Encounter with the farm

Story

Looking back from when I first encountered Thai coffee to today, I can see that there have been many difficulties.
Even when I was constantly scolded for hours, or when I was searching for a farm deep in the mountains of Thailand, not knowing what to do, for some reason I never felt negative.
Despite all the difficulties we faced, we opened a store called "Laughter," which means smile.

Episode 1

Back when I didn't know what coffee tasted like

It all started with an encounter with a young man from a Thai ethnic minority group.
He was an employee at a winery I was involved with in my university seminar activities.
At the age of 20, I was lucky enough to be taken by the winery president to visit his hometown.

The Akha people live in the mountainous region of northern Thailand and once cultivated poppies, which are used to make narcotics. Eventually, the Thai royal family banned poppy cultivation and planted coffee instead. After touring the coffee trees and village houses, we roasted the beans they harvested in an oven and drank them in the forest. I took a sip and was deeply moved. Looking back, the beans and the roasting method were terrible, but no matter what anyone said, the coffee was absolutely delicious. From that day on, Thai coffee was all I could think about.

After returning to Japan, I entered a business plan contest and began to seriously consider starting my own business. Miwa, who was in the same seminar class, joined us. However, we had no idea what coffee tasted like. Miwa had never even tried a drop of it.

To find out the quality of the beans we brought back from Thailand, we dropped by AMANO COFFEE, famous for its specialty coffee. Unaware of common sense, we visited the store without prior notice and showed the beans to the owner, Mr. Amano. He severely scolded us. The okonomiyaki we had on our way home had no flavor. But we went back to the store the next day. We didn't see any other way than to apologise to Mr. Amano. Of course, we were scolded again, but he didn't tell us to leave. For the next two months, Mr. Amano drilled us, who knew nothing about coffee, into his teachings.

At the time, Thai beans had a reputation for being of poor quality in Japan, and were not available at all. Unfortunately, this was true. But we decided to go to Thailand again. It wasn't too late to give up after seeing it for ourselves and tasting it for ourselves. We still had the hope that maybe...

Episode 2

A fateful encounter with Charlie

The stay period is one week.

From the first day, we visited several farms and coffee shops.
The more I learned, the more I realized that the quality of Thai coffee beans did not justify the selling price.
Most of the coffee grown was Robusta, which has an inferior taste compared to Arabica, and the harvest was uneven.
Along with the ripe red fruit, they also pluck the green fruit.
The shipping process was also sloppy, with some beans being sold with stones and wood chips still mixed in.

I returned to the hotel and spent the night muttering, "I guess I should go back and start job hunting..."

However, a miracle happened. I happened to walk into a cafe that served hand-dripped coffee, which was unusual. I tried it to see what it was like, and it was surprisingly delicious. I drove off, guided by the two words "FARMER: Chalee" and "VILLAGE: Doichang" written on the label. I had to find Charlie in Doi Chang Village! However, when I looked at the map, I saw that Doi Chang was not a village, but a mountain range.

We drove around Doi Chang Mountain, but time just passed without us finding any clues. Taking a break, we stopped into a small restaurant that caught our eye and asked the lady there if Charlie was there. "I'm sure he's over there," she said, and for a moment my heart skipped a beat, but when we got to where we were in the car, we found Charlie, a Lisu, not an Akha. There was no way we'd find him that easily. Ignoring the interpreter's repeated pleas of "It's impossible, let's go back now," we continued walking along the mountain path.

After walking for about 20 minutes, I met a couple in the forest who told me, "Charlie's son is a friend of mine." They immediately called and asked for the man. Their kindness touched my heart. Maybe this time it was the real deal? Or maybe it was someone else... Just as I was feeling a mixture of anticipation and anxiety, a young man without a helmet appeared on a large motorcycle. "I'm Charlie's son!"

The place he took us to was, without a doubt, the Charlie Farm we had been searching for. You could tell by looking at the beans. They had been carefully selected, incomparable to any other farm we had visited up until then. We had met Charlie on the same day we visited Doi Chang Mountain. It was nothing short of a miracle.

Episode 3

Contracts, imports, financing, construction - everything was a challenge

We returned to Japan with an overwhelming sense of accomplishment and excitement, and resolved to start our own business, quickly getting ready.
When I went to tell Mr. Amano about it, he was so happy he cried.

But here's where it gets really difficult.
No matter how many times I messaged Charlie, he never replied, so I had no choice but to go to the site to proceed with the deal.
I saved up travel expenses by working part-time, went to Thailand, made some progress in negotiations, then started working again...and the cycle repeated.

Deciding on the terms of the contract was not an easy task. They wanted us to buy lower-ranked beans as well, but we couldn't compromise on quality for their sake. In the Thai domestic market, beans are sold at low prices. We wanted the farm to improve quality and gain a fair reputation in the overseas market.

After much back-and-forth, Charlie finally gave in. So on October 15th, after registering the company, I headed straight to the airport and headed to Thailand for the fourth time to buy beans. Thinking that there might not be a bank account, I had hidden 1 million yen in cash in my bag.

Charlie Farm successfully ordered one ton of beans, signed a contract with a local trading company, and returned home. However, there was a catch here as well. The contract with the trading company only extended up to arrival at Osaka Port, and separate procedures were required for customs clearance and transportation in Japan. The one ton of beans was already at sea... My head went blank.

We called every import agent we could find, but were turned down by all of them. With no other options, we went crying to a shinkin bank representative. We were scolded by many people, but the company they introduced us to showed sympathy, and in mid-December, one ton of beans arrived in front of us.

The list of mistakes that followed was endless. He ordered beans before signing a contract, resulting in a large inventory.
I was bad at scheduling and made a lot of unreasonable requests. I got scolded a lot.
There were times when I was struggling with cash flow and had to get by by telling a desperate lie.

A lot of people helped us out.
I used Amano's name without permission in sales calls, but he no longer got angry.

Epilogue

The thoughts behind "Laughter"

Charlie is a quiet person.
As we continued to visit, we gradually became closer.
After a few visits, they started inviting me to dinner, and eventually they started picking me up from their farm on the mountain to my hotel in town.

Now he's letting me stay at his house. When I wake up in the morning at Charlie's house, I find the neighbors gathered in the living room.
Each farm brings their own beans and the tasting begins.
I can't speak the Aka language, but I can convey the feelings of "delicious" and "fun" without words.
There is a lot to be learned from their smiles.

We wanted our store to be a place like that, so we named it "Laughter."

In the future, we plan to purchase beans from the farms of Charlie's friends. It would probably be more efficient to buy from a trading company, but if we hadn't visited the farms in person, we wouldn't have realized that Thailand had delicious coffee, and we wouldn't have met these friends. That's why we want to continue to make it a priority to buy coffee beans directly from the farms. The smiles on the other side of the beans are what support Akai Noroshi.