AFTER HIS MEETING with Wicha, Darch flew back to Vancouver full of excitement. He called Wayne Fallis, who had served with him on the Crew Development board of directors for many years. Fallis, then in his early seventies and retired from a career as a grocery importer, assured Darch that he could help him with the new coffee venture and might even be interested in investing.
Darch talked to various other colleagues and friends about the coffee project, and one of them, Jeff Weaver, put him in contact with a roaster in Calgary named Shawn McDonald. Darch asked him to test some of the Doi Chaang green beans he had brought back.
McDonald was, fortuitously, already familiar with decent arabica beans from Thailand, having previously imported some from Paradise Mountain, a coffee farm to the northwest of Chiang Mai. He had by then sold his roasting business, so he called a former competitor, Jeff Farris, who owned Joffee Roasters, and arranged to do the sample roast there. He was pleasantly surprised and called Darch with the good news. “They’re really top-notch,” McDonald said. “I thought maybe they were Kona beans. They’ve got that same kind of high overall quality and balanced acidity and flavor.”
Darch wanted a second opinion, just as he would have wanted for a new mining prospect. McDonald recommended Kenneth Davids of Berkeley, California. He ran an online outfit called Coffee Review, which billed itself “The World’s Leading Coffee Guide,” and he had also written three books about coffee. Davids validated McDonald’s opinion in his review: “A quiet but interesting coffee: soft, low-toned, with hints of cedar, warm spice, chocolate, and a low-acid fruit that suggests banana. The chocolate notes become more explicit in the impressively long, resonant finish.” He gave it a score of 89 out of a hypothetical 100 (few beans hit the low 90s), which was not off the charts but still well above the score of 80, the accepted cut-off point for what would be considered specialty coffee. Doi Chaang was, Davids noted, a “coffee that rewards patience and attentiveness.”
WITH THESE ENCOURAGING assessments, Darch returned to Thailand in June 2006, with his eldest son, John A. Darch.* When they arrived in Doi Chang, they were astonished at what they saw. “I couldn’t believe what they had done,” Darch Senior recalled. A small cement building held the ancient German roaster, with an adjoining room that served as both office and packing area. On the right side was a small bamboo hut with a thatched grass roof, in which a small fire had been set, with a pot simmering a dinner of rice, greens, and chicken, with sauces in small bowls ranging from mild to fiercely hot.
Just below the roasting hut, a small plot of land had been cleared for a drying patio. A group of Akha was pouring the concrete for it when they arrived. Nearby was a small wet processing facility, where the freshly harvested coffee cherries would be pulped and fermented, then spread to dry on the new concrete patio.
Just after a downpour (this was the rainy season), Wicha and Adel took the Darches for a tour of the coffee fields. As they drove slowly along the muddy road through the trees, they saw men wielding machetes, pruning the coffee shrubs. Others were climbing the shade trees to lop off a few limbs, allowing the proper amount of sunlight to filter down. Further along, still others were spreading rotted compost made from fermented coffee pulp.
They stopped the truck and got out. They ventured off the road, down a steep hill, to talk with some of the men who were pruning. Adel translated from Akha to Thai, and then Wicha told the Darches in English what the worker said. “Yes, of course, we have to be careful with the machete, or we can hurt ourselves. But few get hurt. We cut off this part here,” he said, indicating a sucker growing between two sturdier branches, “so that the tree will produce more cherries.”
Clambering back up to the road, Darch Senior had to pull himself up by the trunks of the trees and found himself out of breath. He thought about how difficult it must be to harvest all these cherries. They were small and green now but would swell and ripen by the fall. He pondered all the labor involved, even in the off-season. But look at where they get to work, he thought, as he caught his breath on the road, looking out over the valley to the surrounding mountains. This was one of the most beautiful places he had ever seen. Yes, the people were poor—beyond poor, according to Wicha, since you had to have something in order to be poor—but they were obviously intelligent, hardworking, and incredibly friendly. I’m going to do this, Darch thought. I’m going to get involved. He thought of the poster his mother had given him, and that he still kept on his office wall: “I shall pass through this world but once. Any good therefore that I can do or any kindness that I can show to any human being, let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it. For I shall not pass this way again.”
Over dinner in the grass hut, he told Wicha that he wanted to be a part of the initiative, that Wayne Fallis knew how to import and sell grocery items, and that Shawn McDonald would roast the beans. He proposed that he start a Canadian roasting company especially for the Doi Chaang beans.
“That sounds wonderful, Khun John,” said Wicha, “but we’ve had others, Japanese and Koreans, who wanted to go into partnership with us, and we’ve turned them down because they wanted to own 51 percent or more of the company. The Akha will not give up ownership. They want to keep control.”
“That shouldn’t be a problem,” Darch said. “How about if we give the Akha 50 percent of the roasting company? We would make no demands on you to change your operation here in Thailand, and we would pay a good price for the green beans we import to Canada. In return for that, we would have the right to purchase up to 75 percent of your premium coffee beans and to have exclusive rights to them in North America and Europe.” It was an extraordinary, unique offer, allowing the Akha farmers to keep full ownership of their Thai operation, while receiving half the equity in the prospective Canadian firm. The Akha would not share in any losses the Canadians might sustain, but they would reap half of the profits.
