Café Culture
World Espresso Stop: Thailand
by Oliver Benjamin

Want to know how "developed" a country is? One needn't waste time with confusing statistics like GDP and literacy rates when there's a much simpler method: measure how much coffee it drinks. The top coffee-drinking countries in the world also enjoy the highest standards of living, while those who eschew the brew come in at the bottom of the list. Is coffee a bellwether of success? More than a few sleep-starved businessfolk might agree.

To be fair, this is an overgeneralization, highly unscientific and somewhat impolite. Yet there may be some truth in it: Many scholars contend that if it hadn't been for the rise of coffeehouses in England in the 1700s, the Industrial Revolution never would have happened. (Workers had previously been too drunk to operate machinery.) And is it a coincidence that Microsoft and Starbucks both came of age at the same time and that both were in Seattle? Coffee not only gets the brain going full-tilt, but it is a vehicle to connoisseurship; like wine, art and complex music, it appeals to and inspires the upwardly mobile.

Chiang Mai, that disarmingly quaint city in northern Thailand, is on its own vertical vector. Aside from a breakneck boom in five-star and boutique hotels, cutting-edge restaurants and bohemian art galleries, the town is advertising its ambitions most evidently in the explosion of a domestic coffeehouse culture. Whereas five years ago "fresh coffee" meant you had just broken the seal on your jar of Nescafé, today you can't wander two minutes without seeing a new coffeehouse or even just a humble espresso machine at a shack on the roadside.

Happily, there seems no danger of Chiang Mai turning into a festooned commercial blitzkrieg like Bangkok. While the far more populous capital has become overrun with aggressive international brands and a manic, frenzied atmosphere, Chiang Mai has steered its upward momentum with a ginger style that has come to typify what makes the medium-sized town so appealing to visitors. Voted the fifth-best city in the world to visit by readers of Travel + Leisure Magazine and third-best in Asia by Conde Nast Traveler last year, this densely betempled burg boasts a layout and an atmosphere that invite leisurely strolling through its narrow lanes, or just sitting around on the boulevard and watching the world go by. In short, it is the perfect ground zero for a jubilant and burgeoning café culture.

Bean streets

While years ago the streets lining the Ping River on the east side of town were considered the place to be for local hipsters, today Nimmanhaemin Road on the west side holds the coveted crown of cool. A wide boulevard close to the university and the foothills of Suthep mountain, this epicenter of the eclectic serves up a seemingly endless (and growing) stream of bakeries, boutiques, art galleries, chic eateries and, of course, coffeehouses. In fact, the road has become so rapidly jam-packed with cafés that it is now known by locals as soi kafe, or coffee lane.

In the prime location, of course, at the corner of the boulevard and lane 9, looms the internationally famous Starbucks monolith. It is an icon that inspires both awe and apprehension; though credited with single-handedly introducing premium coffee to the world, the chain is often derided for locating next to small coffeehouses and deliberately running them out of business. Nevertheless, taking Western ideas and making them distinctively domestic is an entrenched Thai art form. Consequently, the hunter now finds itself the hunted: Though open for little over a year, Starbucks is now encircled by a posse of competing local café chains: Wawee, 94°, Café Nero, Smoothie Blues, and Bake and Bite, with others a few steps down the road and more surely on the way. Moreover, the Thai establishments are packed with customers, while Starbucks hosts far fewer—predominantly rich Thais from Bangkok and foreigners bound by brand loyalty.

Easily the most popular of Chiang Mai coffeehouses is Wawee Coffee. With nine stores in town and on the cusp of opening two in Bangkok, Wawee boasts the most rabid followers among local coffee connoisseurs, many coming in every day to sample the strong brew, use the wireless Internet and socialize with friends. Students of entrepreneurial business would do well to study the chain and dissect the reasons for its success. A famous architect once said, "God is in the details," and mild-mannered owner Kraisit Foosuwan has an impeccable eye for the particulars. Employees at Wawee open the door for you, offer hearty greetings and graciously shuttle drinks to your table. The design is upscale but inspired, resembling a modern, cozy chalet in Switzerland—long an aesthetic ideal among Thais because their beloved king grew up there.

Most noteworthy of all, though, is the price point. With drink prices half that of Starbucks, only very wealthy Thais can afford to ignore this all-important detail for the sake of status. And while the other cafés on the soi are also busy and offer enviable options at a similar charge, they lack that signature Wawee atmosphere. It seems that when it comes to providing that "special something," Wawee takes the (coffee) cake. But Foosuwan doesn't see his neighbors as competitors. "Every day, we only compete with ourselves," he says. "We never stop thinking about how to please the customer." Words to live—and thrive—by, certainly.

