Nguyen Coffee Supply’s Sahra Nguyen Featured on Inc.’s 2023 Female Founders Cover

The hard-working editorial staff at Inc. magazine today announced its sixth annual Female Founders list, honoring a bold group of 200 women whose innovations and ideas are shaping the world into a better place.

The founders cross all industries and bring with them unique stories of success from each stage of the entrepreneurial journey — from startup to going public, being acquired by big buyers, or spending decades at the helm of an organization. They are reinventing everything from shoes to food and are challenging issues like financial literacy and reproductive health.

Sahra Nguyen, Founder & CEO of Nguyen Coffee Supply, shares the cover of Inc. Magazine with Eva Longoria, Lena Waithe, Kim Abrams, and Jaymee Messler as one of the magazine’s featured Female Founders 200. This recognition comes after several wins for Sahra’s specialty coffee brand this year, as she continues to change the narrative around robusta coffee throughout the U.S. and lead the next wave of coffee to uplift the most marginalized coffee communities around the world.

We’ve tried their cans of coffee here at Grit Daily — including a batch during Grit Daily House – SxSW on March 11 — and can say it’s competitive with some of the top brands we’ve sampled worldwide. Rich and bold flavors, we “favorited” the coconut milk infused variety. And at 180 mg of caffeine, Nguyen smartly doesn’t overreach into the assumption that more caffeine is better. (It isn’t.)

“Through this incredible honor and recognition, I’m thrilled to amplify our mission to build a more equitable coffee industry and invest in the most disenfranchised coffee community: robusta farmers worldwide,” says Sahra Nguyen, in an email to Grit Daily.

Nguyen Coffee Supply is America’s first specialty Vietnamese coffee company and proud champion of the resilient robusta bean. Importing directly from the source and roasting in Brooklyn, New York, their mission is to transform the coffee industry through diversity, sustainability and cultural integrity.  In addition to being a relatively unknown but delicious brew, robusta’s farming practices are more sustainable and utilize fewer pesticides. Its beans, higher in caffeine content, are lower in fats and sugars. Despite the coffee industry’s stigma against the robusta species which excluded robusta farming communities from entering specialty coffee markets, Nguyen Coffee Supply set out to change the narrative, educate consumers and expand the coffee conversation to be inclusive of robusta. Vietnam is the second largest producer of coffee in the world (and the leading producer of robusta beans) and yet the nation has not played a significant role in specialty coffee culture — a sector estimated at $25 billion in the U.S.

In 2021, Nguyen graced the cover of Food & Wine magazine as one of their “25 Game Changers,” and has been featured in the The New York Times,  Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Forbes, VICE, Fortune, CBS Saturday Morning, and recently the front page of Wall Street Journal.  In 2020, Imbibe Magazine featured Sahra Nguyen as one of the #Imbibe75 — people, places, and directions that will shape the way you drink in 2020.

Nguyen Coffee Supply ships to customers in all 50 states and internationally to Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Singapore, U.K. and is available in restaurants and cafés in New York City, Washington D.C., Seattle, Kansas City, as well as at all Neighborhood Goods locations nationally. It is also sold in Whole Foods, FreshDirect, Gorillas, Weee! and more. Nguyen Coffee Supply can be enjoyed in a wide array of styles including the traditional cà phê sữa đá (Vietnamese coffee with sweetened condensed milk and ice) as well as the pour over, Chemex, French press, drip, espresso and as a canned ready to drink cold brew.

Each year, Inc. editors review thousands of applications highlighting female founders who are challenging the status quo and tackling some of the world’s biggest problems. The list features women who have overcome challenges and lifted those around them, while leading impactful organizations across the country. Sahra Nguyen joins the ranks of previous honorees including Jessica Alba, Tracee Ellis Ross, Rihanna, and Shonda Rhimes.

“These 200 female founders have identified solutions to difficult problems and created valuable, industry-changing companies out of them. We congratulate this year’s list on their achievements and look forward to their continued success,” says Inc. editor-in-chief Scott Omelianuk.