And so it was agreed, around the fire under a thatched roof on top of a mountain in northwestern Thailand. “We will be like a family,” Wicha said. “It’s beautiful. But—” he paused dramatically. “We must stand strong together. Are you strong enough?” He grasped Darch Senior on the shoulder. “If not—” he said, and dragged his finger across his throat. “If not, we all die.” Then he laughed and slapped Darch’s leg.
That night, the Darches slept in a grass hut a mile or so up a mountain road, as strange insects explored their bodies. The next day, they met with the village elders, including Adel’s father, Piko, to formally cement the deal, which seemed to meet with universal approval. Darch Senior had seen Piko’s turbaned visage on the Doi Chaang Coffee packages, but now he and the other elders were wearing what appeared to be fedoras. They looked quite dapper, Darch thought. Yes, this was a good thing. He would help the Akha by selling their fantastic coffee in Canada, then he would expand into the United States and Europe. No problem.
BACK IN CANADA, Darch Senior contacted his lawyer, George Brazier, and told him to begin drafting papers for the incorporation of the Doi Chaang Coffee Company, to be funded privately but with half the ownership going to the Akha farmers of Doi Chang village through a shareholder arrangement in which they were represented in several loosely organized associations.
“Are you sure that’s the way you want to do it?” the astonished lawyer asked. “Yes, that’s exactly the way I want to do it,” Darch said in his mild but definitive manner. Brazier shrugged and drew up the papers. Darch had had enough of public companies, share price swings, and boards of directors, so the new entity was a private corporation. It was also a family affair. Darch Junior, a former banker and professional photographer, signed on to the new project as the chief financial officer, although he recalled, “My title was somewhat deceiving. I did take care of the books, but I also did a little of everything else. We all did.”
His younger sister, Katharine Darch Regan, also joined them, coordinating the first marketing strategy and developing their website. Politically, she and her father had their differences, but she recognized that he had a big heart. And he had taught her two important principles, both of which he was now putting into practice: 1) The best investment you can make is to create a healthy society; and 2) Question everything. Just because someone says that’s the way it is, doesn’t mean it is necessarily so.
Katharine had plenty of questions for her father. “He was a mining executive who had raised tons of money for new operations. But this was a grassroots effort, not some big boardroom deal. And Dad didn’t know anything about coffee.” Still, after asking many questions about Doi Chang and doing extensive research on the hill tribes and their problems, Katharine joined the effort to help create a healthy Akha society halfway around the world. Working part-time as a young mother, she would create the firm’s website and coordinate marketing efforts.
The new company, officially launched in April 2007, had a main office in Vancouver, where the three members of the Darch family worked with Danielle Bower, Louise’s niece, who handled sales and marketing, and Tanya Jacoboni, a receptionist with no family connection. The separate roasting facility remained in Calgary, 600 miles to the east, where Shawn McDonald supervised a staff of four at the Joffee Coffee roasting facility, two sales people, and a delivery vehicle.
WITH GREAT ENTHUSIASM—AND what turned out to be profound naïveté—Darch committed to buying four containers of Doi Chaang green coffee beans from the 2006–2007 harvest season (November–February). “I asked Wicha what price he needed in order to move forward with all the programs he envisioned,” Darch remembered. Wicha not only had ambitious plans to buy a new roaster, he also wanted to create an Academy of Coffee, where the Akha farmers could learn about agronomy and other subjects, and eventually he wanted to build a school where hill tribe children from surrounding villages could learn, regardless of whether they had a Thai ID card or not.
Wicha had asked for $6 per kilo, or $2.73 per pound—well above the C-market rate of $1.00 a pound. The C-market was the price for average coffee, and Doi Chaang beans qualified as specialty gourmet beans that should command a premium, but that was still a very high price, especially for unknown beans that were just being introduced into an established market.
In addition, Darch Junior had advised his father that for environmental, social, and marketing purposes, their beans should be certified as both organic and Fair Trade. “We knew that the beans were truly organic, since the Akha used no chemical fertilizers or pesticides,” the younger Darch said, “so it was just a matter of getting certified.” Fair Trade guaranteed a base price of $1.26 a pound for green beans at the time, so the certification would make no difference to the price. But being certified as Fair Trade was becoming increasingly important in the specialty coffee market, where the logo signified that the coffee farmers were being paid a fair wage.
Pursuing both certifications meant that the new roasting company would have to pay to permit auditors to visit the farms and make sure that the Akha farmers of Doi Chang qualified. That brought Darch Senior’s costs to almost $3 per pound.
The first four containers of coffee that shipped from Thailand to Vancouver carried a total of 150,000 pounds of beans. When roasted, coffee beans blow up to twice their size but lose about 20 percent of their weight, so that translated to 120,000 pounds of roasted coffee, or the equivalent number of retail units if sold in traditional one-pound bags. But because they had decided to sell Doi Chaang in half-pound bags (to keep the retail price of the unit lower), they would have to sell 240,000 bags. They planned to retail each bag for $10, which would yield gross sales of $2.4 million dollars, if they could sell them all. Of course, there was also a great deal of overhead.
The new company sponsored motivational speaker, educator, and author Stedman Graham to give inspirational speeches to launch the coffee product at gala events in Calgary and Vancouver. Graham, who was on a book tour, was a powerful speaker, focusing on how determined, resourceful underdogs (the Akha among them) could achieve greatness. He didn’t drink coffee, but his partner, Oprah Winfrey, did. Darch hoped she would sample it and promote Doi Chaang in the United States, but although she apparently enjoyed the coffee, she never promoted it.