Royal blend

In truth, neither Starbucks nor Wawee nor the others gave premium coffee its start in Chiang Mai, or in Thailand for that matter. If anyone is to be credited with this, it is the King of Thailand himself.

Back in 1969, Bhimibol Adulyadej traveled extensively throughout his kingdom so that he could help identify the problems of his far-flung subjects. One pernicious problem that had troubled the northern hills for ages was the illegal growth of opium. While hard-line politicians espoused Draconian measures to get them to stop, the king pushed for more humanitarian methods such as crop substitution, education and training.

Prince Bhisadej Rajani, a trusted relative of the king, and himself a fervent champion of hilltribe needs, invited the king to a high-altitude village an hour and a half from Chiang Mai, where he had helped the town's residents to start growing fine Arabica coffee. Though some 100,000 tons of coffee were produced annually in Thailand's south, it was all robusta, used to make traditional, cheap o-liang Thai iced coffee, or instant powder in Nestlé's local factories. Though it grew more slowly and only at high altitudes, Arabica fetched far higher prices. Plus, the same soils that were ideal for opium were well-suited for the Arabica plant. Subsequently, without any help from the government, the king then used his own funds to initiate what would come to be known as "The Royal Project." Teaming with the United Nations Development Program and Chiang Mai University, they worked to help Arabica flourish in the country's northern mountains. Thus the success of coffee and other nontraditional crops allowed opium production to wane to the point that it has become nearly wiped out today.

Nevertheless, market forces being what they are, this was not the end of the story. When Arabica coffee prices plummeted in the 1990s, many farmers decided to abandon coffee production, cutting down their trees and reverting to subsistence crops like rice, which they could at least themselves eat. Those who stayed the course found themselves increasingly taken advantage of by middlemen—those who had the expertise and the machinery to convert raw coffee cherries into dried, expertly roasted coffee beans. (In Thailand, farmers generally mill their coffee too, and the middlemen/brokers are usually roasters as well.)

The farmers know little about marketing or fair prices and sometimes lack information about preferred farming methods; many are operating on advice provided decades ago by the United Nations. The people who are driving this small-scale "coffee renaissance" are almost invariably educated, moneyed Thais who learned roasting techniques abroad or from visiting foreigners and then created brands by buying the dried beans from the farmers (often teaching them the wet process method, where they formerly were using the dry method) and then roasting them with varying degrees of expertise. In the past, the broker/roasters were relatively unscrupulous, forcing farmers to sell well below market value, but today the middlemen are generally making enough money that they can afford to be more "enlightened." As maturing economies have shown, entrepreneurs need to get to a certain level themselves before they can help those below them, and Thailand is just about there.

Coffee futures

Fortunately, as both the Old Testament and Pete Seeger pointed out, "To everything, there is a season"—including coffee. Changes in the market, coupled with honest, forward-thinking entrepreneurs (see Seed Projects sidebar, p. 42), have helped breathe new life into Thailand's coffee commerce. Now that many Thais are willing pay five times as much for a specialty espresso drink than for a regular coffee, the market has found new legs. Super-premium mocha iced caramel latte boom, anyone? Though they may not all understand the question, anyone associated with coffee production in Thailand should be pleased that the answer, increasingly, is yes. Arabica production has tripled to more than 1,000 tons annually, and the landmark success of domestic chains has ensured that the lion's share of coffee commerce isn't lost to overseas brands. Which compels one to wonder: How long will it be before Wawee opens a store in Seattle?

Before getting hopped up on caffeine confidence, however, it's important to note that specialty coffee is still a niche market in Thailand. Then again, not so long ago so were pizza shops and Internet cafés, and now they're everywhere. No visitor to one of Bangkok's grandiose shopping malls can fail to appreciate the heady consumerism of the Thai people, a factor contributing to their well-publicized boom-and-bust cycles. And so it is likely that the trend-setting consumers and trailblazing domestic coffee companies of northern Thailand might very well be laying the groundwork for an increasingly caffeinated Siamese consciousness.

If statistical games are anything to go by, all this means the entire nation stands to benefit economically, perhaps someday joining the ranks of rich, coffee-crazy countries like Finland, Norway and the Netherlands, only with better weather. That's something worth drinking to. If you're Thai, one might argue, it's your patriotic duty.

 

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