the sun. For that reason, the quality and price is very low plus there are many faulted beans,... It is these habits that have killed Vietnamese coffee.
Speaking of the taste of specialty coffee, Ms.Hanh described: “Drinkers will notice a sense of fruit aroma, simply because it is a fruit itself, it is ripen and tastes sweet and sour, it has the same aroma as jasmine tea. Sharing about the future of specialty coffee, Ms.Hanh said: “At the moment, every 5-star hotel in Vietnam is introducing this product, as well as in a student village in Korea. In the future, it will be introduced to Arab, Dubai, American,...
"We are finishing from the team, people to open up the points in Saigon".
Source: Http://cafebiz.vn/tu-mon-binh-dan-xu-kim-chi-den-ca-phe-thoi-thuong-dat-viet-cua-Cap-vo-Chong-Sales-Nhan-Viet-Nam-han-Quoc-2017120111312875. CHN