To cover the initial costs, John Darch Senior and Wayne Fallis each invested a million dollars in Doi Chaang Coffee. Fallis had assured Darch that he could handle imported coffee beans, just as he had sold containers of imported oranges, but McDonald warned Darch that they had committed to an extremely ambitious amount of coffee to start with. “Coffee is not a short-term business,” he warned. “It’s going to take at least three years for you to turn a profit. It’s not easy to launch a new coffee brand.” Fallis remained optimistic. “I’ve been doing this for fifty years, kid,” he told McDonald. “You just watch.”
Darch Junior designed new bags, modifying the Thai version. He retained Piko’s face as the logo and put it on a handsome black plastic one-way valve bag, explaining the story of the Akha on the back. Even though the beans all came from the same place, there were varied offerings: dark- or medium-roasted, “signature” (a combination of dark and medium), decaf, and peaberry (single rather than double beans).
McDonald had a network of loyal customers in Alberta from the time he owned Planet Coffee Roasters (his former company, with six associated coffeehouses), and he was able to get roasted Doi Chaang beans into prestigious places like the Banff Springs Hotel and Lake Louise Ski Resort. Sysco, the giant food distributor, agreed to carry Doi Chaang, and the Darches also hired a broker, SunOpta Grocery West, to help place the coffee in new outlets. However, a broker takes anywhere from 10 percent to 25 percent of the profits depending on the service level.
But as 2007 bumped along, it became clear that Wayne Fallis had been overly optimistic, to say the least, and McDonald couldn’t begin to sell that much roasted coffee. Calgary wasn’t a thriving coffee hub, and McDonald’s hordes of customers never materialized. Even after an expensive, time-consuming penetration of two Costco outlets in Calgary, the Darch team was able to sell only a tiny percentage of the beans they purchased. “It was like getting pregnant, and now what do we do with the baby?” Darch Senior recalled. They were forced to dump the remainder of the green beans at a loss. That first year was a disaster, with gross sales of only $73,000. “The reality was that I knew zero about coffee,” Darch Senior admitted. “I didn’t really care if we were selling tea or cacao or something else. I just wanted to help the Akha. We didn’t know what we were doing.” As Darch Junior had realized and had been frantically trying to tell his father, coffee wasn’t like oranges or many other commodities. You couldn’t just sell it straight from the container in bulk. And the overheads were significant.
So were the marketing challenges. They were a new company trying to introduce an expensive new coffee brand called Doi Chaang, which sounded more like Chinese tea to most consumers. No one had heard of good coffee from China (or Thailand, for that matter), and the picture of Piko, which they kept on their bags, didn’t help. Who was this severe-looking man with the turban? They could attract attention if they could get people to read the story of the Akha on the back of the bag, but how to get them to pick up the bag in the first place?
Katharine stepped in. While she was developing the marketing material for the firm, her father told her that he wanted to get the coffee certified as Fair Trade to help promote sales. Katharine wasn’t convinced. “This coffee is way beyond Fair Trade. We’re offering a real partnership, not just a higher price for their green beans. In addition, we’re paying much more than Fair Trade requires.” Thus was created the slogan for the Doi Chaang brand: Beyond Fair Trade.
That helped to entice customers to pick up and sample the product, but it also created a new problem. The beans were certified as Fair Trade by the Fair Trade Labeling Organization (FLO), and FLO managers told Darch Senior that he was infringing on their trademark by calling his beans “Beyond Fair Trade.” He had to take it off the label and throw away all the bags featuring the phrase if he wished to continue to use the Fair Trade mark on Doi Chaang beans.
Outraged, Darch Senior e-mailed back. It was rather ironic, he noted, that the Fair Trade movement was created to make sure that impoverished farmers were paid a reasonable amount for their hard work. Now he was being punished for doing exactly that—for going beyond the Fair Trade criteria to help the Akha farmers. He agreed to change his logo if FLO would put in writing what it was requiring, and why. He promised to then publicize this letter widely in order to embarrass them. No letter arrived, and Doi Chaang Coffee continued to proclaim that it went Beyond Fair Trade.
AT THIS POINT, near the end of 2007, Wayne Fallis balked at putting more money into the venture. Coffee was a complex business, and he was over his head. He told Darch Senior that he was bailing out, chalking it up as a lost cause. Darch consequently contemplated the unthinkable. He might have to fold the company and renege on his commitment to the Akha. He had never believed in charity. He had thought of himself as a pioneer of a new form of sustainable capitalism. He would prove that profits could be equitably shared across continents. Although it might lose money for the first few years, Doi Chaang Coffee could be a thriving enterprise in the long run.
But his usual self-confidence was shaken. He realized now how naïve he had been, thinking it would be simple to launch a new brand, and that the Akha’s story would ensure large sales. Katharine had also told him that she wouldn’t be working on the project much longer for personal reasons.
Darch Junior, who had been trying for so long to get his father to face the complex, challenging realities of the specialty coffee business, surprised him now. “Of course we’re going to lose money at first, Dad. But we’ve actually done an amazing thing. Starting from scratch, we’ve created a new brand, and you haven’t given it time to gain traction.” He wanted to keep the company going, and he was willing to buy out Wayne Fallis’s share at a discount. Encouraged by his son’s commitment, Darch Senior agreed to keep going, though it would mean investing more of his own money.
The next two years saw a few positive developments on the Canadian side. The Darches managed to get bags of Doi Chaang onto the shelves of a few gourmet food stores like Meinhardt Fine Foods in Vancouver. Gross sales increased to $336,000 annually—but profits still came nowhere near expenses.
In April 2009, Darch Senior missed the third anniversary celebration of the Academy of Coffee in order to attend the annual convention of the Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA), held in Atlanta that year. The SCAA, founded in 1982, had grown from a tiny fledgling organization of coffee quality-obsessed rebels to a large, respected rival to the older National Coffee Association, which represented the huge traditional roasters selling Maxwell House, Folgers, and other canned products.
Darch spent little time roaming the aisles, where a veritable United Nations of coffee countries were represented, choosing instead to remain in the little Doi Chaang Coffee booth he had rented. He felt like a rather small fish in a huge pond, and it was difficult to attract the attention of the crowds wandering by. His British reserve prevented him from yelling out or seeking attention. But one particularly friendly man stopped to sample a cup of Doi Chaang and was impressed. He had seen Doi Chaang bags back in Vancouver in the Meinhardt coffee section and thought that the slick black presentation was “fabulous packaging.” He was intrigued by the Asian slant.
Now he introduced himself. “My name is Eric Lightheart, and we’re neighbors. I work for Canterbury Coffee, the largest roaster in British Columbia. Here’s my card.” Darch was polite but confused. He had never heard of Canterbury Coffee. Lightheart explained that Canterbury, based near Vancouver, BC, started in 1977 as a small office coffee supply company, founded by Murray Dunlop, who began roasting his own coffee in 1981. Now Canterbury supplied the private label roasted coffee for giant outfits in Western Canada such as Safeway, Costco, and London Drugs, while providing coffee service for major universities, hotels, and restaurants, accounting for $60 million a year in sales. The company was known primarily as a “toll roaster” in the trade. It didn’t have its own brand, which is why few people had heard of it.
Lightheart listened to Darch tell the story of the Akha and their coffee. He was impressed. “Here was the owner of the company, manning his own booth,” he recalled. “John was warm and gracious. I could tell he had heart.”
Darch presented a positive front, but it was obvious that the young firm was struggling. Lightheart offered his opinion: “You need better distribution. You need to get Doi Chaang out there into more avenues. We could help you. We’ve got seven branch offices. We could get you into more food service, grocery, and offices. I’ve been wanting to find a coffee to buy directly from the farm, with a great story behind it and a brand name we could promote. With our great distribution and your great brand and story, we could work well together. In fact, we could roast your coffee for you.”
Darch explained that he had already committed to a roaster in Calgary and didn’t want to move the business, but he was interested in working out some kind of arrangement. Back in Canada, Darch Senior took Darch Junior, office manager Tanya Jacoboni, and Shawn McDonald to visit the Canterbury roasting facility. At that point, McDonald could see the writing beginning to form on the wall. Darch Senior asked him if he would consider moving to BC to work with Canterbury, but McDonald had no interest in uprooting to work for a larger outfit. Darch Junior, uneasy about pulling out of Calgary, procrastinated. His father continued to pump money into his fledgling coffee venture, fulfilling his promise to buy another three containers of Doi Chaang beans for the same price of approximately $3 a pound, paying up front and then hoping to sell them.
MEANWHILE, WICHA AND the Akha were working diligently to expand the coffee business. In the spring of 2007, with the new income from sales to the Canadians, they built the imposing Academy of Coffee, harvesting teak poles from Wicha’s property in Nan Province, to the east of Chiang Rai. They used fifty-seven poles to represent the fifty-seven generations recited by the elders in their oral history. The 3,000-square-foot building had a roof of thick thatched grass, and in the middle of the office on the left-hand side there was a traditional fire pit. The smoke from the fire helped to cure the roof and discourage insects from eating it. Patchanee Suwanwisolkit from Chiang Mai University taught agronomy classes in the classroom area and brought colleagues for other educational offerings.
In the middle of the building there was room for a coffee-soap-making venture that a young Akha woman named Nuda began, with Wicha’s encouragement. Nuda started with a “soap base,” purchased in Bangkok, then shaved off pieces and put them in the top of a double boiler to melt, along with coffee pulp, honey, and olive oil infused with a fragrant local flower. She also made espresso soap, with concentrated brewed espresso added, along with some very finely ground coffee that acted as a kind of pumice to scrape off dead skin. Three people could make a thousand bars of soap in one day, to be sold in the coffeeshop and other outlets.
On April 16, 2007, the facility opened, with John Darch Senior and Wayne Fallis in attendance as honored guests and partners. Both of them struck the ceremonial gong. The Akha women had donned their silver-laden headdresses and brightly embroidered clothing. There were speeches, music, and dancing. This celebration would become an annual event that drew thousands of Akha from many other villages, even from China, Laos, and Burma.
In September 2007, with money from the Canadian venture, the Akha bought a new ultra-modern Brambati roaster, manufactured in Italy, to replace the ancient German one. Paolo Fantaguzzi, an Italian machinist, took fifteen days to install the roaster for Wicha, who later convinced him to move to Bangkok to build coffee roasters and brewers in cooperation with Doi Chaang. The Brambati roaster featured a computer screen so that Akong, the roastmaster, could monitor every aspect of the process.
The coffee was harvested and prepared with obsessive care, then sorted several times to make sure that any defective or imperfect beans were removed. The Doi Chaang Coffee Original (the name of the main Akha company) processing plant wasn’t big enough to handle all of the coffee, so twelve loose associations were formed by other Akha (including Adel’s older brother Leehu and cousin Apa) in the village to receive the ripe coffee cherries and supervise the processing and drying, for a small fee of 2 baht per kilogram. Then they would deliver the beans in parchment to the main Doi Chaang Coffee location where they were again sorted and eventually hulled.
During the sorting, the Akha women also separated “peaberries” from the regular beans. Most coffee beans grow in facing pairs, but peaberries, shaped like tiny footballs, sometimes grow alone in a coffee cherry. They are prized for their rarity and supposedly more concentrated flavor. In April 2008, Kenneth Davids gave Doi Chaang Peaberry an extraordinarily high score of 93 along with high praise: “Pure, refreshing coffee. Sweetly acidy and honey-toned in the aroma, with floral and coffee fruit (tart cherry) notes. In the cup softly acidy, delicate in mouthfeel, crisp but very sweet in structure, with continued notes of tart coffee cherry, honey and flowers, together with a slight, deepening butterscotch-like pungency. In the finish the sweetness fades, but the fundamental flavor notes persist far into the long finish… A pure, lyric, light-roasted breakfast coffee, gently exotic.”
Wicha was a bundle of creative energy. To display and sell their coffee in the village, he had a coffeehouse built near the Academy, where Akha women pulled shots of espresso and steamed milk for cappuccinos and lattes. He encouraged Lipi, one of Adel’s nephews, in his efforts to grow blue oolong tea to complement coffee sales. The tea, processed in a Chinese factory 40 kilometers to the west in the town of Wawi, was of a high quality, but it couldn’t compete with cheaper Thai teas, and it was also too pricey for the export market. Nonetheless, Doi Chaang tea was sold in the coffeeshop.
To take advantage of the annual March coffee-blossom season, with its jasmine-like fragrance and explosion of white flowers, the Akha became beekeepers and sold delicately flavored coffee-blossom honey in the coffeehouse, along with the soap and tea. The hives were then trucked to the lowlands, where the bees collected pollen from flowers and orchards for standard (but still delicious) honey.
Already a seasoned traveler, Wicha began a series of promotional trips for John Darch Senior and his Canadian company. In May of 2008, Wicha flew to Canada, where he charmed the Doi Chaang staff with his charismatic enthusiasm and humanity, although the doorman at the elegant Terminal City Club, where he was staying, at one point refused Wicha entry because of his odd garb. He appeared on several local radio and television shows, which temporarily boosted sales. Darch also took Wicha to the annual Specialty Coffee Association of America conference held in Minneapolis that May, where he won the distinction of being named “the best authentic character” at the event.
In his suitcase, Wicha had brought what appeared at first glance to be Oh Henry! candy bars. “This is kopi luwak, civet cat coffee,” Wicha said. “Will you try it?” The agglomeration turned out to be coffee beans that had been eaten and excreted by wild civet cats in the coffee groves of Doi Chang. Wicha knew that such beans from Indonesia fetched a ridiculously high price in some countries.
Darch took the beans to John Gilchrist, a Canadian gourmand and food writer, who told him, “John, I’ve tried this civet poop coffee before, and it’s terrible stuff.” Yet when he washed and roasted these beans, he loved them for their mellow, lingering honey flavor. Darch took them back to Vancouver and arranged for six chefs to test the civet coffee, with positive results. Finally, he sent a sample to Kenneth Davids, who gave the civet beans a score of 90, along with flavor notes: “Intriguing mid-tones throughout the profile: mainly a sort of orangy, floral citrus with a backgrounded complex simultaneously suggesting fresh earth, mushroom and decomposing leaves. All of this takes on a vaguely chocolaty tone in the finish. Gently smooth acidity, medium body.”
Wicha returned to Doi Chang brimming with ideas for new products, but mostly the Akha would grow more and more coffee. From the 200 acres originally growing in 2002, in 2009 there were nearly 2,000 acres, with plans to plant up to 8,000 acres. Some of those trees were starting to produce cherries, having been planted as seedlings three or four years previously. Others would come into maturity in the next few years. While the Thai market for Doi Chaang beans was growing—there were now a dozen Doi Chaang coffeehouses in Chiang Rai, Mae Suai, Bangkok, and elsewhere—Wicha and the Akha were counting on the Canadians to buy most of their premium beans for high prices.
FINALLY, IN 2010, Darch Senior and Junior concluded that they could not continue with the Calgary operation. Their primary potential market was in Vancouver. It made little sense to pay for the beans to be shipped from the coast inland to Calgary, where McDonald’s team roasted and packaged them, then shipped most of them back to Vancouver. Eric Lightheart was eager to have their business at Canterbury. Thus, the Darches made an orderly transfer of their business to Canterbury in July 2010. It was a two-part deal. Canterbury would serve as a toll roaster for accounts that Doi Chaang Coffee found on its own. Using the specified roast profile for the beans, the huge roaster would charge a toll fee to roast, package, distribute, and invoice customers for Doi Chaang Coffee. It was a fairly expensive option in some respects, but it saved the salary of several people, plus the cost of a roasting facility and delivery truck. Darch Junior, who had been advocating such a change, was able to implement a switch from the half-pound bags to one-pound offerings, which put them in the same size as their top competitor, Kicking Horse Coffee. A new broker, Cyba Stevens, helped get Doi Chaang beans into IGA grocery stores as well as London Drugs.
The second part of the deal had Doi Chaang Coffee give Canterbury the exclusive right to handle its food service coffee. Canterbury would purchase the green beans at a small mark-up and then pay Doi Chaang a 5 percent royalty on all sales to its institutional customers. Not all of these 6,000 customers would order Doi Chaang, but gaining access to such Canterbury clients would instantly and dramatically expand the market for the Thai beans. Canterbury provided all of the coffee brewing equipment and service to these customers as well—something that tiny Doi Chaang could never do. In return, the deal gave Canterbury a distinctive brand and story to offer that no one else had.
In the competitive world of specialty coffee, Lightheart argued that this special deal with Doi Chaang would be advantageous to Canterbury. He encountered some resistance, though. “Explain again why we want to promote someone else’s coffee?” founder Murray Dunlop asked. In the end, he grudgingly agreed to the deal, though he groused that Canterbury made less profit on Doi Chaang beans than any others they handled.
The move to Canterbury eventually saw Doi Chaang beans move into Safeway and more Costco stores, as well as over 200 coffeeshops, restaurants, and hotels. Getting onto more Costco shelves proved to be challenging. At Darch’s expense, Doi Chaang and Canterbury had to put on a “Costco road show” in eight stores in Alberta and BC. That meant bringing two skids of coffee (pallets holding over 400 two-pound bags) to each store, paying for a presenter to offer free samples of brewed coffee all day, and hoping that enough customers would buy the coffee. If accepted in the store, sales of Doi Chaang had to reach at least a skid-and-a-half per week in order to stay there. Costco eventually accepted the beans in fifteen locations.
Eric Lightheart visited the village of Doi Chang that fall. He was impressed with the whole setup, including the latte art in the shape of a dragon atop his cappuccino, and he was particularly taken with Wicha, whom he described as “a lovely guy, humble, outgoing, passionate, and dying for more coffee knowledge, asking lots of questions.”
Back in Canada, Lightheart was delighted with the sales to institutions. “I told the story of the Akha and their coffee,” he said. “Everyone wants to hear a good story that rings true. They are leery of American big business hype, but this was completely real. I had seen it for myself, and I told customers.” Other than Kona and Jamaica Blue Mountain beans, he sold more Doi Chaang Coffee than any other brand.
THREE MONTHS AFTER the momentous switch to Canterbury, Doi Chaang Coffee got another crucial boost: Darch Senior (and Wicha, when he visited Canada) had appeared on local television and radio shows. The story about the extraordinary coffee from northwestern Thailand was beginning to percolate but had not yet achieved national recognition. In October 2010, Darch got a call from producer Linda Aylesworth of Global Television Network, which had twelve owned-and-operated stations across Canada. Aylesworth wanted to arrange a visit to the village of Doi Chang with a film crew. Could Darch perhaps facilitate that?
Yes, indeed, he could, and he and his son would accompany her. Because of the success of Doi Chaang coffee, earlier in 2010 the government had finally paved the road up to the village. Because it was seen as being for the benefit of the hill tribes, the road was sub-standard, without proper foundation, and the asphalt was too thin, so that potholes almost immediately appeared, but it was still a vast improvement on the previous mud road, and now it took only an hour to drive from the city of Chiang Rai instead of four or five hours.
Aylesworth was enchanted by what she found. She was charmed by Wicha and the Akha. What had originally been planned as a three-minute segment on the news turned into four consecutive nights, showing audiences the miracle that was occurring on this remote mountainside, in large part because of the Darches and their Vancouver coffee company.
The first show aired on Monday, November 22, 2010, introduced by an anchorwoman: “It’s been said that the only thing that keeps people awake more than coffee is your conscience. Well, what if your conscience could be eased by the perfect cup?” Then she turned the show over to Aylesworth, who said, “Canadian coffee lovers are increasingly demanding more than a heady aroma and full-bodied taste. They want to know that the people who grow their beans are being paid fairly—people like the Akha of northern Thailand…”
With that, the camera zoomed in on a traditionally dressed Akha woman, singing in her native tongue as she picked coffee. The scene was exotic, enticing—and almost realistic. It was true that Akha women did the bulk of the coffee harvesting, but they no longer wore their elaborate headdresses, except on special occasions. Apparently a television documentary was one of those occasions. “In spite of their hard work,” Aylesworth said, “discrimination and unscrupulous coffee brokers have kept them from rising out of poverty.”
Then Wicha appeared on camera, with his earring, beard, and earnest manner, explaining: “These people have nothing, [treated] worse than a dog. OK, they look down [on them], that’s why their children are not to go to school. Even teachers, they just look down at our people.” The camera turned to cute little children running down a broken concrete village road.
Aylesworth then introduced Darch Senior, shown drinking coffee with Wicha at the café in Doi Chang. “He’s good, he’s a kind man,” Wicha said of Darch, who then explained in his calm, measured British accent, “I wanted to see if, by taking the coffee to North America and introducing it, that I would be able to add to what Wicha wanted to do.” He would pay “beyond Fair Trade” prices and give the Akha half of the company. With that money, Aylesworth explained, the Akha had been able to expand production, which the camera documented by showing the newly constructed wet processing plant and huge concrete drying patio, where a worker was raking beans to turn them.
The program did not explain why the new processing plant had been necessary, or what a rift it had caused in the village. The success and fame of Doi Chaang Coffee, and the higher prices it commanded, had tempted some of the Akha processors to buy inferior beans from lower elevations and mix them with the locally processed beans. As a result, some of the Doi Chaang green beans had been rejected. Adel and Wicha decided to stop using the twelve Akha associations and their processing stations. Instead, they would build a larger, faster facility and buy just-harvested cherries directly from the farmers. But this move to cut out the middlemen infuriated some of the Akha who had run the processing facilities.
Aylesworth continued: “This year 800 tons of premium beans will be shipped to Richmond, BC, where they will be roasted and distributed to Canadian buyers, who with every purchase help the Akha to help themselves.” The figure was inaccurate (only 200 tons would go to Canada), but otherwise Aylesworth had it right.
“After decades of being paid a pittance for their beans, the Akha are at last getting what they deserve,” she concluded. “We never beg,” said Wicha on screen. “We want to work for whatever we want to see.” Darch wrapped it up: “I was living a comfortable life. I could have retired. But there’s a much greater feeling and passion toward this project than anything else I’ve done before.” The program closed on a shot of Akha children laughing.
That first night, 250,000 people watched the Global TV news show with this segment. By the time the fourth segment aired three days later, viewership had risen to 750,000. Aylesworth took the rest of her footage and turned it into a half-hour documentary, televised over the Christmas holidays of 2010 and then posted on YouTube.
Because of the switch to Canterbury and the media bonanza from Global TV, Doi Chaang sales hit $1.3 million for the year 2010.
THE DOCUMENTARY WON the award for the best long feature of the year from the Radio-Television News Directors Association of Canada and launched a string of other awards and media that followed in 2011 and 2012. The Thai-Canadian Chamber of Commerce, based in Bangkok, named Doi Chaang Coffee its “Company of the Year 2011.” The Canadian Association of Foodservice Professionals gave the firm its “Outstanding Community Development” award, while Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, covering twenty-one nations with borders on the Pacific, from Peru to Russia, from Canada to Thailand, awarded Doi Chaang Coffee third place in its “One Village One Brand” contest. The firm was short-listed to the top ten Small-Medium Enterprises at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro in June 2012—the only coffee company and sole Canadian company to be so ranked.
The media fell in love with the story of the plucky, thriving Akha of Doi Chang village, their coffee, and the Vancouver firm that was roasting it. Mutineer Magazine, which covered all “fine beverages,” alcoholic or not, ran a long encomium to Doi Chaang Coffee in its May 2011 issue. “The Akha seem to possess an uncanny ability to learn by doing,” wrote author Chris D’Amico. “They’ve mastered complex agricultural practices as well as mechanical and civil engineering.”
The June 2011 issue of Sawasdee, the inflight magazine of Thai Airways, featured Doi Chaang in “Coffee Quest,” an article by Matthew Kadey, with the subtitle, “A mountain community in northern Thailand is brewing a success story in coffee, tea, and agro-tourism.” Kadey, who bicycled up the mountain to the village as part of a ten-week cycling adventure through Laos and Thailand, declared the strenuous effort worthwhile once he got to the top and got an iced coffee from Adel and a tour from Miga.
Global Coffee Review, in its September 2011 issue, featured a photo of Wicha and Darch with hands clasped in solidarity in an article by David Swinfen, headlined “Business Thais.” Wicha, who had grown into his role as a media star, told Swinfen, “I live for Doi Chaang, and it’s 24 hours. I sleep for two hours sometimes, but I work at night, in the day, whenever there is anything the village requires me to do.” One could doubt whether Wicha really slept only two hours a night, but there was no question that his mind was racing with new plans, and he seemed unstoppable. Darch told Swinfen, “I met with Wicha out of politeness, but I was overwhelmed by the commitment that I saw [in the village].”
Darch explained that the Fair Trade coffee certification had “done a wonderful job in terms of raising public awareness about the need for a decent and reasonable wage for growers,” but that the Fair Trade price was really equivalent to a minimum wage. “It does little to break the cycle of poverty for many coffee farmers.” That was why he had gone “Beyond Fair Trade” in his business model. By that time, 2,000 acres of coffee trees in Doi Chang were producing 640 tons of green beans annually. Another 5,000 acres had been planted with coffee seedlings in various stages of growth. Each year, the Akha planted another 100,000 shade trees, including macadamia, plantain, plum, and peach trees, as well as nitrogen-fixing trees that were particularly good for the soil.
“Until you establish a brand which is recognized internationally,” Darch said, “there is no demand other than for your [bulk commodity] green beans.” Now that the brand was getting attention around the world, sales were growing in Thailand, where pride in being recognized outside the country translated to better domestic appeal. Luxury Thai malls such as Siam Paragon and Emporium were begging for the beans. Thai sales had reached 200 tons, with the same amount sold in Canada.
In the article, Darch Junior noted that they were selling at select stores in the UK, including Harrods of London, where Doi Chaang was the most expensive coffee. Darch Senior’s younger brother, Terence “Terry” Darch, who still lived in Weymouth, had taken on the task of promoting Doi Chaang coffee in the UK, at first selling roasted beans he got from Canada. He carried samples to London and the Midlands, spreading the Doi Chaang gospel and persuading Harrods to sell the beans. He then contacted DRWakefield, a British coffee bean importer, where Simon Wakefield had taken over the business his father had begun. Wakefield began to buy a container of Doi Chaang beans annually to supply the UK specialty market.
Canadian sales were growing as well, surpassing $1.8 million in 2011, though the company had yet to turn a profit, and Darch had now sunk nearly $4 million into the enterprise. All the articles mentioned that the Akha owned half of the Canadian coffee company and were entitled to half of the profits—but they did not mention the inconvenient fact that there were no profits yet. Regardless, the Akha shared in the equity and goodwill of the company, and the Canadian company’s marketing, including the widening press coverage, proved invaluable.
As 2012 rolled around, the media attention continued. Miles Small of CoffeeTalk Magazine visited Doi Chang village and was blown away by the coffee and the place. He wrote an article in which he called Wicha “this quiet, peaceful, and wickedly intelligent man.” He also injected a little romance when he wrote that Darch first rode up the mountain on a mule—not true, but not that far in comfort level from the actual jarring trek in a four-wheel-drive truck that Darch had taken up the rutted dirt road.
The coverage just kept coming. In March 2012, Stir, a coffee industry periodical, published a feature article, followed the next month by a long article in the Tea & Coffee Trade Journal. Kenneth Davids made a pilgrimage to the Thai village and wrote about it in Roast in the October 2012 issue. At first, he wrote, Wicha seemed too good to be true, “with his endless energy, open, innovating spirit and part hippie, part Buddhist idealism. But he ultimately convinced me, thoroughly.” He was impressed that Wicha, Adel, and the farmers had “tirelessly worked almost every possible angle to increase the Akha cooperative’s coffee volume, coffee quality, revenues, and general well-being.”
By this time, there were twenty Doi Chaang coffeehouses that were fully owned by the cooperative, and nearly 300 other Thai cafés that exclusively served the Doi Chaang brew, so that they were essentially franchises. Doi Chang village had running water, a rudimentary sewage system, electricity, and paved roads. Thai officials who had once scorned the ignorant, lazy Akha now proudly took visitors up the mountain to show off an example of their successful development efforts. In April 2012, Darch Senior was invited to accompany Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper to Thailand on a goodwill trip. Though his roasting company was tiny compared to the other corporations whose CEOs came along, his was the only Canadian venture that actually partnered with people in Thailand—and with marginalized hill tribes at that.
OVER TIME, DARCH Senior and Junior assembled a tight-knit young office staff in Vancouver. “We try to run it like an extended family,” Darch Senior said. “Everyone here is involved and passionate.” He became chairman in 2012, while his son, elevated to president, was more active in day-to-day nitty-gritty details. Tanya Jacoboni progressed from receptionist to office manager and then vice president of business development. “I always laugh at titles here,” she said, “because we all do so many things.”
Danika Speight joined Doi Chaang in January 2011 as an accountant, taking over the bookkeeping from Darch Junior and gradually handling receivables and payables, then doing the firm’s financial statements. When Darch Junior became president of the company, Speight was named chief financial officer.
Anand Pawa, who had been born in Bangkok and moved to Vancouver with his family when he was in Grade 8, joined the company in 2011 and quickly became a key employee. During his interview with Darch Senior and Junior at a Vancouver restaurant, Darch Senior told him that he wanted someone with extensive experience with media contacts. Anand Pawa, who had earned a degree in marketing from Simon Fraser University, admitted that he didn’t yet have that specific expertise, but he could learn. He pointed out that he was fluent in Thai. “That’s nice,” Darch Senior said, “but Wicha and Sandra both speak English, so I don’t think we’ll really need that skill.”
To his great disappointment, Anand Pawa wasn’t initially offered the job, but the Darches called back in March to offer a three-month trial period. He quickly proved to be invaluable, especially after he visited Doi Chang in October 2011 with Jacoboni and Darch Junior. Anand Pawa discovered that every piece of information about the village he’d been given back in Canada was incorrect, including how the coffee cooperative functioned and how the coffee was processed. “It was all lost in translation,” he said. He quickly bonded with Adel and Miga, translating for Darch Junior. They negotiated prices for the next harvest, a process that went smoothly for the first time.
The next hire, in November 2011, was receptionist Jacquelyn “Jackie” Kingston. She was followed by Sanja Grcic, a native of Bosnia, who became vice president of sales in the grocery division in February 2012, and Katharine Sawchuck, who was hired in October 2012 as public relations director.
Darch continued to travel extensively, not only for Doi Chaang Coffee, but also for his other business ventures. He may have sold the first potash development company he helped to start, but now he was working on six other Thai potash deposits in the same northeastern region, as well as having part-ownership of Waste Energy, a Thai firm that would burn waste to produce sustainable energy, IMS Global Corporation, a Canadian firm providing safety systems to mining companies, and a few other ventures. His daughter Katharine was back as his main assistant.
Thus, by the end of 2012, most of the Vancouver Doi Chaang staff were in their twenties, excited to be pioneering the new coffee venture that was helping the Akha tribe halfway around the world. Each would get to visit the village of Doi Chang three years after joining the firm.
Despite his travels, Darch Senior kept close tabs on the Vancouver roasting business. Gross sales crested $2.3 million in 2012, finally netting a small profit of $145,000 for the year.